The release of the book Transforming by the People: Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s Road to Power in Syria was delayed several times before it finally reached readers—perhaps because the authors, Jérôme Drevon and Patrick Haenni, wanted to introduce last-minute revisions, or to wait for the outcome of the “Deterrence of Aggression” campaign after which the Syrian regime fell. The two authors are closely connected to the group—back when it was still Jabhat al-Nusra—and naturally, “good relations must be maintained.”
At last, the book has been published, with Ahmad Sharaa pictured on the cover—“the man the United States never targeted in Syria.” We chose to start the reading from the final page, where the authors compare Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s transformation to “the path of the French Revolution,” specifically the Thermidorians—those deputies who revolted against the rule of Maximilien Robespierre, seeking to “end revolutionary radicalism, back away from rigid adherence to texts and principles, and bring an end to the Reign of Terror.” This comparison, the authors argue, is necessary because Islamic thought, and the literature of Islamism and jihad, “is insufficient” to understand HTS’s transformation.
So, classical literature was not enough, and we find ourselves turning to the French Revolution as a reference point. For that reason, we began at the end to understand the intellectual frame through which the book reads HTS. What stands out even more, however, are the sources used: “Interview with an activist in Idlib; interview with a security official in Turkey; interview with a member of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham; WhatsApp interview; meeting with Ahmad Sharaa; interview with a range of civilians between 2012 and 2015; interview with ‘Abd al-Rahim Atoun,’ etc.”
In other words, we face an array of “interviews” as the primary source of information, voices which are anonymous or unreliable for many reasons. This is what is troubling: two researchers attempting to interpret the transformation of a political-jihadist entity using the testimonies of its own founders and insiders! Meanwhile, references on the French Revolution can be counted on one hand.
The authors acknowledge early on the suspicion readers (including myself) may harbor, given their relationship with the group—one that began from “the top,” with leadership that found them “credible” as experts on jihad and political Islam. They also say clearly that they are examining only the group’s political performance—not its “disciplinary practices,” meaning “political violence and human rights.” The focus, rather, is on the group’s “pragmatism” and its ability to transform into a governing system.
“Be Pragmatic,” He Told Him…And He Was
Ahmad Sharaa explains in one interview that pragmatism carries negative connotations in Arabic, yet the term sticks to him and to HTS. The term “pragmatic” and its derivatives appear more than 55 times in the 300-plus-page book—about once every five pages. This might seem trivial, but in context, the meaning becomes blurred. There is always a “pragmatic shift,” a “pragmatic choice,” yet the precise definition remains elusive. What kind of pragmatism is meant?
Clearly, the book is not written for an Arab reader, but for a Western audience who may admire the transformation of a radical jihadist group from the far extremist fringe to a stricter conservative center. The authors stress the group’s evolution from militant jihadist organization (Jabhat al-Nusra) to de-facto governing authority (the Salvation Government).
Here we encounter an orientalist undertone, not only because of the French Revolution analogy, but because of the vague celebration of HTS’s “pragmatism,” while jihadist rivals like Omar Omsen describe Abu Muhammad al-Jolani as “the fox.” The book seems to praise the uniqueness of HTS, claiming it achieved what no other jihadist group did: abandoning global jihad—the core target of the War on Terror—moving away from Salafism, securing support from the “silent majority,” and embedding itself in its local environment. The authors describe this transformation as a “silent revolution” led by al-Shar’a with excessive pragmatism.
The Men Around Sharaa
The book portrays Ahmad Sharaa as a charismatic leader capable of negotiation and adaptation. His arrival in Damascus is framed as the beginning of a “Bonapartist” phase after a bloody revolution. Al-Julani—who was never imprisoned by the Syrian regime—managed to defeat rivals, unify factions, and consolidate control, along with figures like ‘Abd al-Rahim Atoun, who appears repeatedly in the text. Together, they ended the takfiri line, pursued religious reform, and struck balances with local society.
