Matija Šerić
The spectacular conquest of large parts of Syrian territory and cities such as Homs, Daraa, Aleppo, and Damascus, and the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s government in early December, surprised the world.
Syrian Islamists led by the organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) managed, after many years of being largely pushed into the Idlib province, to make a 180-degree turnaround and capture large parts of the country. Although the war in Syria is not over yet, and it is uncertain when it will end, HTS has positioned itself as the new ruler of Syria after the ousting of Assad’s regime, and its leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani (also known as Ahmed al-Sharaa) is a political star.
Although HTS fighters overthrew the authoritarian Assad regime, which the West despised not because of its authoritarianism but for rejecting Western dictates (e.g., the Qatar-Turkey pipeline), this organization should never be idealized because they are not the bringers of democracy, peace, freedoms, and human rights. Quite the opposite. HTS has long been rightly labeled as a terrorist organization by much of the world (with a radical Salafi-Wahhabi ideology), and its past actions show a radical and criminal character. This will not change, even if influential countries remove the group from the list of terrorist organizations.
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