Who is Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s interim president?

Islamist former rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has been appointed as Syria’s interim president. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Islamist former rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has been appointed as Syria’s interim president after his Islamist group led a lightning offensive on December 8 that toppled Bashar al-Assad. The appointment of Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with al-Qaeda, came after a meeting of the former insurgent factions in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Sharaa has been Syria’s de facto leader since leading the offensive that deposed Assad after more than 13 years of civil war.

Formerly known as Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, al-Sharaa is the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the lightning offensive that toppled Assad in early December. The group was once affiliated with al-Qaeda but has since denounced its former ties.

In recent years, al-Sharaa has sought to cast himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance and promised to protect the rights of women and religious minorities. The tall, sharp-eyed Sharaa has held a succession of interviews with foreign journalists, presenting himself as a patriot who wants to rebuild and reunite Syria.

Ahmed al- Sharaa’s early years

Born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia, Sharaa is from a well-to-do Syrian family and was raised in Mazzeh, an upscale district of Damascus.

In 2021, he told U.S. broadcaster PBS that his nom de guerre was a reference to his family’s roots in the Golan Heights. He said his grandfather was among those forced to flee the territory after its capture by Israel in 1967.

According to the Middle East Eye news website, it was after the September 11, 2001 attacks that he was first drawn to jihadist thinking.

“It was as a result of this admiration for the 9/11 attackers that the first signs of jihadism began to surface in Jolani’s life, as he began attending secretive sermons and panel discussions in marginalised suburbs of Damascus,” the website said.

Following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he left Syria to take part in the fight.

He joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and was subsequently detained for five years, preventing him from rising through the ranks of the jihadist organisation.

The United States had previously placed a $10 million bounty on al-Sharaa but canceled it last month after a U.S. delegation visited Damascus and met with him. Top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf said after the meeting that al-Sharaa came across as “pragmatic.”