Jolani battles dissidents
HTS purge sign of shifting policy

Abu Ahmad Zakour is a renegade Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) commander who is on the run. After witnessing the arrest of many of his close allies and associates in a wide-sweeping purge of suspected spies and traitors, Zakour (real name: Jihad Issa al-Shaikh) fled to where he thought he would be safe. Held by the rival Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), Azaz looked promising. Zakour in fact had for years managed HTS relations with the SNA and was on good terms with many of its commanders. But not much of the opposition-held northwest is safe from the long arm of Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of HTS. On 19 December, he sent a snatch squad to Zakour’s hideout in Azaz. After a brief, late evening firefight, the defector was bungled into the boot of a 4X4 and driven in a convoy at speed towards Idlib past unsuspecting SNA checkpoints. It looked like he was doomed until, like in a Turkish mafia TV series, armoured vehicles belonging to MIT intercepted the convoy. The Turkish agents were not pleased with HTS brazenly kidnapping people in areas under their direct control. Zakour was saved, but only just.

Competing wings
Several factors make Zakour’s defection noteworthy. The first is timing. HTS has had its fair share of defectors. Some have even taken to X to voice harsh criticisms of the HTS leader, accusing him of corruption and of doing the West’s bidding as well as that of Russia and Turkey. Many of these defections, however, took place pre-2018, before the years of consolidation and restructuring that saw the governance of Idlib improve and Jolani’s power increase. Criticism of HTS by these defectors was seen largely as sour grapes on the part of low level operatives. The same charge could not be levelled at Zakour. Until a few weeks ago he was one of Jolani’s key lieutenants with responsibilities for finance and external relations. Zakour did not go quietly. Immediately after the failed kidnapping, he released a five-minute voice message that was widely circulated on WhatsApp cursing Jolani and exposing damaging secrets about him. This was the first time that a ranking HTS member had so publicly ‘flipped’.  

The second factor making Zakour’s defection noteworthy is what it reveals about HTS’ structure. The organisation is not homogeneous. Rather, it is an alliance of various region-based (i.e. Aleppo, Daraa, Damascus, etc.) factions of what was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, which accepted Jolani’s strategy of moderation and pragmatism in return for a slice of the Idlib cake. The province has come a long way economically and administratively, and with that have come significant revenue streams that the factions were given to administer. The main cleavage within HTS is native vs outsider. Jolani relied heavily on the outsiders (i.e. not native to Idlib) to fight Islamic State cells and extremist splinter groups like Hurras al-Deen, and in return he awarded them important positions. Zakour was the leader of the Aleppo faction of HTS – one of the outsiders – as was his close associate Abu Maria al-Qahtani, leader of the Deir Ezzor “eastern bloc” and long regarded as Jolani’s deputy. The Damascus bloc exists but is weak after its leader, the wily Abu Malik al-Tali, was sidelined in 2020. Two blocs hold most of the power within HTS today: the Hama bloc led by “Abu Hasan 600”; and more so the Idlib bloc, led by Qutaiba Badawi, aka “Al-Mughira Binnish.” The natives claim that the outsiders were plotting to overthrow Jolani, and that their campaign of mass arrests of allies and associates of Qahtani and Zakour was in defence of the organisation. Qahtani was detained in August 2023 and his fate is unknown. Meanwhile, following his failed kidnapping, Zakour relocated to an SNA base in Ras al-Ayn, the furthest point from Idlib in opposition-held territory.

Spy games
The third factor that makes Zakour’s defection interesting was his admission – the first from an insider – of what was already widely believed: that HTS cooperated with the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies against Islamic State and Hurras al-Deen. Interviewed by an opposition newspaper, Zakour affirmed that Jolani had, “opened HTS’ prisons to British and American intelligence”, and that the HTS leader was proud of his “beautiful relations with the Americans.” 

Cracks began to emerge last summer when HTS’ security arm arrested 300 persons in Idlib in what HTS sources said was a mass bust of US and Russian spies and intelligence cells that had been secretly operating in Idlib for years without Jolani’s knowledge. Those arrested included apparatchiks in the Salvation Government and HTS administrators, field commanders, and security men, as well as HTS’s deputy chief, Qahtani. Speculation is rife over who may have tipped off Jolani about these networks and why. 

Then, in early January, social media accounts close to HTS published what were described as Qahtani’s “confessions”, which included his admission that since 2018 he had been an agent for the “International Coalition operations room in the city of Erbil”, and that for the past two years he had been plotting a coup against Jolani timed for late 2024. The goal was said to be to hand  control of the northwest to the US and the eventual surrender of the southern half of Idlib to Russia and the regime. The narrative is all too convenient, especially when you consider that it was Jolani who had given Qahtani the task of liaising with the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies in the first place. It wasn't only Qahtani, however: there was a team of emissaries that managed various aspects of the HTS-West relationship. 

That intelligence agencies should seek to develop networks of informants inside HTS separate from any formal cooperation mechanism is to be expected; and that Qahtani may have been turned by his handlers is not at all unlikely. Jolani is a veteran of the jihadi game and something of a Machiavellian operator. He would have understood that legitimising contacts with Western government agencies that were considered enemies until just a few years previously, could foster cynicism within the ranks that would increase the risk of infiltration. The purge of Qahtani, Zakour, et al may have been a pre-emptive strike against disloyal elements; but it was also a removal of those who had managed security cooperation with the West. When a state does this, it is usually interpreted as a sign that it no longer wants cooperation. That might not be entirely true in the case of Jolani, who will have wanted to avoid being left at the mercy of Turkey, his sole remaining sponsor. Accordingly, a recalibration of that “beautiful” relationship may now be in order. Jolani’s return on his investment, over five years, in moderation and pragmatism has been modest, with no sign that he or his group will ever be removed from the terrorism list. His hopes of being recognised as a responsible actor with a legitimate political role in Syria’s future appear doomed.  

In Idlib, the Islamic morality police are back.