BBC - a Jihadi on a Charm Offensive (2023)

Krassi Twigg: On the morning of February 6th, a powerful earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria. The scale of the tragedy was overwhelming from the first moment on. But while aid started flowing into Turkey within hours, Idlib province in Syria was initially left to its own devices. The authorities in charge appealed to the international community for help. This is a journalist putting his question to the man in charge. And it is he who holds the key to Idlib. Our jihadist media team was watching him.

Abdirahim Said: It's him standing in front of a podium. You've got a mic in front of him, casually taking questions from, you know, local journalists and media activists about The response of his group to the earthquake, you know, in the style of any government that faces a natural disaster, it was just incredible.

Krassi Twigg: It's not the kind of content my colleague Abdirahim Said is used to watching. The man in question, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is the leader of a jihadist group that had its roots in al-Qaeda. Here's what the Americans once tweeted him.

Speaker 3: Oh, hello, Jolani, you handsome one. What a cute suit. You can change what you wear, but you are still a terrorist. Don't forget the $10 million reward on your head.

Krassi Twigg: This story is about an unusual jihadist venture into civilian governance. Center stage is the man in charge of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS. Think of it this way. While the Islamic State group wants to be feared, he appears to want to be liked. We track him on his journey of transformation to find out what is his endgame and what are the implications for the Syrians under his rule. I'm Khrassi Twigg, and this is The Global Jigsaw, an original podcast from BBC Monitoring, zooming in on political, security and social shifts around the world. Through the lens of its media, our team listens to, watches, and analyzes media narratives in 100 languages. Radio Tehran.

Abdirahim Said: Right, we must go now to Moscow.

Krassi Twigg: To my Niftar Gales, the territory Ukraine.

Hisham Shawish: Western countries are not the international community.

Speaker 3: That era has finished.

Krassi Twigg: 저 좀 주당 주なら 치고 اليوم도 자 통지 될게요, 가는. I mean, have you got any thoughts on that?

Abdirahim Said: On any given day, it will be various online sources.

Krassi Twigg: This is Somali-born Abdirahim Said, in an unusual line of work.

Abdirahim Said: Yeah, my day job is to track and analyze the activities and propaganda of jihadist groups— Islamic State group, al-Qaeda, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS, in Syria.

Krassi Twigg: What is really the purpose of your job?

Abdirahim Said: When we're covering an attack or a bombing in a particular country, you still want to see if there's been official claims. We read between the lines, then report the news in a very careful manner, in a way that tells a story without giving such a group a platform for propaganda.

Krassi Twigg: So tell me about Jolani.

Abdirahim Said: He's a Syrian, and he is arguably one of the most powerful jihadist leaders in the Middle East. And he runs a group called HTS, which stands for Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, or the Organization for the Liberation of Syria.

Krassi Twigg: The liberation of Syria— language borrowed from the revolutionaries behind the Arab Spring. More than a decade into the bloody war, President Assad's forces, supported by Russia, have been pushing to capture the last remaining opposition stronghold, The northern province of Idlib. And it's there we now find the restyled leader of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. His group is accused of rampant abuses of human rights and has been on the list of proscribed terrorist groups by the U.K., U.S. and Turkey. And we find the perfect visualization of his transformation in a series of satirical memes on Twitter. I'm a terrorist. We're seeing 4 pictures on the screen.

Abdirahim Said: Yes. So one social media user posted a meme making fun of how al-Jolani has been changing from wearing military fatigues and then slowly moving into more civilian clothes, about how al-Jolani looks on different platforms.

Krassi Twigg: What he would post on Tinder, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, that meme.

Abdirahim Said: That's his LinkedIn profile. Exactly.

Krassi Twigg: It's a very professional look. He's wearing a suit. Beard is neatly trimmed.

Abdirahim Said: Yep. You know, open glasses.

Krassi Twigg: He could be going for a job interview.

Abdirahim Said: Exactly. For this particular look, he was actually sitting in a rare interview with an American journalist.

Krassi Twigg: Just to be clear, Jolani isn't really on LinkedIn. This is all a spoof. Jihadists have largely been removed from mainstream social media platforms and forced onto encrypted chat apps. But who is posting these memes?

