Syria in the hands of the Islamists

Thirteen years of civil war, 500,000 dead, millions displaced, and a secret flight from Damascus to Russia… Such is the pitiful epilogue of half a century of dictatorship of the El-Assad dynasty. In Aleppo and Damascus, the statues of the tyrant are torn down; in France and Germany, the Syrian diaspora celebrates “liberation”. But from this jubilation also arises concerns: are the “liberators” really there?

The strongman who succeeded in uniting the rebel groups and the Syrian National Army supported by Turkey is named Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. A seasoned Salafist, he has been scouring the Middle East for twenty years. In 2003, he joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq to fight the American army, then in 2011, in Syria, he joined forces with the Islamic State before returning to Al-Qaeda. But in 2016, aware of the political obstacles inherent to his association with one of the franchises of international terrorism, he separated and created Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

And now ?

Since then, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani has swapped the Islamic turban for military fatigues and has proven himself to be a skilled political animal in a region where instability continues to grow. In Idlib, the bastion city of its Islamist group, “it is sharia (Koranic law) that reigns, but it is not that of the Taliban, nor that of the Islamic State”, observes Wassim Nasr, specialist in movements jihadists. “For the first time, a group with this very strong jihadist CV is saying that global jihad and international terrorism were a mistake. All this is unprecedented. »

His challenge now is to ensure harmony in this fragmented country. Druze, Kurds, Alawites, Christians, Sunnis, Syria is an ethnic and religious puzzle where fears of oppression of minorities are numerous. Between 2011 and today, the Christian population living in Aleppo has fallen from 250,000 to 25,000, according to the Oeuvre d’Orient. “The Christian minority is jeopardizing its existence in Syria,” said Vincent Gelot, the head of the association in Syria. “There were some violations against them by some individuals during times of chaos, but we resolved those issues,” the Islamist leader said in a recent interview with CNN. Syria deserves an institutional system of government, not one in which a single leader makes arbitrary decisions. » Promising. The future will judge.