This is one of the unknowns on which the fate of the Idlib enclave depends: the evolution of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Cham (HTC) group, a dominant force in this region of northwestern Syria, the ultimate possession of the anti- Assad. Outgrowth of the Al-Nosra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaida, at the forefront of the insurgency in the years 2013-2015, this armed faction, classified as terrorist by the UN and the western capitals, is far from his jihadist matrix.
In an interview he gave at the end of January to the International Crisis Group (ICG), a think tank on conflicts in the world, the group's leader, the Syrian Abou Mohammed Al-Joulani, stressed this transformation. "I was influenced by a Salafist-jihadist milieu, born of a desire to resist the occupation of Iraq by the United States, he explains, referring to his involvement in the 2000s with the Islamic State organization in Iraq, which was fighting against the American forces deployed in this country. But today, the reality on the ground is our frame of reference. "
Pragmatism
These statements, breaking with the rhetoric of global jihad, overlap with the speeches and press releases produced by the group for several months already. HTC now presents itself as an independent group in the Al-Qaida chain of command, rooted in the anti-Assad rebellion, driven by a strictly national, rather than transnational, Salafi agenda. A Syrian revolutionary Islamist formation in a way.
The beginnings of this transformation date back to 2016, when the Al-Nusra Front, renaming itself "Fatah Al-Cham", announced its divorce from the jihadist nebula founded by Osama bin Laden. The process continued the following year, with the merging of Fatah Al-Cham and four other armed groups into a new organization, Hayat Tahrir Al-Cham.
These name and speech changes were followed by action. The most extremist sheikhs within HTC, who are often non-Syrians, have been expelled or marginalized. The movement is chasing the cells of the Islamic State, which has never been able to establish itself firmly in the Idlib region. HTC is also monitoring another jihadist group, Huras Al-Din, which has regained the Al-Qaida label and which it has forced to give up any plan for autonomous governance. Abu Mohammed Al-Joulani refuses to allow his fiefdom to serve as a platform for attacks abroad.
Pragmatism is also in order vis-à-vis Turkey, the godfather of the rebels. HTC did not oppose the deployment of its army in the province of Idlib from 2017. Even if it could criticize in public the various cease-fires negotiated since that date by Ankara with Moscow, the protector from Damascus, the group has never actively opposed it on the ground. This is still the case with the latest truce agreement, signed last week in Moscow, between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.