Abdirahim Said: These are Syrians on the ground. These photos have been put together as satire, trying to make the point of how al-Jolani is actually playing politics, playing to different audiences. And he does not really care about jihadism. He does not care about the Syrian people or anything else other than his survival.

Krassi Twigg: It's striking to see a jihadist Someone wanted as a terrorist, in a suit, dressed to impress. And all the more extraordinary when we hear about his journey.

Abdirahim Said: What he said, soon after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that's when he actually crossed the border into Iraq to fight American forces. And he himself tells us in later interviews that he was captured by the Americans. And he says he was imprisoned for a total of 5 years, moving between different facilities. He mentioned the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. He claims that he wrote a 50-page letter or a manifesto about his ideas for change in Syria. He claims that during prison, he got to know a middleman who would introduce him to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was fighting for al-Qaeda, and Baghdadi would take a liking to him. And send him with some money and few men to set up a branch in Syria to fight the war in Syria.

Krassi Twigg: Jolani was now back in his home country as an unknown foot soldier. It was a time of conflict between the government and rebel forces. Then BBC monitoring heard word of a new jihadist group.

Mina Al-Lahmi: So, Nusra Front declared its presence in Syria in January 2012. And with it, they said the leader is Abu Mohammed al-Joulani.

Krassi Twigg: This is Mina Al-Lahmi. She's a renowned jihadism expert at BBC Monitoring. She's an Iraqi and was in Baghdad in 2003 when U.S. tanks rolled in, and later Islamist militants For jihadists, U.S.

Mina Al-Lahmi: troops is a magnet.

Krassi Twigg: She's been watching jihadists ever since, including the Nusra Front.

Mina Al-Lahmi: And we were scratching our heads. Who is al-Joulani? Because we hadn't heard of him before, and yet this group was, you know, becoming powerful. And it called for jihad in Syria. And more importantly, the message appeared on a website that at the time was an al-Qaeda-accredited website.

Krassi Twigg: So, of course, we thought, yes, it's a jihadist group, but we didn't know We weren't sure back then, but later it became clear that Nusra Front was an al-Qaeda offshoot. The group eventually became Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS. It's not uncommon for jihadist groups to rename in an attempt to shake off unwanted baggage. With Jolani as its leader, HTS based itself in Idlib, the last opposition stronghold in Syria. My colleague Hisham Shawish is from Lebanon and is a Middle East media analyst at BBC Monitoring. He did a fact file to help us understand why Idlib matters.

Hisham Shawish: It's the last remaining area of Syria not in the hands of the Syrian government. It's home to around 4 million people, and that includes hundreds of thousands displaced from other parts of Syria. Many are living in makeshift tents. It's extremely hot in the summer and freezing and snowing in the winter. On top of that, Idlib comes under frequent artillery fire and air bombardment from Syrian government and Russian forces. The province remains vital, as it's a key entry point for humanitarian aid. This is because it sits on the northwestern border of Syria with Turkey. The dominant faction in Idlib is the jihadist HTS group, who back a so-called Salvation Government. And this runs services in the area. They also encourage the work of aid agencies. HTS has now largely marginalized more mainstream rebels who are backed by Turkey. It's also clamped down on its former al-Qaeda allies. And the Islamic State group also has a clandestine presence in Idlib.

Krassi Twigg: Hisham mentioned the Salvation Government, and this is important, because This is the de facto ruling body in Idlib. It's unelected, but it's making an effort to appear as a civilian entity. Looking at articles from our jihadist media team over the years detailing its activities, I was struck by how hard it's trying to appear state-like.

Abdirahim Said: The Salvation Government was set up in 2017. They claim to provide services for Syrians. They show us roads being built, classes being run in schools, people receiving medication and treatment at hospitals, young people getting degrees at universities. That's the image they want us to see. Ajolani has been trying to set up a political front for himself so that when it comes to solving the war in Syria, he has a seat at the table.

Krassi Twigg: So HTS is a group led by a man who fought the jihad on the front line and says he was jailed by the Americans in Iraq. This same man now has a political front in the face of the Salvation Government. And they're very keen to showcase their activities.

