What we know about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the offensive to oust Syria’s leader

• Bashar Assad’s government in Syria collapsed on Sunday, ending his 24 years in power.
• Rebel forces led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham swept through Syria, seizing Damascus.
• Here’s what we know about HTS.

Bashar Assad’s 24-year rule came to an end on Sunday as rebels swept into Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Shortly after insurgents declared the city “free,” Russia’s foreign ministry announced Assad had resigned his position and left the country. Russian state news later reported that Assad had arrived in Moscow, where he was granted asylum.

The collapse of Assad’s government came after a coalition of opposition forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched a surprise offensive, seizing control of major cities like Aleppo, Hama, and Homs in a matter of days.

Syrians around the world celebrated the end of Assad’s rule, which was marked by brutal suppression. His violent crackdown on peaceful anti-government protests in 2011, part of the Arab Spring uprisings, sparked a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, straining neighboring countries like Turkey and Lebanon.

World leaders conveyed cautious optimism after news of Assad’s ouster, but uncertainty remains around what kind of government and leader will replace him.

One major player will almost certainly be HTS, which is led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, a Syrian who fought against US occupation in Iraq alongside a branch of Al Qaeda.

Jolani later returned to Syria, his homeland, where he fought with Jabhat Al-Nusra — an Al Qaeda offshoot formed in 2012 — and other rebel groups against Assad’s forces.

Jolani severed his ties with Al Qaeda in 2016 and formed a new group, which eventually became HTS in 2017. Since then, Jolani has portrayed himself as a more moderate leader to gain international legitimacy. Both the United States and the United Nations still list HTS as a terrorist organization.

In one 2021 interview with PBS Frontline, Jolani called the group’s terrorist designation a “political label that carries no truth or credibility.”

“Through our 10-year journey in this revolution, we haven’t posed any threat to Western or European society: no security threat, no economic threat, nothing. That’s why this designation is politicized,” he said.

In recent years, HTS has controlled Syria’s northwestern Idlib Province, where analysts say it worked to consolidate power and transform its image while pursuing its ultimate goal of toppling Assad.

In Idlib, Jolani established the so-called Syrian Salvation Government, which has acted as a showcase for what his leadership could bring to a wider area.

Speaking about the Salvation Government in the PBS interview, Jolani said that while the situation in Idlib was not ideal, there was “a self-asserting model that was capable of running the affairs of a whole country under an Islamic rule.”

While some have remained doubtful that the group has fully cut its links with Al Qaeda, it has put forth a message of inclusiveness and unity in recent days, calling for a peaceful transition of power and reassuring religious and ethnic minorities in Syria.

“In the future Syria … diversity is our strength, not a weakness,” the group said in a statement to the Kurdish minority in Aleppo.

Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International and a Middle East analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, told Sky News that while Jolani and his group had changed, they remained “pretty hardline.”

“It’s PR, but the fact they are engaging in this effort at all shows they are no longer as rigid as they once were,” he said, referencing video footage showing Jolani forbidding fighters from entering homes and telling them to protect citizens. “Old-school Al Qaeda or the Islamic State would never have done that.”

HTS is only one part of an ideologically diverse opposition, and it remains to be seen if the coalition can peacefully share power and extend unified control over the whole country.

“If not, intra-Syrian territorial fragmentation, and the potential emergence of regional warlords and fiefdoms, will quickly grow,” Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Program, told Business Insider.