Biden Admin Sends Diplomats to Meet Syria’s New Jihadist Overlords

A group of U.S. diplomatic officials met on Friday with the rebels who toppled Bashar Assad, awkwardly seeking to open channels with an insurgency whose leaders are designated terrorists.

Assad was driven out of Damascus two weeks ago, ending five decades of murderous despotic rule by his family. The insurgent coalition that toppled him after an 11-day blitzkrieg was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an offshoot of al-Qaeda that was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2018. The leader of HTS, Muhammad al-Jolani, has a $10 million bounty on his head from the FBI at the time of this writing.

HTS has been attempting to reinvent itself as a more “moderate” jihadi organization, and Jolani has reverted to his birth name of Ahmed al-Sharaa to put his al-Qaeda and ISIS past behind him.

Western government palpably wish to believe HTS is sincere in turning over a new leaf and will preside over a more inclusive and peaceful Syria where humanitarian aid can be more effectively delivered. Everyone desperately want to avoid an Afghanistan nightmare scenario, where the Taliban imposed a primitive Islamist regime after President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal in 2021.

The open admiration for the Taliban expressed by HTS leaders is not reassuring. The Taliban reciprocated their affections by warmly congratulating HTS for overthrowing Assad within hours of the dictator’s departure.

To avoid another Afghanistan, European governments and the United Nations have tentatively reached out to the insurgents, even though every one of those institutions considers HTS to be a terrorist organization.

A few days after delegations from the United Nations, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom met with Jolani, U.S. diplomats took their turn to open a dialogue with the new jihadi rulers of Syria. The first American mission to Damascus since 2011 is headed by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf. 

The U.S. State Department said its delegation to Damascus “will be engaging directly with the Syrian people, including members of civil society, activists, members of different communities, and other Syrian voices about their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them.”

Outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the Biden administration’s fears explicit on Thursday by warning HTS not to follow the trail blazed by the Taliban.

“The Taliban projected a more moderate face, or at least tried to, in taking over Afghanistan, and then its true colors came out. The result is, it remains terribly isolated around the world,” Blinken said during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York.

“So if you’re the emerging group in Syria, if you don’t want that isolation, then there’s certain things that you have to do in moving the country forward,” Blinken wheedled.

The State Department’s official posture is skepticism that Jolani will keep his promises of moderation, with a dash of hope that he might be persuaded to do the right thing if enough incentives are dangled by the international community. The Biden administration has strongly hinted HTS could earn goodwill from Washington by locating American journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Damascus in 2012.

Syria’s new rulers would very much like to see their terrorist designations rescinded, a process that would take months at best if President-elect Donald Trump is agreeable. Even then, the U.S. generally respects terrorist designations applied by the United Nations and the U.N. is very unlikely to remove HTS from its list of terrorist organizations for as long as Assad’s former patrons in Russia have veto power.

Jolani signaled that he at least knows the rules of the diplomatic game by criticizing the Taliban for its brutish treatment of women during a BBC interview on Friday.

“I believe in women’s education. Syria is a diverse society with various ideas, unlike Afghanistan, which is more tribal. The Afghan model cannot be applied here,” he said, saying exactly what every diplomat in the U.S., U.K., EU, and U.N. wants to hear.

Jolani has also said HTS has no interest in attacking Israel, which has extended its “buffer zone” around the Golan Heights to forestall that possibility.

HTS leaders have said the group intends to control government agencies in Syria until March 1, at which time a “caretaker government” will be established in consultation with all Syrians, and a new national constitution will be drafted.