Abdirahim Said: They really boasted about inaugurating a new road. And in this video, I can just quickly show you, we see al-Joulani again, as he usually likes to appear recently, wearing more civilian clothes with his trimmed beard. And here we can see him wearing a beige coat, open-neck shirt. And here's a commemorative stone for the event. And you see that they actually had red curtains on it, kind of activities.

Krassi Twigg: So very stage-managed.

Abdirahim Said: Very stage-managed. Now that was the start of 2022. Since then, I clocked him making many more public appearances in the same year. Everything from taking selfies with locals at a market during Eid, meeting local tribal chiefs, to dropping in on school teachers during exams. Let me show you this. This is actually a Christian service. In the summer of 2022, Jolani met with representatives from both the Druze and the Christian communities. And within weeks, a church in Idlib that had been closed for years reopened its doors, and a rare prayer service took place. Now, this was controversial with hardline jihadists. HTS underplayed the significance of the event, claiming the group had always protected minorities. Now, this is an assertion disputed by human rights organizations.

Krassi Twigg: So, what is he hoping to achieve with such, as you said, controversial move for a jihadist?

Abdirahim Said: I guess he wants to carry himself as a de facto president who is also a jihadist leader that can lead militant operations against the Damascus government, but also equally can sit around the table and take part in political negotiations. And that way, he thinks he can gain points with the West.

Krassi Twigg: And he's found other ways to appeal to his people, some of which is not what you'd expect from a jihadist leader.

Mina Al-Lahmi: Increasingly, al-Jolani has been filmed and been shown in videos touring displacement camps, going to shops, restaurants, meeting with people, asking them directly on the ground, what are your needs? He has a notepad and a paper, and he's talking to people, and he's jotting down notes. And he's accessible. And accessible means more legitimate, more mainstream.

Krassi Twigg: This is beginning to look like a charm offensive.

Mina Al-Lahmi: So, what we're seeing here is al-Joulani visiting one of the most famous restaurants in Idlib province. They do falafel and hummus. But anyway, very popular, very busy, as well.

Krassi Twigg: He's in the kitchen area.

Hisham Shawish: He is.

Mina Al-Lahmi: He made a surprise visit during Eid. And you can see him going behind the counter—

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Mina Al-Lahmi: Yes. Tasting the food, asking them about it. Yes, yes, serving. And then after that, he actually, you know, as he sits down to eat, he meets with locals.

Krassi Twigg: And people seem quite chuffed.

Mina Al-Lahmi: Chuffed. A lot of the people who were at the restaurant took selfies with al-Joulani.

Krassi Twigg: Yeah.

Mina Al-Lahmi: And so that really went on social media.

Krassi Twigg: Not the kind of jihadist material you're used to watching on a daily basis, you know?

Mina Al-Lahmi: Not at all. Not the angry jihadists that we see on the screens.

Krassi Twigg: Joulani was venturing into new And perhaps the most striking example of that came in the form of one media appearance by him. He was interviewed for a documentary called The Jihadist by the American TV network PBS, which aired in 2021. The film attracted controversy for giving a platform to a wanted jihadist. Abderrahim watched it at the time. I watched it.

Abdirahim Said: He is wearing a casual suit without a tie. His beard is trimmed. He's speaking in a confident manner, and he wants to project that image. So he said, we're part of the Syrian revolution. And it's interesting, he used the word revolution around 50 times.

Krassi Twigg: But his old enemies, the Americans, weren't convinced. A photo of Jolani with the journalist who interviewed him, Martin Smith, attracted attention on Twitter.

Abdirahim Said: Here in this tweet, the State Department says— this tweet is in Arabic, and it tells readers that if you've got any information that would help locate al-Joulani, call us on this Telegram number or Signal number.

Krassi Twigg: We have voiced this up, but these are the actual translated words.

Speaker 3: Oh, hello, Joulani, you handsome one. What a cute suit. You can change what you wear, but you are still a terrorist. Don't forget the $10 million reward on your head.

Krassi Twigg: The Americans clearly haven't bought into Jolani's new image. That U.S. bounty is still in place. He's accused of carrying out multiple attacks in Syria, often targeting civilians. But he's still alive, in contrast to other jihadists in Idlib. President Biden has announced that the leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Ghassimi, Qureshi has been killed in an attack carried out by U.S. special forces in the Syrian province of Idlib. This happened in February 2022, 3 years after Qureshi's predecessor, al-Baghdadi, met the same fate, also in Idlib. Mina's been across the jihadist chatter.