Sharaa and his men did not just sever ties with global jihad; they also distanced themselves from the Syrian revolution itself. After the “de-escalation agreement” in 2019, the transformations accelerated: from opposing the regime to containing the revolution, and from extremism to gradual moderation. They are all “pragmatists” for the sake of establishing authority.
This is where the paradox emerges: the transition of a militia into a state has always been fraught. Armed groups ruling states—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis—offer stark examples. Yet, HTS is treated as exceptional; al-Shar’a and his men are presented as singular. And of course, no popular elections can be held at any stage for the same reason used to justify selecting members of the People’s Assembly: you need a census first.
This technique of distancing and containment—from the “Front” era through to the Salvation Government—was adopted by Sharaa under what the book calls “strategic patience.” It was not without “tactical skirmishes” with other factions. But hasn’t this same technique—albeit in a different form—been applied now by sidelining Hasan Soufan, who has become closer to Fadi Saqr’s defense attorney, and removing Ahmad al-Dalati after the Suwayda massacres? Didn’t Sharaa “pragmatically” sacrifice leaders of Ahrar al-Sham?
There is no denying that the Organization managed to push aside the most hardline elements by various means, as happened with Hurras al-Din. After “skirmishes,” arrests, and pressure, the agreement with them culminated in their abstention from participation in civic life; in other cases, it meant targeting military leaders or detaining them, as happened with Abu Malik al-Talli. The Organization’s strike force against its “opponents” is the General Security Apparatus, born out of Jabhat al-Nusra and ostensibly tasked with “fighting terrorism and pursuing ISIS and al-Qaeda elements”—the same apparatus that opened its doors to volunteers after Assad fled!
Even after the Salvation Government was established, the Organization stayed in the background, reshaping civilian institutions and delegating certain powers to them, while at the same time creating a balance between worldly affairs and jurisprudence. This explains the presence of “sheikhs” inside institutions—“sheikhs” with jihadi histories—whose task is to monitor the consistency of civil transactions with the various strains of fiqh. Their power is captured in a chilling line quoted in the book: “We have moral influence because people know who we are.”
Reading the Organization’s transformations from “within” and “from the top” leaves us with the problem of believing the Organization’s own account. True, there is a nod to taqiyya (dissimulation), but at the same time, how are we to believe them without comparison or review? This is precisely what makes the book resistant to a neutral reading. Celebrating Abu Abdu the Ramadan Drummer (a real example in the book) for managing to go back to waking people for suhoor as evidence of the Organization’s achievement in removing and neutralizing extremism is not something that easily absolves the killing of journalists and activists like Raed Fares and Hammoud Junaid, who are referenced in a passing sentence in the book.
Minorities and Women: Containment through Marginalization
Women’s neutralization in Idlib did not occur by an official or jurisprudential decree (at least not publicly); rather, their activity was constrained because of Western funding. The book explains how women’s work moved from the public sphere into the private one due to civil society donors whose funders require them not to engage in formal politics because the Organization is designated as a terrorist group. This left women outside formal politics in order to preserve their work, funding, and some women’s ability to travel abroad. The result: a kind of accommodation with the status quo. In a way, the Organization benefitted from the conditions of “activism”: it did not ban women from working, and they were “free” to engage—so long as they weighed the losses.
Women appear in their relationship with the Organization as a party subjected to marginalization within the pincers of money and “terrorist designation.” The doors of politics are ostensibly open, but they do not want to risk entanglement in governance while living in Idlib. Yet this very situation—between a Western donor and a “terrorist organization”—ignores, for example, the public execution of a woman, the imposition of shari‘a dress in schools, and other forms of domination. It leaves women as activists searching for a livelihood and afraid of the very repression they are being invited to participate in!
