The Road to Damascus: The Case for Normalization with the New Syrian Government
OP-ED: The United States’ continued designation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as a terrorist organization is one inspired by a track record of insularity.
Initially formed as an offshoot of Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, Jabhat al-Nusra, HTS’s historical ties to extremism are undeniable. However, the group’s dynamics and structure have shifted heavily since its precursor was first designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the US Department of State in 2014, and even more so since the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024, leaving a group today which is hardly recognizable in comparison to its prior iterations. HTS’s political evolution, embrace of pragmatic governance in northwest Syria, and growing focus on local political and administrative control rather than global jihadist ambitions, warrants a nuanced reassessment of this US designation, and a broader reassessment of US policy in Syria. Mischaracterizing HTS, which today serves as the de facto interim government of the Syrian Arab Republic, may inadvertently undermine opportunities for stability in the region and hinder effective responses to Syria’s complex conflict dynamics.
Divergent Ideological Growth
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham emerged in 2017 from a coalition of Islamist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra and several other smaller factions. The group’s leader, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, is now more commonly known by his nom de guerre: Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. Once explicitly aligned with Al-Qaeda, he later renounced these ties in an effort to rebrand HTS as an independent organization, a move which marked the beginning of a significant shift in HTS’s ideological and operational focus.
Initially, the group’s alignment with Al-Qaeda attracted its designation by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). However, HTS’s break with Al-Qaeda was officially announced earlier in 2016, when Jabhat al-Nusra rebranded as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (“Front for the Conquest of the Levant”), and a subsequent series of mergers, reorganizations, and internal defections would conclude in 2018 with a final evolution into the HTS moniker.
In seeking to consolidate control over local governance as a stalwart against creeping regime bombardment intended to promote degradation of local infrastructure and civic life, HTS signaled a divergence from the global ‘jihadist’ framework and a further embrace of the issues raised by civilians in territories it governs – a significant legitimating factor for any party desiring to assert local control.
This break is significant, as it signals an ideological divergence from ineffectual and extreme political governance under the label of jihadism, which in Western media is often conflated simply with terrorism. The word itself, though, means ‘to struggle’ – thus a struggle for the sake of Islam. Ideologically extreme militant organizations and terrorist regimes embracing the label have bastardized the word to an egregious point. While HTS’s origins remain rooted in extremist ideologies, its trajectory suggests a pivot toward a localized governance model, where the word ‘struggle’ to a disaffected and largely displaced populace means resistance against the Assad regime and restoration of the basic services and dignities long denied to them.
A Smarter CT Strategy
The United States’ counterterrorism (CT) strategy relies heavily on designation of groups as FTOs. This tool is, of course, essential for isolating dangerous actors, but its practical application can oversimplify complex realities on the ground. In the case of HTS, the blanket designation fails to account for the group’s evolution and its current administrative role in northwest Syria.
Continued designation of HTS as a terrorist organization has practical implications which directly impact the wellbeing of Syria’s populace. It restricts international engagement with the group, complicating efforts to deliver humanitarian aid and support local governance structures. It also reinforces HTS’s isolation, potentially pushing the group back toward more extremist positions or forcing HTS out of the United States’ sphere of geopolitical influence and into the arms of willing actors like Russia and China.
There are also nuances to consider regarding the influence of such a label towards domestic and international dialogue about Syria. By continuing to label HTS as a terrorist organization without acknowledging its repercussions, policymakers risk oversimplifying the Syrian conflict and undermining nuanced discussions about potential pathways to stability. This binary framing—which categorizes groups as either “friends” or “foes”—ignores the more fluid dynamics of Syria’s fractured landscape.
Al-Sharaa’s Personal Evolution
Ahmad al-Sharaa’s journey from an Al-Qaeda affiliate to a self-proclaimed nationalist leader is also emblematic of HTS’s broader evolution. Once a key figure in the global jihadist movement, al-Sharaa has repositioned himself as a pragmatic leader focused on Syria’s internal challenges.
In interviews and public appearances, al-Sharaa has sought to distance HTS from its extremist past. He has emphasized the group’s commitment to protecting civilians and maintaining stability in Idlib. While skepticism about al-Sharaa’s intentions is warranted, his rhetoric reflects a deliberate effort to reframe HTS as a legitimate actor in Syria’s political landscape. Al-Sharaa’s interviews with CNN and the BBC broadened the world’s perspective—and preconceived notions—towards al-Sharaa and HTS.
“The way we govern is different,” al-Sharaa told the BBC when asked if there were intentions to turn Syria into the next Afghanistan – an external and largely irrelevant conflation commonly employed by Western analysts. “Afghanistan is a tribal community. Syria is completely different. The people just don’t think in the same way. The Syrian government and the ruling system will be in line with Syria’s history and culture.”
