Abu Mohammad al-Julani
Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a[5] (Arabic: أحمد حسين الشرع, romanized: ʾAḥmad Ḥusayn aš-Šarʿ; born 1982), known by his nom de guerre as Abu Mohammad al-Julani[6] (Arabic: أبو محمد الجولاني, romanized: ʾAbū Muḥammad al-Jawlānī), is a Syrian militant leader who is the current commander-in-chief of the militant group Tahrir al-Sham.[7]
Abu Mohammad al-Julani
Position established
Organization disestablished
Position established
Organization disestablished
1982 (age 41–42)[1]
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia[1][2]
'The Conqueror Sheikh'[3]
Current:
Syrian Salvation Government (2017–present)
Tahrir al-Sham (2017–present)
Former:
Al-Qaeda (2003–2016)[4]
Al-Qaeda in Iraq
(2004–2006)- Mujahideen Shura Council
(January 2006 – October 2006) 
Islamic State of Iraq
(October 2006 - 23 January 2012)
Al-Nusra Front (2012–2016)
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (2016–2017)
Tahrir al-Sham (28 January 2017 – present)
2003–present
Before cutting ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016,[8] Joulani had served as the emir of the now-defunct al-Nusra Front, the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.[9] The US State Department listed Al-Julani as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" in May 2013,[10] and four years later announced a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture.[11][12] As of February 2021, the bounty remains in force.[13]
The nisba "Al-Julani" in his nom de guerre is a reference to Syria's Golan Heights, partially occupied and annexed by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967.[14] Al-Julani released an audio statement on 28 September 2014, in which he stated he would fight the "United States and its allies" and urged his fighters not to accept help from the West in their battle against ISIL.[15]
Biography[edit]
Family background[edit]
Ahmed Hussein's family came from the Golan Heights in Syria. The family was displaced in 1967 after the Israeli occupation of the Golan territories during the Six-Day War. Joulani's father was an Arab nationalist student activist for the Nasserists in Syria. He was imprisoned by Syrian Ba'athists during the anti-Nasserist purges initiated after the 1961 and 1963 coup d'etats, which broke up the United Arab Republic and propelled Arab Socialist Ba'ath party to power.[16]
Joulani's father later escaped prison to complete his higher studies in Iraq in 1971. During this period, he had also travelled to Jordan to co-operate with the Palestinian Fedayeen of the PLO. After returning to Syria in the 1970s, now ruled as the personalist dictatorship of Hafez al-Assad, Joulani's father was again imprisoned. He was later released and found asylum in Saudi Arabia.[17]
Early life and Iraq War[edit]
al-Julani was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1982; where his father worked as an oil engineer until 1989. In that year the al-Julani family returned to Syria, and he grew up and lived in the eastern villas area in the Mezzeh neighborhood of Damascus, until moving to Iraq in 2003.[1]
Once al-Julani moved to Iraq to fight American troops after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he quickly rose through the ranks of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The Times of Israel newspaper claimed that Joulani was a close associate of AQI leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.[6] In a 2021 interview with Frontline, Al-Julani asserted that he had never personally met al-Zarqawi and denied any leadership roles during the early Iraqi insurgency, other than fighting as a regular foot-soldier under the command of al-Qaeda in Iraq against American occupation. Before the eruption of Iraqi civil war in 2006, Joulani was arrested by American forces and imprisoned for over five years in various prisons and detention centres. These prisons included Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, Camp Cropper and al-Tajji prison.[18]
Formation of Tahrir al-Sham[edit]
On January 28 2017, Julani announced that Jabhat al-Fath al-Sham would dissolve and be subsumed into a new, larger Syrian Islamist group called Hayat Tahrir Al Sham ("Assembly for the Liberation of the Levant"). Under Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (called HTS for short), the group focused on fighting Al-Qaeda and ISIS to get rid of hostile perceptions from West. With HTS, he crushed ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the majority of opposing forces in the vicinity of HTS and now controls nearly all of the Idlib Governorate, under the governance of the HTS-aligned Syrian Salvation Government.[31]
In the summer of 2020, al-Julani made frequent public appearances around Idlib in an attempt to gain support from the population. Video output by HTS-affiliated media increased significantly throughout mid-2020, multiple videos being published daily, showing governance videos, distribution of taxations in rural villages, frontline videos, and al-Julani meeting with local militia groups.