Who is Abu Mohammed al-Julani, Syrian rebel leader who overthrew Assad regime?

After a week of rapid offensive, Syrian rebels on Sunday announced that they had liberated Damascus and ended President Bashar al-Assad’s reign, encountering no resistance from government troops.

According to news agency Reuters, Assad, who ruled the country for 24 years, fled from the country to an undisclosed location in a plane.

Leading the offensive and ending President Assad’s regime was Abu Mohammed al-Julani, who currently heads the most powerful armed opposition force in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamic group with ties to Al Qaeda. In 2018, the United States designated HTS a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and placed a $10 million bounty on him.

Speaking to CNN at an undisclosed location, Julani said that the primary motive of the “revolution” in Syria was to overthrow President Assad’s regime and the establishment of a kind of government where a “council chosen by the people” would be at the helm of affairs.

“When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” Julani told CNN in an old interview.

“The seeds of the regime’s defeat have always been within it… the Iranians attempted to revive the regime, buying it time, and later the Russians also tried to prop it up. But the truth remains: this regime is dead,” Julani added.

WHO IS ABU MOHAMMED AL-JULANI?

Julani, who is now on the centre stage as his forces took control of Damascus, was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as a petroleum engineer.

In 1989, Julani returned to Syria as his family decided to settle near Damascus. According to a report by Al-Jazeera, Julani joined Al Qaeda in 2003 in Iraq at the time when the US invaded the Middle East as part of its war against terrorism. Jukani set HTS under a different name, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 as a direct affiliate of al-Qaeda.

While in al-Qaeda, Julani also worked with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of al-Qaeda’s Islamic State in Iraq (ISIS). Later in 2013, Julani announced that his group would be cutting ties with Baghdadi. He also bloody war against Baghdadi after the Islamic State sought to unilaterally subsume the Nusra Front in 2013.

Nearly eight years after its disassociation with al-Qaeda, Julani spoke about the designation of HTS as a terror group and said that he opposed the killing of innocent people.

He detailed how the Nusra Front had expanded from the six men who accompanied him from Iraq to 5,000 within a year.

As the Islamic State collapsed, Julani was cementing the grip of HTS in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, establishing a civil administration called the Salvation Government.

With the Syrian rebel forces taking control of Damascus, according to Middle East experts, Julani now aims to brand HTS as a credible governing entity in Syria and a possible partner in global counterterrorism efforts.