What is striking regarding minorities in Idlib is that they were “relocated” from their villages! When Sharaa decided to “reconcile” with them and visit Druze and Christian villages after displacement, pressure, and the forced conversion of some, we read a sentence on which we have no comment—according to the book, Sharaa reassured the Christians during his visit to their villages in Idlib in 2022 by saying: “We will not delve into the past, particularly the specific historical context of the Crusades and the regime’s manipulation of minorities.”
These are the two reference frames for dealing with Christians: the Crusades and the regime’s manipulation of them. There is no national or Syrian agency ascribed to “Christians”—their past is full of blood—whereas the Organization’s jihadi past, al-Shara’ decided, would not be probed. Perhaps that is “pragmatism”: medieval interpretations and the instrumentalization of fear with “components,” techniques treated as if the product of some peculiar genius, continuing up to the regime’s fall—genius whose emblem is punishment, both as prison and as slogan.
The Birth of the Public Sphere: The “Mall” Economy and the “Public Decency” Gauge
We can detect the seepage of the Organization’s and the Salvation Government’s techniques of rule into the Interim Government. The method of de-radicalization the authors highlight to emphasize the Organization’s uniqueness conceals not merely “authority” but hegemony, which hides behind the image of a “centrist” Organization surrounded by legions of jihadis, hardliners, foreign fighters, and missionary parties—especially as the revolution faded, no longer an ethical or ideological referent, and as the Free Syrian Army was crushed. Even so, there is the “rest” of Syria, and the less hardline Syrians, those who have no choice but to be “governed.” How, then, are they “embraced” outside the frameworks of da‘wa and educational institutions? The solution: the mall!
The researchers liken Ahmad Sharaa to Mohammed bin Salman in a context they discuss later, but they overlook the technique al-Shara’ borrowed from MbS: domination over gathering places through an economic infrastructure that birthed the public sphere in Idlib, namely cafés, coffee shops, and “malls,” civil gathering spaces based on consumption and entertainment rather than political agency.
These spaces are a modality of rule on one hand and, more importantly, spaces of profit. Restaurants, cafeterias, and malls are all spaces built for consumption. They set in motion the suspect capital the Organization controlled via cross-border trade at the crossings, and so it sought to protect them. Consider the zoo, which, according to the book, belonged to the “Spoils Committee,” and whose owners are linked to the Organization. But it was the malls and their commerce, and their political dimension as public spaces, that provoked ire. Al-Hamra Mall in Dana, Idlib, held a nine-day anniversary celebration on December 8, 2023, sparking harsh criticism, given that Syrians were being killed just miles away, while music, entertainment, ostentation, and “gender mixing” took place.
The foundation of this controlled space of mixing and debate is profit, and the creation of an arena where consumption overwhelms dialogue. This recalls what is happening now: domination over public spaces wherever possible; the creation of investment projects in parks; malls and multi-story buildings; investments on Mount Qasioun; and the Ministry of Awqaf’s drive toward expropriation and investment. Yes, it is impossible to fully control public spaces in Syria, but creating profitable spaces for mixing and ensuring consumption transforms politics into an act of consumption and a method for manufacturing obedience and social discipline.
Some hardliners justified the “mall” by saying it resembled the “market” at the dawn of Islam; a place for gender mixing. Yet we are in fact facing a profit-making institution that continued to operate with certain concessions (families-only, for instance) and the spread of General Security to protect the mall/investment/public sphere, as happened with Al-Hamra Mall.
These spaces of fun-and-obedience incensed hardliners to the point that one of them opened fire in a mall. Here a new technique of “governance” emerges—call it “testing the waters”—which became clear in the “Public Decency Law,” with its constant emphasis on the social fabric and the necessity of controlling it.