To conflate Islam directly with Syrian culture is not a stretch: Islam arrived as a force in Syria in the 630s CE, resulting in deep religious ingratiation across many Syrian demographics, particularly rural ones in the context of the Assad regime’s secular, quasi-neoliberal urbanization campaign. Scorched earth warfare during the Syrian civil war was a major motivating factor in compounding historical religious repression and increasing societal participation among rural religious Syrian citizens in opposition to a secularist regime which buried men alive for failing to praise Bashar al-Assad as God. Islam is fully ingrained in the traditions of Syria, yet people continuously display oversimplification when describing the origins of the conditions Syria faces today by blaming a Sunni-Shia divide. This oversimplification in turn hurts those affected the most by Bashar al-Assad and his regime.
Al-Sharaa’s transformation has not gone unnoticed. Some observers argue that his pragmatic approach offers a potential avenue for engagement, particularly as the broader Syrian conflict enters a protracted phase. However, others remain deeply skeptical, viewing his efforts as a strategic facade aimed at securing international legitimacy.
Policy Reform or Public Relations?
Al-Sharaa has highlighted his support for women’s education, pointing out that women already make up 60% of students in Idlib universities. This narrative of progress, however, clashes with reports about HTS’s newly appointed Minister of Justice, Shadi Mohammed al-Waisi, who previously oversaw public executions of women accused of ‘moral crimes’ under the group’s earlier extremist jurisprudence one decade ago. While HTS now vocally promotes women’s education, critics argue that such appointments reveal lingering contradictions in its reformist claims, particularly for rural women. Still, HTS has made strides in this regard, including the establishment of a multilateral women’s affairs office.
Religious freedom is also a topic that is not oft shied-away from. After the burning of a Christmas tree in December 2024, HTS was quick to reprimand foreign fighters they said were at fault. A religious figure from HTS subsequently joined protests in Suqaylabiyah, a Christian-majority town in central Syria, to show support to the Christians and assure the Christmas tree would be back the following day.
HTS’s leadership has also repeatedly emphasized its focus on Syria’s internal affairs, distancing itself from global violent jihadist networks and their associated rhetoric. Al-Sharaa, in particular, has sought to present HTS as a nationalistic movement aimed at protecting Syrians from both the Assad regime and from extremist groups like ISIS. This rhetoric, coupled with practical measures to secure Idlib and suppress rival jihadist factions, underscores HTS’s shift from transnational violent jihadism to localized governance.
Today, HTS wholly controls the Idlib region, home to an estimated three million Syrians. Under its administration, HTS has established a semblance of governance, including judicial systems, security forces, and public services. This governance, while undoubtedly authoritarian, reflects an effort to maintain stability in a war-torn region. In many respects, governance and civil society in Idlib has emerged as substantially more resilient than comparable institutional structures in formerly Assad-held Syria; indeed, even the Syrian Civil Defense have sought to facilitate “critical” injury cases during recent clashes with Assad regime remnants on the coast into hospitals in Jisr ash-Shughur, Idlib city, and the Idlib countryside, suggesting that healthcare resilience and standards of care are significantly improved over local hospitals in formerly regime-held areas.
Critics argue that HTS’s governance is marred by corruption and suppression of dissent, which to a large extent is true – HTS, for example, is likely responsible for the systematic suppression of Radio Fresh Syria and the murder of its founder, Raed Fares.
Supporters, meanwhile, contend that its administrative structures—despite their flaws—offer a degree of order above and beyond the Assad regime and within an otherwise chaotic environment. In recent years, HTS has also demonstrated a willingness to cooperate with international humanitarian organizations to facilitate aid delivery, highlighting its pragmatic approach to governance. In fact, the designation of HTS as a terrorist group led to a rapid shift in perception, with attitudes turning overwhelmingly negative.
A Pathway for Humanitarian Engagement
Consequently, NGOs grew reluctant to engage or collaborate openly with HTS. This compounds a long-standing policy among the United Nations and its affiliated partner organizations (including the IFRC) and the local NGOs which interface heavily with them, which previously insisted upon facilitating all humanitarian aid directly through Damascus city under the auspices of the Assad regime’s institutional authority. As a result of this, significant disparities in aid provisions existed under the Assad regime between regime-held areas and HTS-held Idlib. Continual interface with the Assad regime also allowed parties like the UN’s World Health Organization to facilitate the logistics of military besiegement on behalf of the Assad regime, at the expense of displaced civilians like those residing in Rukban camp.
