OPINION:
Those celebrating the fall of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad are feeling the need to whitewash his replacement’s bloody past. With the assistance of President Biden’s foreign policy team, the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is assuming control of the Middle Eastern nation of nearly 25 million.
“We’ve taken note of statements by the leaders of these rebel groups in recent days. And we’re — they’re saying the right things now,” Mr. Biden said on Dec. 8. He credited his sanctions and his arming of “local partners” in Syria for turning the tide against Mr. Assad.
Odds are that Mr. Biden will remove Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, from the terrorist watchlist before President-elect Donald Trump moves into the White House. “The big guy” doesn’t want anyone to notice that he just handed Syria to an Islamist movement that is committed to jihad.
Israel understands what’s happening, which is why its military spent all day Thursday sinking every ship and bombing every plane in the Syrian arsenal “to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorist elements.”
Last year, our State Department wrote: “Armed terrorist groups such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham committed a wide range of abuses, including unlawful killings and kidnappings, unjust detention, physical abuse, deaths of civilians, and recruitment of child soldiers.”
The department also acknowledged that HTS “restricts the religious freedom of non-conforming Sunni Muslims and threatens the property, safety, and existence of religious minority groups such as Alawites, Christians, and Druze.”
HTS’s commander, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, intends for the world to think otherwise. He recast himself as a moderate by trimming his beard and wearing Western-friendly clothing for interviews with CNN.
A decade ago, he was hard at work trying to kill U.S. troops in Iraq, prompting the U.S. government to place a $10 million bounty on his head. The man’s own words suggest he has yet to relinquish his passion for suicide bombings and beheadings.
In 2016, Jolani consolidated Syrian insurgent factions by downplaying formal affiliation with “external entities.” Then-al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri approved this public relations strategy, as Jolani explained in his rebranding news conference. His remarks opened with praise for “the blessed leadership” of terrorist kingpins past and present.
“They have practically implemented the words of Sheikh Osama bin Laden (may Allah have mercy on him),” he said, adding he would act “without compromising or sacrificing our solid beliefs.”
His goals remain to establish Shariah — Islamic law — in Syria, unify the groups fighting Mr. Assad and “protect the Jihad in [Syria] and assure its continuity using all Islamically legitimate means.”
Those aren’t the words of a reformed terrorist. Rather, as Jolani explained in a 2015 Al Jazeera interview, “We received clear orders not to use Syria as a launching pad to attack the U.S. or Europe in order to not sabotage the true mission against the regime.”
Which is to say, al Qaeda chieftains made the strategic choice to fool the West into helping jihadis take charge in Syria. “Our options are open when it comes to targeting the Americans if they will continue their attacks against us in Syria,” he warned.
A few years after saying those words, it took only a bit of happy talk to dupe the administration into handing him the keys to the presidential palace.
Mr. Trump has a different take on recent events. “Syria is a mess, but is not our friend,” he wrote on Truth Social. “The United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved!”
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