It has been a momentous eleven months since Syria’s ousted former leader Bashar al-Assad took flight to Moscow, ending his family’s fifty-three-year repressive rule in Syria. About six weeks after Syria’s liberation, the factions that overthrew Assad declared the leader of one of those factions, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new president. Sharaa, previously known as Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, had led a government of opposition in Idlib province, which was beyond Assad’s control. It was by all measures repressive and based in Islamist interpretations of law and conceptions of order. Yet since coming to power, the former leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—a jihadist group with an al-Qaeda lineage—has struck a more measured approach to governance.
Pivotal U.S. Summit Could Help Mend a Fractured Syria | Council on Foreign Relations