Mina Al-Lahmi: So one key point that jihadist rivals of HTS make repeatedly to undermine the jihadist credentials of Joulani and suggest that he is colluding with international players is this. They say, how come he gets to walk in Idlib in broad daylight without being bombed, while other jihadist leaders will get killed in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes the minute they pop their head up?

Abdirahim Said: And here we are seeing comments from hardline jihadists on encrypted messaging apps suggesting that Jolani could in fact be America's guy, because if they really wanted to pick him off, they could have done, just like they did with other al-Qaeda sympathizers.

Krassi Twigg: Jolani may be a wanted man, but he is not hiding, it would seem. He's living in plain sight. If he's trying to court the West and win over the local population, is it working? Nader Ibrahim is a colleague from BBC Arabic who's been covering the situation in Syria.

Nader Ibrahim: Our sources say 95% of citizens live below the poverty line. We have built a reliable network of sources over the years. For the journalists that operate in Idlib, there are limitations on how much They can cover, right? If some of them go as far as criticizing the government on Facebook or on social media, they get invited for a chat with one of the HCS officials.

Krassi Twigg: It's not a chat for tea and biscuits.

Nader Ibrahim: No, sadly, it's not. It could involve tea and biscuits, but it also involves a bit of intimidation to draw a line at what they can do and they can't do. We've seen what happened in 2018 with Roy Fares, a vocal critic of jihadists and the regime, very well-known activist. He was sadly assassinated in an area controlled by HTS. We've heard from people there that describe the situation in Idlib at the moment as a new dictatorship.

Krassi Twigg: A new dictatorship. There seems to be a discrepancy between the narrative of the dominant jihadist group and the reality for people in this Syrian province. And as if life for them wasn't hard enough already, A powerful earthquake struck on the sixth of February.

Abdirahim Said: لقد تعرضت المناطق المحررة لززال قوي فجر هذا اليوم.

Krassi Twigg: A member of the Salvation Government giving updates at the news briefing. Abdurrahim followed their media campaign.

Abdirahim Said: So as soon as the earthquake happened, both Al-Jolani and his affiliated Salvation Government. kind of really kicked into action within hours. So, immediately we've seen a statement from Joulani calling on the world to send aid to this part of Syria. Also, we've seen Joulani and other officials going on tours to the affected areas. You would think it's any other government official dealing with this huge natural disaster. Right.

Krassi Twigg: So it's clear that they're very media savvy and understand what the media can do for them.

Abdirahim Said: Following HTS for the past few years, one thing they've really been good at is actually talk about themselves. You can say their activities after the earthquake does definitely underscore their evolution as a group from a hardline jihadist group that had links with al-Qaeda —to a group that is trying to be a little bit more moderate. It did become another opportunity for al-Joulani to try and legitimize himself in the eyes of the international community. And one way to do that is actually to get Western journalists to interview him one-to-one, in the style of a civilian leader. And he did, in fact, have 2 Western outlets, after the earthquake, interview him. And he spoke to one channel, where he talked about what they were doing for the local people and why the U.N. should engage with them directly.

Krassi Twigg: Who were those Western outlets?

Abdirahim Said: So, one was Sky News, and the other one was The Guardian.

Krassi Twigg: Joulani is not a lone voice when it comes to urging the U.N. to change its approach in delivering lifesaving aid to Syrians in rebel-held areas. Legal experts have told the BBC the U.N. shouldn't have insisted on permission from Damascus to reach victims in Idlib. This is The Global Jigsaw, where we are tracking the transformation of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the head of the jihadist group HTS, who wants to be seen as a civilian leader. But why did he choose to distance himself from al-Qaeda in the first place? Here's Mina to help us with the final pieces of the jigsaw.

