On the menu today: If you’ve wondered why Donald Trump has grown so buddy-buddy with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa since the start of the year, the New York Times revealed a big piece of the puzzle. Apparently al-Sharaa, formerly known under the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani and leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, as U.S. designated terrorist group . . . was “discreetly cooperating with the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS and Al Qaeda since he took control of a slice of rebel-held territory in northwestern Syria in 2016.” We can debate how much that makes him “our guy,” but he clearly hasn’t been ISIS’s guy for a long time, as that particular Islamist terrorist group has tried to kill al-Sharaa at least twice this year. And now the U.S. is reportedly in discussions to establish a lasting military presence at a Damascus airbase. Read on.
The Chameleon-Like Abilities of Ahmed al-Sharaa
It’s entirely reasonable for Americans to regard Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa with wariness and suspicion.
As I wrote in my magazine piece about my trip to Syria in the May issue, al-Sharaa has about as notorious a background as any foreign leader on the planet:
That [State Department] warning casually mentions that the “United States continues to designate Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as a terrorist group,” without specifying that the current acting president of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, under the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, used to run HTS. Up until late December, the U.S. government was willing to pay $10 million for information about his location, because he was on the “specially designated global terrorist” list. Jolani traveled to Iraq in 2003 and joined al-Qaeda; he was later captured and held at Camp Bucca. In 2011, at the start of the Syrian civil war, he formed the Nusra Front as an affiliate of the Islamic State. But Sharaa had a falling-out with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2013, and the Nusra Front split off.
And yet, since his first interaction with Ahmed al-Shara, President Trump has been oddly positive with him.
Back in May, at a U.S.-Saudi Investment Event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Trump said, “I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.” (For what it’s worth, I thought that was the right move. If we had sanctions on Syria to punish the actions of the Assad regime, and then the Assad regime is toppled, the new regime deserves to be judged by its own actions, not the actions of its predecessors.)
After meeting al-Shara in Saudi Arabia on that trip, Trump told reporters on Air Force One, “Young, attractive guy, tough guy. Yeah, strong fighter, he’s got — he’s got a real shot at pulling it together. I spoke with President Erdoğan, I’m very friendly with him. He feels he’s got a shot, going to give it a try. It’s a torn-up country.”
Earlier this week, for the first time in U.S. history, the White House welcomed the Syrian president for a visit. Raise your hand if you expected the summit to be covered in . . . People magazine:
As Trump, 79, presented al-Sharaa, 43, with a perfume bottle, Trump sprayed the fragrance on the politician, calling it “the best fragrance.”
“And the other one is for your wife,” Trump said, before quickly asking, “How many wives?”
“One,” Al-Sharaa replied.
“With you guys, I never know,” Trump replied.
Later in the day, Trump gushed about him:
He’s a very strong leader. He comes from a very tough place and he’s a tough guy. I liked him. I get along with him, the president, the new president of Syria. . . . We want to see Syria become a country that’s very successful. And I think this leader can do it, I really do. I think this leader can do it. And people said he’s had a rough past. We’ve all had rough pasts, but he has had a rough past, and I think frankly, if you didn’t have a rough past, you wouldn’t have a chance. He gets along very well with Turkey, with President Erdoğan, who’s a great leader. Erdoğan is a great leader and very much in favor of what’s happening in Syria. We have to make Syria work. Syria is a big part of the Middle East. And I will tell you, I think it is working and really well. We’re working also with Israel on, you know, getting along with Syria, getting along with everybody.
The Economist called al-Sharra “Donald Trump’s new bestie.”
You can forgive Trump’s fans, who thought of the American president as a ferocious opponent of militant Islamism, for being bewildered that Trump is growing so buddy-buddy with a former member of al-Qaeda and ISIS.
This morning, the New York Times delivered a scoop that affirmed what some in the Middle East had suspected for a while: Ahmed al-Sharaa’s actions have quietly been more pro-American and anti-ISIS than many realized for a long while:
On Tuesday, Syria’s minister of information, Hamza al-Mustafa, said Mr. al-Shara had recently signed a declaration of political cooperation with the U.S.-led coalition that combats the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
The Syrian leader has been discreetly cooperating with the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS and Al Qaeda since he took control of a slice of rebel-held territory in northwestern Syria in 2016, according to Syrian officials and Western diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol.
Since December, Syrian security forces have been cooperating with the global anti-ISIS coalition, according to Mouaz Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a humanitarian and advocacy group in the United States.
[Note that some Western sources spell his name “al-Sharaa” and others spell it “al-Shara.”]
