Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa. Photo / Getty Images
When a veteran American diplomat met a Syrian rebel commander in 2023, they had a surprisingly cordial chat about their lives on enemy sides in two Mideast wars.
The commander, who went by the name Abu Mohammed al-Golani, recalled when he was a young jihadi shooting at the mobile homes in Baghdad where the diplomat was living after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The diplomat, Robert Ford, recounted that in 2012, as ambassador to Syria during its civil war, he had shut the US Embassy for fear that the commander’s al-Qaeda faction would bomb it.
The Syrian rebel leader then talked about what he envisioned as his next act, seizing the capital and governing Syria – a prospect that appeared fantastical at the time, Ford told the New York Times.
Last December, the commander did just that.
He led a startling offensive that toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad and became President of Syria.
He swapped his military garb for sharp suits and exchanged his nom de guerre for his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
Today, al-Sharaa is expected to become the first Syrian leader to address the United Nations General Assembly in 58 years, a stunning turnaround for a man still officially designated as a terrorist by the United States and the UN.
“As time goes on, we see that al-Sharaa is less of a hardline Islamist jihadist trying to appear pragmatic and more of an authoritarian who is trying to establish a stable government,” Ford said. “He is a power seeker.”
Interviews with more than 70 people who tracked or interacted with al-Sharaa during his rise painted a picture of an intelligent, ambitious shapeshifter who used guile, charm, diplomacy, and ruthlessness to survive in some of the most dangerous corners of the Middle East.
Early on, he allied himself with terrorists while fighting the US in Iraq, joining jihadis who considered that struggle a religious war.
He later returned to his homeland and set up the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda. As the years passed, he rebranded himself as a moderate rebel leader to broaden his appeal.
His many transformations have fuelled questions about what he truly believes and how he intends to lead a country emerging from the ruins of a 13-year civil war – particularly as Syria’s future could be crucial in stabilising a region in turmoil.
He has won support from the US and other powers; sought peaceful relations with neighbours, including Israel; and called for reconciliation between Syrians.
But recent sectarian violence has tarnished his reputation. Thousands have been killed in attacks that human rights groups and the UN say his security forces participated in.
He has concentrated power in his hands and those of loyal deputies, raising concerns about whether he really wants to establish a government that represents all Syria’s diverse minority groups or intends to become a new strongman.
He told a small group of reporters, including from the New York Times, during a meeting in Damascus last week that his past – regardless of what anyone said about it – had prepared him to do what no one else could: topple the Assad regime.
“Whoever has judged us on our past, were they wrong? Or were we?” he said.
Al-Sharaa was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia to a middle-class Syrian family that returned home to Damascus, the capital, when he was a child.
His father was an economist, his mother a teacher. The family talked politics at home but had no history of Islamist extremism.
Neighbours recalled him as bookish and shy.
In his teens, he took to wearing a long tunic and knitted cap that signified increasing religiosity, said Maya Athem, a neighbour.
When he was 20, neighbours stopped seeing him around.
“Suddenly, he disappeared,” Athem said. “Even his mother didn’t know if he was alive or dead.”
He had slipped across the border into Iraq just before the US invasion in 2003.
He fell in with insurgents who would go on to form the core of al-Qaeda in Iraq, but there is no indication he did significant fighting.
An Iraqi security official said al-Sharaa recently told him that US forces arrested him in 2005 during his first mission to plant roadside bombs targeting American troops.
Like many of those interviewed, the official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with diplomatic protocols or for fear of retribution.
The young man was detained in the northern city of Mosul with other suspected insurgents, according to Muzahim al-Huwait, an Iraqi tribal leader who befriended him in prison.
Al-Huwait recalled a quiet inmate who identified himself as an Iraqi student named Amjad Mudhafar and who spoke Arabic with a convincing Iraqi accent.
Since then, al-Huwait said he nearly forgot about the quiet inmate until he showed up on television last year as the new leader of Syria.
“Now Amjad Mudhafar, who was detained with me in Mosul, is the president of Syria,” al-Huwait said, appearing still baffled.
Al-Sharaa’s transformation from middle-class Damascene to jihadi in Iraq was the first of various guises, and he succeeded in duping many other people during his six years in prisons in Iraq.
American and Iraqi authorities never realised he was Syrian, according to Iraqi records and the Iraqi justice minister at the time, Hassan al-Shammari.
In 2011, al-Shammari said, the Iraqis reviewed his detention and found no charges against anyone with his assumed name. So he was freed on March 13, 2011, records show.
Days later, anti-government protests inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings broke out in Syria, the first spark of the civil war that would draw al-Sharaa back home.
In late 2011, al-Sharaa and a few comrades sneaked into Syria to inject a new jihadi group into the accelerating civil war.
Before he left Iraq, he turned to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whom he knew from prison and who had become the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Iraqi gave him about US$50,000 to expand al-Qaeda into Syria, al-Sharaa has said.
His new group, the Nusra Front, made its presence known in early 2012 by dispatching suicide bombers to attack security personnel in Syria’s largest cities, killing hundreds of people.
In an online message claiming responsibility for two big attacks, al-Sharaa promised more.
“This regime will never stop except by the power of God and the power of weapons,” he said, using his new nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Golani. Almost no one knew his true identity.
At the time, most Syrian rebels saw their fight as a revolt against a brutal dictatorship.
