The Patient Efforts Behind Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s Success in Aleppo

“God willing,” the militant told his lieutenants, they would “be able to celebrate Eid al-Fitr in Aleppo and Damascus soon.” That militant was Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the Islamist coalition that took Aleppo by storm last week. As it turns out, his remarks — delivered in April to the leaders of his group’s militant wing — were not mere whimsy. He had a plan. And Eid al-Fitr is still four months away.

It has become a common refrain in recent days that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was able to take Syria’s second largest city in a matter of days only because of Russia’s distractions elsewhere and the hammering the so-called Axis of Resistance has taken since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. To be sure, that is part of the story alongside a weak regime, but only a part. This would not have been possible had Hayat Tahrir al-Sham not transformed itself over the last four and a half years.

From the March 2020 ceasefire in Syria to last month, Jawlani made concerted efforts to build more resilient institutions locally and reform Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s governance and military apparatuses. Jawlani believed that the space given post-ceasefire would help build greater capacity and experience locally in what they call the “Liberated Areas” so when the time was ripe, the coalition would be able to export these institutions to the rest of Syria as Jawlani described back in July 2022. So far in Aleppo, it seems like they have been able to scale up these institutions quickly, with civilians already taking control of governance days after its military apparatus took the city. How much more territory Hayat Tahrir al-Sham can take remains an open question, but either way, the model built in northwest Syria will be carbon-copied to the new “Liberated Areas” as it consolidates its control.

Background

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has an interesting and unique history. It started out as a branch of the Islamic State’s predecessor group, the Islamic State of Iraq, when it was founded in January 2012 as Jabhat al-Nusrah. However, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi overtly brought the organization from Iraq to Syria in April 2013, Jawlani disavowed Baghdadi and pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, then the leader of al-Qaeda. In another twist, Jawlani disavowed al-Qaeda and global jihad in July 2016 and transitioned to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham by January 2017 with a focus on only fighting locally. At the time, there were questions about how real all of this was considering the group’s history. However, in the intervening time, not only has Hayat Tahrir al-Sham destroyed the Islamic State’s presence in the Liberated Areas, but it also dismantled al-Qaeda’s attempt at building a new branch in Syria called Huras al-Din in June 2020. At the same time, the group still espouses an Islamist worldview, which is why I describe its members as more political jihadists than salafi jihadists because of their greater pragmatism vis-á-vis politics and theology not driving decision-making as it does with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda.

Since 2020, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani has increasingly inserted himself into the affairs of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham–backed civilian and technocratic Syrian Salvation Government and its local municipalities in the Administration of the Liberated Areas. The Syrian Salvation Government was born out of a process of trying to establish full governance control in the areas in which Hayat Tahrir al-Sham operated by late 2017. Prior to the Syrian Salvation Government’s establishment, a series of independent local councils (though some had previously been affiliated with the Syrian Interim Government) helped govern cities and villages that were created after the 2011 Syrian revolution, when the Bashar al-Assad regime lost territorial control over various areas of the country. This filled an initial gap for services, so local residents’ lives could continue as best as possible in the trying circumstances of the civil war. However, due to the changing nature of the rebellion and changed loyalties of various insurgent factions over time, there was always a quest to unify all military and governance apparatuses amongst the anti-regime activists and fighters.

While it is true that much of the governance within Syrian Salvation Government-administered areas is primarily technocratic in nature, there are specific exceptions where key leaders within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham take to the fore. For example, key figures and ideologues within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham such as ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Atun, Mazhar al-Ways, and Anas Ayrut have varying involvement in the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-backed extrajudicial body, the Supreme Fatwa Council, and have senior-level roles within the Syrian Salvation Government’s Ministry of Justice’s Supreme Judicial Committee and the Ministry of Endowments, Proselytization, and Guidance. Likewise, one of the founding leaders of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Hasham al-Shaykh, is the deputy head of the administrative council of Dar al-Wahi al-Sharif, which is an association of Qur’anic schools, within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham/Syrian Salvation Government territory, shaping how children grow up to view the world based on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s interpretations of Islam.

Jawlani’s Theory of the Case

Through Jawlani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s efforts to steer institution-building and internal bureaucratic reform toward more integration and efficiency, the group has been better able to meet crises in its borders over the past four and a half years based on lessons learned. This process has also been used to better professionalize all aspects of institutions in the Liberated Areas so that if and when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham decided it was time to expand its territory (as we are seeing now), it would be more able to replicate this updated form of its polity to integrate the newest locales proficiently.

Many of the meetings that Jawlani attends within the Syrian Salvation Government framework are part of his and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s effort to show that it is responsive to governance issues and concerns. In August 2020, for example, in a meeting with internally displaced Syrians from Halfaya, Jawlani acknowledged that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is not a “big state” and has limited ability to help people, but it would direct its resources where it could. One way to do this, he said using a theme he raised a few times, is self-sufficiency. In May 2021, while meeting a delegation of tribal sheikhs, Jawlani stated that “the current stage is one of preparation and institution building” that will pave the way for an eventual victory. “Every institution we build in the liberated areas represents a step toward Damascus. … Our battle is on every level. It’s not just a military battle, because construction is harder than war. There are many hardships.” Thus, it was not surprising to see Jawlani appear at the January 2022 inauguration of a widened road connecting Bab al-Hawa to Aleppo, explaining that these projects are building blocks to a better life for local residents. “Freedom comes from military strength … and dignity comes from economic and investment projects, through which the people and the citizens live a dignified life that befits Muslims.”

This project is important to Jawlani because he believes that “there is a double responsibility to liberate areas in the right way and to build institutions in the right and honorable way.” The building blocks are at the core of Jawlani’s push for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s supremacy above all actors in the Syrian arena. If the foundations of the Liberated Areas in northwest Syria are suspect, there will inevitably be deficiencies when they export these institutions to other locales. That is why building it in the correct way, as envisioned by Jawlani, is crucial to successfully consolidating control elsewhere if and when they take more territory. Further stressing that these efforts must continue without individuals becoming complacent: “We have to always think that we need to build more … and organize more.”

Source » warontherocks