This law—whose provisions prohibit mixing, sorcery, insulting religious symbols, etc.—was leaked in draft form in 2023, bringing hardline positions back to the fore, drawing criticism from Western donors, and even producing a bout of nostalgia for the regime, in what was described as the Organization’s “Talibanization.” But the law was not enacted, and the book says that Ahmad al-Shara’ did not initially care about it. The entity that resolved the matter was the Salvation Government, not Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which had abolished the hisbah (religious police)! In effect, the Organization gave itself time to study criticism from inside and outside Idlib and to amend the law—yet the questions remain: Who drafted it? Why was it drafted? Why the late intervention?
These questions reflect how the Organization, via the Salvation Government, plays the role of overseer over jihadi and hardline groups, attempting to strike a balance among factions and “components.” The Organization does not fear a revolution against it so much as internal splits among factions. By “testing the waters” through leaks, it placates hardliners on the one hand, then revises and issues opaque laws whose meanings can be controlled within “the government” and its “sheikhs.” Not to mention the policy of renaming entities, symbols, and marks—and, above all, property/spoils? This is laid bare in stories of land seizures in the countryside of Homs and Hama after the regime’s fall, as if “spoils” were a pragmatic political tactic!
Exporting the “Revolution”?
The protests against Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the Salvation Government in Idlib between March 2024 and August 2024 were the most significant popular movement against Ahmad al-Shara’, with slogans that recalled the 2011 revolution and spread through a number of towns and villages across the north.
What is noteworthy, as we read the book now after two massacres witnessed by the “new” Syria, is the techniques the Organization used at the time to control protesters: absorbing the outburst (“faz‘a”), setting up checkpoints to hinder armed men from moving around, and carrying out arrests from which detainees were then quickly released.
In other words, the Organization contained the “movement” and did not treat it as an “enemy.” The authors argue that the easing of the security grip was not the result of diminished religious zeal but of a re-positioning of forces and “deliberate political and strategic maneuvers involving multiple parties,” conducted by Sharaa with his “strategic patience.” He did not borrow from the playbooks of Assad and Sisi, nor even Mohammed bin Salman, insofar as the easing of religious strictures was not accompanied—Saudi-style—by an increase in repression. In Idlib, both dimensions were eased! Sharaa drew on the legacy of the “Arab Spring” by not attacking demonstrations, following a “neither this nor that” doctrine: neither the regime nor jihad—while maintaining a hardline centrism and the idea of “no alternative.”
The regime’s fall and the proliferation of factions across Syria exported the “internal” problem to most of the country, where numerous protests emerged over property, the security grip, “individual mistakes,” and the monopolization of business by the Organization’s men or those who “settled” with it. At that time, slogans like “Neither al-Jolani nor Assad—we want to rebuild the country” were raised. Today, many are raising the slogan of rebuilding across different Syrian cities, but there are no calls to topple anyone… yet.
Postscript
The transformations the Front underwent until it became the Salvation Government and then the Interim Government are built on violence in multiple forms. But does announcing the Organization’s dissolution and forming an Interim Government mean the past is to be forgotten? In the book, the Front appears as a postmodern entity, endlessly capable of transformation and repositioning. Nothing within it is fixed except Ahmad Sharaa and his men; men able to forget the past with ease. The point was made clear after videos surfaced of the former Minister of Justice, Shadi al-Weisi, enforcing the hadd (penal punishment) for “zina” on a woman in Idlib. The official response at the time was: “The incident reflects a stage we have moved beyond in light of current legal and procedural transformations. It is therefore inappropriate to generalize it or use it to characterize the present stage, given the differences in circumstances and reference frames.”
These transformations and “stages,” each of which represents a quasi-rupture with the “past,” rest on containing “jihadis” and “hardliners,” while keeping “Syrians’” affairs running within fragile economic models—and, crucially, on a form of absolution. It is as if the “crimes” of each “stage” wipe out those of the one before it, and as if individuals can be remade simply by changing their names and suits. Ahmad Sharaa, the pragmatist, appears—“in a gilded palace”—as the CEO of global jihad who turned a phenomenon that once terrified the West from a “transnational corporation” into a “local holding company.”