The Nusra Front added the tactics of violent jihadism and sought to make its rigid interpretation of Islam the law.
But a rift emerged with his Iraqi patron who, in 2013, created the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis. Al-Sharaa refused to integrate the Nusra Front into it.
The Isis began what it considered global holy war and staged attacks in Paris, Cairo, and elsewhere.
Al-Sharaa pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, global leader of al-Qaeda, though the Nusra Front kept its fight inside Syria.
“We do not seek to rule the country,” al-Sharaa said in his first television interview with al-Jazeera in 2013, his face and true identity still concealed. “We seek that God’s law will rule the country.”
His forces based themselves in Idlib province, a poor corner of northwestern Syria. They took down other rebel factions there, including some that Washington supported.
Rights groups and Syrian activists accused them of killing and detaining critics, and videos shared online showed them executing women they accused of prostitution. They were tough on religious minorities, whose beliefs they considered heretical.
They forbade Idlib’s Christians from displaying crosses or ringing church bells, and they and other rebels seized Christian homes and farmland.
Hanna Jallouf, a Roman Catholic priest in Idlib at the time, said the Nusra Front kidnapped him in 2015 for 20 days. An international outcry prompted his release.
“They took everything,” he recalled. “You had no rights. You had no worth as a human.”
Two years later, Jallouf received a visit from two Muslim clerics in Idlib who said they wanted a reconciliation with local Christians.
Al-Sharaa had sent them, he said. The priest showed them the seized properties, and the fighters began returning them to their owners.
In 2022, al-Sharaa apologised to the priest and to other Christians, expressing hope that they could turn the page, said Jallouf, who is now bishop of Aleppo. Much of the Christians’ property has since been returned.
“This man is trustworthy,” he said. “If he promises something, he carries it out.”
Al-Sharaa’s reconciliation with Idlib’s Christians was part of a broader turn away from extremism.
His group stopped carrying out suicide bombings and reframed their fight against the dictatorship in more nationalistic terms.
Urging al-Sharaa along this path was Turkey, which engaged with him early in the war, according to six officials and others familiar with the matter.
Syria’s war was a nightmare for Turkey, pushing millions of refugees into its territory and creating a haven across its southern border for jihadis, including the Nusra Front.
By 2013, Turkish intelligence officers had established ties with al-Sharaa, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
In 2016, al-Sharaa showed his face publicly in a video announcing that his group was no longer linked to al-Qaeda.
The next year, he founded Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the primary group that toppled Assad and which now forms the core of Syria’s security services.
As government forces advanced, Assad was sending rebels who had been routed in other parts of the country to Idlib, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in the province.
Turkey was worried that the dire situation there would push more refugees into its territory, officials said.
To stabilise the area, Turkey sought a Syrian partner, and al-Sharaa appeared to be the most capable, according to five people familiar with the matter. So Turkish intelligence increased its support for him while encouraging him to move away from extremism.
Over time, al-Sharaa used his growing power in Idlib to fight or restrain extremists while parts of his group provided information that helped foreign intelligence agencies pursue al-Qaeda and Isis, according to current and former officials.
He also took advantage of a truce around 2020 to develop a civilian administration and pursue talks with Western governments. None wanted to talk directly because they still considered him a terrorist.
So he took another tack, inviting researchers and conflict-resolution workers to Idlib to see how he and his fighters had changed and to find out how they might get rid of their terrorist designation.
They wanted the Americans “to know that they were no longer a threat, that they could be a useful interlocutor,” said Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, who met al-Sharaa during this time.
Those efforts opened new lines of communication.
Jonathan Powell, now the British national security adviser, met al-Sharaa. A group Powell founded, Inter Mediate, organised Ford’s trip to Syria in 2023, during which he was surprised by al-Sharaa’s confidence that his forces would reach the capital.
“I just thought, well, he’s never going to get to Damascus,” Ford said. “But it is interesting that even young jihadists may temper their enthusiasm as they get older.”
A few weeks after the rebels reached Damascus, an old acquaintance came to visit al-Sharaa, now Syria’s leader.
Ezzat Alshabandar, an Iraqi politician, lived in Damascus in the 1980s and early 1990s, and his son had been a childhood friend of al-Sharaa. Alshabandar said that when they met again last year, al-Sharaa reflected on his life.
Al-Sharaa acknowledged he had been more extreme when he was younger but said his experiences made him more moderate, Shahbandar recalled. Now, he said he had to be a “realistic Islamist” to lead all of Syria.
Alshabandar said he believes al-Sharaa wants to build a civil state but has to proceed gradually lest he antagonise the more extremist fighters in his ranks who stuck with him through the civil war.
As al-Sharaa takes the UN stage to put forth his vision for Syria, other leaders are trying to decipher his latest transformation.
After meeting al-Sharaa in May, US President Donald Trump expressed confidence in him and announced the lifting of US sanctions.
But the waves of sectarian violence in Syria have amplified doubts about al-Sharaa’s ability to restrain his more extreme followers.
It is also making it more difficult to bring large minority-run regions under his authority.
Alshabandar said that al-Sharaa’s greatest challenge was to prevent a new civil war. He said he had warned al-Sharaa that extremists in his security forces could undermine him.
“He told me, ‘Maybe I have no control over the palace that I’m in,’” Shahbandar recalled.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Ben Hubbard
Photographs from: Daniel Berehulak, Nanna Heitmann, Sergey Ponomarev and Getty Images
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