SYRIASyria After Assad: What to Know About HTS, Hezbollah, and Iran
The ascendance of Sunni Islamist rebels in Syria should be viewed with great caution by Western powers, but the Assad regime’s collapse disables a critical node in Iran’s regional proxy network.
Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a Sunni Islamist group. How should the U.S. and its regional allies view its ascendancy in Syria?
With grave alarm. The U.S. State Department has long offered a $10 million reward for the capture of HTS founder and leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani. He fought under the notorious al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, and subsequently spent five years in an Iraqi prison for his terrorist activities. In 2011, he returned to Syria and founded Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda franchise in that country. As its commander, he was responsible for detention and torture of American journalist Theo Padnos (née Theo Peter Curtis) between 2012 and 2014, among other crimes. Al-Jawlani claims that HTS broke with al-Qaeda in 2016 and no longer adheres to its Salafi-jihadi ideology—a claim doubted by knowledgeable observers.
What are the dynamics between HTS and the Islamic State remnants in central Syria?
As noted above, HTS emerged from the older Jabhat al-Nusra founded by al-Jawlani. Al-Jawlani had resented the attempts of the self-declared Islamic State, known as ISIS, to dominate Jabhat al-Nusra, and this resulted in a permanent breakdown in relations when al-Jawlani refused to bend to ISIS founder and leader Abu Bakr al-Baghadai’s will. But that was a decade when ISIS was in its ascendance and could afford to ignore the upstart Jabhat al-Nusra. Today, the situation is the reverse, and with ISIS profoundly weakened, the prospect of reconciliation and even amalgamation or alliance cannot be completely dismissed.
What does Assad’s fall mean for Hezbollah’s military power in the region?
In the past, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had counted upon the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah’s well-trained and often battle-hardened fighters to backstop Syria’s military. Hezbollah’s intervention had thus proved critical in both the suppression of the array of rebel forces challenging the regime since 2011 and in preserving the Assad family’s rule. But over the past three months, Israel’s unrelenting assault on Hezbollah’s leadership and foot soldiers has decimated the movement, rendering it incapable of rushing to Assad’s aid this past week.
