Within a single year, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, through its control over Syria’s transitional administration, moved from being an organisation listed on terrorism blacklists to an authority participating in the management of counterterrorism. This shift reshaped both its place in the international system and its role within Syria’s legal and political order. Externally, it moved from being a target of sanctions and prosecution to a partner in security coordination. Internally, it shifted from being the object of terrorist designation to an authority that now controls how that designation is used against its opponents.
International Acceptance Despite “Individual Incidents”
At the end of 2025, during the first publicly announced field coordination between forces of the Syrian transitional administration and the international coalition against the Islamic State group, a member of the administration’s forces opened fire on a coalition delegation, killing several American soldiers. The transitional authorities said the perpetrator was an extremist who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and had acted “individually.” The coalition accepted that explanation and coordination channels continued. Shortly afterwards, the United States launched airstrikes against Islamic State positions in the Syrian desert.
What stood out in the incident was that Washington largely overlooked the fact that the shooter belonged to the transitional administration itself. Nor was he the only individual within its ranks with jihadist leanings. The administration’s security and military apparatus includes entire blocs drawn from Salafi extremist factions, some of which include Syrian, Arab and foreign jihadists.
Another test came in early 2026, when the transitional administration assumed responsibility for thousands of Islamic State fighters previously detained in areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces. As control over large parts of northeastern Syria shifted from the Kurdish autonomous administration to the new authorities, responsibility for detention facilities shifted as well. During this period, several detainees escaped amid accusations that members of the transitional administration’s Ministries of Defence and Interior had facilitated their escape.
U.S. Central Command responded by urgently transferring thousands of detainees to Iraq, a move that reflected international concern about the new authority’s capacity to handle such a sensitive file. Yet the issue was ultimately treated through a containment approach aimed at preserving the emerging partnership rather than reopening the broader question of the new authority’s Salafi extremist background.
These two incidents occurred against the backdrop of a series of international decisions that repositioned Syria’s new leadership within the global counterterrorism framework. Immediately after the fall of the Assad regime, the United States cancelled in December 2024 the reward previously offered for information about Ahmad al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, under the State Department’s Rewards for Justice programme. The reward, announced in 2017, had offered ten million dollars for information leading to his capture.
The decision followed direct contacts between U.S. officials and representatives of the transitional administration, as well as official statements in which the new authorities pledged to pursue Islamic State cells and prevent Syrian territory from being used as a base for cross-border attacks. The cancellation signalled that Washington no longer viewed al-Sharaa primarily as a wanted militant but as a figure who could be incorporated into conditional security cooperation.
Further steps followed. In July 2025, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was removed from the U.S. list of terrorist organisations. In November 2025, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2799, removing Ahmad al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab from the sanctions list associated with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda sanctions regime. On 27 February 2026, the Security Council’s ISIL and al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee removed “Jabhat al-Nusra for the People of the Levant” from the sanctions list following the committee’s review procedures and the agreement of its members. As a result, the group is no longer listed under the international sanctions regime targeting al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and is no longer subject to the asset freezes, travel bans and arms embargoes imposed under that system.
Syria also formally joined the international coalition against the Islamic State in November 2025 as the ninetieth member of the U.S.-led framework established in 2014. The step followed intensive security consultations and a public commitment by the transitional administration to combat Islamic State cells within Syria and share intelligence with international partners.
Membership allowed representatives of the new government to participate in operational coordination mechanisms and threat-assessment meetings, marking the transition of the new authority from a subject of security monitoring to a partner in managing counterterrorism at the regional level.
Rethinking International Policy
Within a single year, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham moved from being designated as a terrorist organisation to becoming a partner in the management of counterterrorism. This shift reflects a broader transformation in how actors are positioned within the network of international recognition and how they are treated and held accountable.
A recognised actor communicates through diplomatic channels, participates in coordination meetings and has the opportunity to explain incidents and present its narrative. An actor labelled as terrorist is denied that space and treated instead as a legitimate target of military operations or sanctions. Changing an actor’s status therefore alters how its behaviour is interpreted and what explanations become internationally acceptable.