Mina Al-Lahmi: For Syrians and for, you know, most Muslims, al-Qaeda is bad news. It just attracts airstrikes. It also blocks aid. And then Joulani still wanted to win the support of other rebel groups. The only way he thought he could do that was really to shed the al-Qaeda brand. We can see the rhetoric that's changed. In the past, it was all jihad and all Sharia. And in the last few years, there's a lot cropping in of the term revolution. Now, jihadists, for example, they don't like the term revolution. To them, revolution, rebellion, that's to do more with secular nationalist activity. To them, it's only jihad, really. The broader jihadist community see it as a group that has turned its back on jihad. So there's really one way for it to move forward, and that is to make political gains and get international recognition.

Krassi Twigg: Joulani's game plan, then, it seems, is to get a seat at the table. And to do that, he styles himself as jihadist-lite in the hope that he'll be seen as the lesser evil by foreign players. So does this turnaround in rhetoric protect him?

Mina Al-Lahmi: I think potentially, yes. HTS has taken it upon itself to shut down the bases of jihadist groups, to throw many of the foreign fighters in prison. I'll quote the hardline jihadists. They say that HTS and al-Joulani are doing the dirty work of these various international players instead of them having to go into Idlib and take out jihadists.

Krassi Twigg: While HTS is positioning itself to seem helpful to foreign powers, their approach has caused an ideological debate among jihadists.

Mina Al-Lahmi: So there's all these divisions on these jihadist forums. And that is about, did we get it wrong all these years by insisting on this kind of elitist type of jihad? It's either my way or the highway. Either comply with us and submit to us and Sharia, or shall we do something more gradual, more flexible, and play the long game, where we will show the international community that we are not hardline, that we are flexible, that we are willing to work with them, just as the Taliban is doing now?

Krassi Twigg: The conflict in Syria has been frozen in its unresolved state. And its people largely forgotten. Then all of a sudden, when the earthquake struck, the spotlight was back on Idlib.

Mina Al-Lahmi: HTS has been for years trying to actually attract attention and just say to the world, look at us, look at what we're doing. Now, this is not to say that the response by HTS and the Salvation government was not genuine. However, it was a crucial opportunity for them to showcase their so-called governance capabilities. They had a video to show Joulani heading an emergency meeting for the Salvation government, very similar to what you have in countries where you see the prime minister or the president heading one of those emergency response meetings. They held a webinar where they brought mainstream, very influential Islamist figures and heads of organizations together. And actually, it was through that webinar that HTS articulated very clearly that it wanted to break free from this isolation.

Krassi Twigg: And do you think they were successful in pushing this message out, in using this as an opportunity, as you say, to present themselves in the light that they want to be seen?

Mina Al-Lahmi: That was really a turning point, in a sense, for HTS. Because in the past, no one really wanted to touch them. No one wanted to deal Right. They didn't want to deal with them because they were seen as this jihadist group. But I think the sympathy that the world had for the people, for the locals in Idlib, that kind of forced them to have to deal with the rulers of Idlib. The same with the United Nations and humanitarian organizations and news organizations. They were forced to deal with HTS. They are the authority in Idlib. So I think this was a turning point for HTS. It remains to be seen if the group can build on that.

Krassi Twigg: You said they were seen as jihadists in the past. And how are you and the team describing HTS now?

Mina Al-Lahmi: We used to describe them as a jihadist group, and now we are calling them an Islamist militant group. And we didn't take that decision lightly. The main reason, really, was that They no longer look jihadist. They do not sound jihadist. And they do not act jihadist. They're all in suits and ties. In terms of the rhetoric, the messaging from HTS, for years now, they've really dropped that jihadist messaging. And they make it very clear that they have no jihadist ambitions beyond Syria. They have imprisoned and expelled the hardline jihadists. Of course, the group could still be harboring a jihadist agenda that we don't know. But we just have to really act on what we see and the evidence that we see.

Krassi Twigg: Thanks to Mina Alami and Abderrahim Said. At a time when all eyes are on a different war, they and their team continue to watch for clues in jihadist chat rooms about how much Dowlani, the man at the center of our jigsaw, could influence the direction You also heard from Hisham Shawish and Nada Ibrahim. The producers are Anne Dixie and Krista Shattouri. The sound engineer is Alan Lear, and our editor is Judy King. If you can, subscribe or follow The Global Jigsaw so you never miss an edition. Send us your feedback to theglobaljigsaw@gmail.com. also, all one word, at bbc.co.uk. I'm Krasi Twig. Thanks for your company, and do join us again next time.