Now, if an American looks at al-Sharaa and concludes, “Once a terrorist, always a terrorist,” that’s their right. The world is not awash in former Islamist terrorists who turned into peacemaking statesmen. During the visit, al-Sharaa stayed at St. Regis Hotel in Washington. (I’ll bet it was a lot nicer American hospitality than Camp Bucca.) There he conducted an interview with the Washington Post, where he argued his past fighting was done in the name of a noble cause, and that he never targeted civilians:
To start with, fighting is not something shameful if it’s done for noble objectives, especially if you are defending your own land and the people who are suffering from injustice. I believe this is something good that people should be commended for. I have fought so many wars, but I’ve never caused the death of an innocent person.
But we probably ought to also consider the fact that ISIS is hell-bent on killing this guy. From Reuters:
Syria has foiled two separate Islamic State plots to assassinate President Ahmed al-Sharaa, two senior officials said, adding a personal dimension to the leader’s plans to join a U.S.-led coalition to fight the militant group that he has long battled. . . .
Over the weekend, the Syrian interior ministry launched a nationwide campaign targeting IS cells across the country, apprehending more than 70 suspects, government media said.
The senior Syrian security official said they were acting on intelligence that the group was planning operations against the government and Syrian minority groups. . . .
Last week, Reuters reported the U.S. military was preparing to establish a presence at a Damascus airbase for the first time. A U.S. administration official asked that the exact location and name of the base not be published, citing operational security concerns.
Syrian state media denied the Reuters report without elaborating on what was false.
[In case you’re wondering, there are eight military airfields in the Damascus area.]
If the U.S. ends up with a semi-permanent military presence at an airbase in Damascus, Donald Trump really is one of the greatest neoconservative presidents of all time.
As for al-Sharaa, the man has a remarkable chameleon-like ability to adapt to changing political and military circumstances. This CSIS interview with Nicolas Pelham, The Economist‘s Middle East correspondent, gives you a sense of how al-Sharaa survived and thrived in some extraordinarily dangerous times and places:
Nicolas Pelham: He’s managed to outsmart some very smart people. If you look back very early on when he went off to Iraq just before the American invasion and was pretty disillusioned — came back to Damascus, hung out with groups that were looking at trying to spread jihadism across the Middle East, primarily into Iraq to destabilize the American operation — he was picked up by Syrian Mukhabarat, and everyone else in the group that he was picked up with was sent off to Saydnaya. He was let go.
Jon Alterman: That’s the infamous prison full of torture and death.
Nicolas Pelham: Absolutely. Yes. He managed to convince them that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and was on his way to a shisha bar, and they let him go. You find that same ability to deceive when he’s picked up by the Americans in Iraq, when he’s in Mosul, caught planting explosives. He managed to convince them through his ability to speak an Iraqi dialect, which he picked up incredibly quickly. He manages to convince both his American interrogators and his Iraqi interrogators that he’s an Iraqi and then spends the rest of his jail term in what became laboratories for an Iraqi jihad, then befriended the cohorts of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as he said. He goes on to convince Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who’s the head of the Islamic State, that he should be his point man for Syria. He’s then sent off to Syria, where he tries to establish his own organization.
When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi calls him back and tells him that he’s merging his organization into the Islamic State, Sharaa says no. He managed to convince the head of al Qaeda that he would be his loyal deputy in Syria and again betrays him. In the jihadist world, once you swear an oath of loyalty, you’re held to that. Somehow, he manages each time to convince another jihadist group that he will be their man on the ground. There are many who are left asking how to trust this new version of the man who was Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and has gone back to his childhood name of Ahmed al-Sharaa. How can you trust this latest guise? Who exactly is the man that is now the self-declared president of Syria? . . .
He was the one who was sending Saudis and Syrians and Iraqis to blow themselves up at the Assad regime’s security installations. Again, I found it hard to match that sense of somebody who would push people to give their lives for his ideology with somebody who to me didn’t come across as believing in very much except his own right to rule.
I was reminded of a short snippet of dialogue from the Gulf War film, Three Kings:
Archie Gates: What’s the most important thing in life?
Troy Barlow: Respect.
Archie Gates: Too dependent on other people.
Conrad Vig: What, love?
Archie Gates: A little Disneyland, isn’t it?
Chief Elgin: God’s will.
Archie Gates: Close.
Troy Barlow: What is it then?
Archie Gates: Necessity.
Troy Barlow: As in?
Archie Gates: As in people do what is most necessary to them at any given moment.
Syria is in about as rough a shape as any country on Earth right now. At this moment in the Middle East, the U.S. and Israel are ascendant. Russia, Iran, and the various Islamist factions have taken it on the chin for a couple years now. Opposing the U.S. would get al-Sharaa and Syria nowhere.
Right now, al-Sharaa needs a good relationship with the United States.
ADDENDUM: If you ever thought Matt Gaetz was a good conservative, a good leader, or a good person, repent and go take a shower.