In the Syrian context since 2011, the label of terrorism has not merely described violent acts; it has functioned as a tool for organising the political field itself. Bashar al-Assad’s regime used the accusation to recast political and social protests as an existential security threat. The approach was later institutionalised through the 2012 counterterrorism laws and the Counterterrorism Court, embedding a permanent state-of-exception logic within the judicial system. In this sense, terrorism became a classificatory mechanism determining who is excluded from politics and who is treated as an enemy to be eliminated. The classification of terrorism therefore depends less on the scale of violence than on the authority to define it.
What changed after 2024 was the transfer of that authority. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, once designated as a terrorist organisation both domestically and internationally, became a partner in counterterrorism through the transitional administration. This shift did not result from an ideological break with the group’s Islamist trajectory or from a comprehensive historical reassessment. Rather, it reflected a reordering of international and regional priorities. Preventing the resurgence of the Islamic State came to outweigh earlier concerns about the group itself. Counterterrorism thus shifted from a mechanism for excluding Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to one for integrating it.
The handling of the Islamic State detainee escapes illustrates this logic. The issue was treated primarily as a technical matter of detention and prosecution rather than as a question of political accountability for the composition of the new Syrian security apparatus. Similarly, the killing of American soldiers was interpreted as the isolated act of an extremist individual rather than as evidence of the structural presence of jihadist elements within the state’s security institutions. These responses may appear technical, but they were deeply political, aimed at preserving the partnership framework with the Syrian authorities.
Despite their seriousness, these incidents did not trigger any reconsideration of the gradual international recognition extended to the new leadership. This partly reflects Washington’s willingness to give space to Arab and Turkish initiatives aimed at rehabilitating Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, even when such initiatives diverge from the recommendations of American security institutions. In both cases, events were managed in ways that ensured the continuation of the new authority’s role as a partner in the counterterrorism framework.
Domestically, the transitional administration abolished the Counterterrorism Court and annulled several of its previous rulings, effectively closing an exceptional legal chapter. New terrorism-related cases were referred to ordinary criminal courts. The Syrian Penal Code of 1949 does not contain a comprehensive legal definition of terrorism. Instead, it criminalises specific acts such as bombings, acts intended to spread fear and attacks on state security. These provisions punish particular acts but do not establish terrorism as a distinct legal category.
This stands in contrast to many countries facing terrorist attacks, where counterterrorism often becomes a permanent legal exception that restricts civil liberties and strengthens authoritarian tendencies even in democratic systems. Paradoxically, despite its well-known authoritarian inclinations, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham appears to be moving in the opposite direction by downplaying terrorism as a separate legal category and normalising certain forms of violence associated with militant groups.
This approach places emphasis on individual responsibility while avoiding accountability for state structures that employ extreme violence against minorities or for broader social currents that justify such violence. It also allows the transitional administration to avoid confronting the violent legacy of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham itself, particularly as long-time members of the group now occupy senior positions within the judiciary, military and security institutions of the new state.
At the same time, the category of terrorism has not disappeared from the discourse of the transitional administration. It has simply been repositioned. Various actors continue to be labelled as terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda-linked groups such as Hurras al-Din, Islamic State affiliates such as Ansar al-Sunna, and armed rivals such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Syrian Democratic Forces, often in alignment with Turkey’s security priorities.
In this sense, the logic of classification has not vanished but has shifted from one authority to another. The new Syrian state has not abandoned the language of terrorism; it has redeployed it within its own political framework.
In today’s Syrian context, terrorism appears less as a fixed essence of violence than as a position within a network of international and domestic relations. The transition from the terrorism list to partnership in fighting terrorism reflects a repositioning within an international system that distributes legitimacy according to actors’ ability to control transnational militant groups. Within Syria itself, the authority to define terrorism has changed hands. The Syrian paradox lies precisely in this shift: a category once used for exclusion has become a mechanism of integration without losing its central function as a tool for organising power and the political field.