Since HTS controls Idlib, humanitarian actors have previously been obligated to negotiate with them to maintain access. HTS has workshopped a highly functional and efficient governance structure in the northwest, which it has now applied in the aftermath of December 8th to the entire country – thus obligating humanitarian actors to work through HTS for aid deliveries throughout Syria. This operating environment is not unusual for international NGOs, which previously sought to route the majority of their aid deliveries and infrastructure through Assad-controlled Damascus despite the abuses inherent in this process. HTS is a relatively more reliable partner than the former regime, yet superfluous counter-terrorism measures make NGOs hesitant to fully view groups like HTS as partners. Governments’ arbitrary designation of certain non-state armed groups as “terrorist” significantly impacts the working environment of humanitarian actors. For instance, providing training, advice, assistance, personnel, or transportation to such groups controlling humanitarian areas—often necessary for access negotiations—can be construed as direct or indirect support to these groups.
This freezing effect also penetrates down to individual appointees. Yahya al-Qudmani, a businessman from Suwayda, recently declined appointment as agriculture minister within the HTS-led transitional Syrian government, over concerns that such an appointment may impart personal criminal liability due to HTS’s designation as an FTO.
HTS’s financial stature largely connotes an amendment towards their past. The previous funding model was that of traditional terrorist group standards: oil smuggling, kidnapping ransoms, extortion, and at least $94 million from prisoner exchange deals. Today, HTS’s funds are largely rooted in taxation within Idlib and the management of a key border crossing with Turkey. The taxation within Idlib is distinct from a wholly Sheriff of Nottingham chronicle— taxes go towards zakat (obligatory charity in Islam) and the salaries of HTS members. The taxation became a point of dispute, however, and quickly resulted in protests in early 2024 which demanded civilian tax abolition from HTS. Frankly, internal taxation does not typically indicate a terrorist regime. Traditionally, terrorist groups rely on aforementioned clandestine, predatory economies to fund their operations. These methods prioritize coercion over consent and are detached from any pretense of governance. By contrast, HTS’s reliance on structured taxation signals an attempt to institutionalize authority, shifting to state-like governance.
Assuaging Oversimplified Policy Concerns
The US designation of HTS as a terrorist organization risks conflating the group equally with universally recognized terrorist entities like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. This conflation undermines opportunities to address Syria’s complex realities and hampers efforts to ensure stability in the region. The US policy also oversimplifies the intricacies of Syria’s ongoing conflict by framing it in binary terms, neglecting the fluid alliances, local dynamics, and shifting priorities among the myriad of involved actors.
This disconnected policy assessment similarly runs afoul of pragmatic US actions on the ground. Particularly under the Frank McKenzie-era CENTCOM, the US Department of Defense pursued a longstanding albeit soft-spoken policy of “backchanneling” intelligence on terror groups in cooperation with HTS, leading to crucial intelligence-gathering on groups such as Hurras al-Din in support of actions like the October 2019 raid to eliminate ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. HTS has also taken substantial action of their own accord to degrade alternate power structures, including a 2023 assassination of ISIS leader Abu Hussein Al-Husseini al-Qurashi; and its broader military and arrest campaign against ISIS and affiliated groups has emerged as one of the most historically effective anti-ISIS campaigns beyond the auspices of the US-led CJTF-OIR.
A sour 2017 piece by the oft-derided Washington Institute for Near East Policy touted an “HTS Emirate” and al-Sharaa’s “army of jihadists.” The irony of pressing a fearsome narrative onto a group that would then go on to free Bashar al-Assad’s wrongfully imprisoned men, women and children does not go unnoticed.
International actors like the UK and the United Nations—hostage to P5 veto dynamics, including US and Russian alignment against HTS—further isolate HTS with outdated policies. Meanwhile, regional actors like Israel have reportedly lobbied U.S. officials to retain HTS’s terror designation, framing the group as a persistent threat. Israeli officials have highlighted instability among Syria’s Druze communities—particularly in Suwayda province—as a security concern tied to HTS, despite recent Druze-led protests emphasizing local unity against external interference. This lobbying risks weaponizing sectarian anxieties to justify maintaining a rigid counterterrorism stance, even as HTSs operational focus remains confined to northwest Syria. There is incentive from all sides, though, to reevaluate HTS’s global standing. From the European right-wing perspective, establishing “safe zones” in government-controlled areas would facilitate the return of Syrian refugees—German conservatives and far-right politicians claim that since Syrians fled to Germany to escape Assad, they should now be able to return to Syria without delay.
A parallel conversation is held in which reassessing European ties to Syria includes Assadist sympathy, no doubt potentially harming the perilous peace of the nation. The reassessment, from a sickeningly optimistic outlook, would paint Syria as completely safe, thus harming its citizens. The go-around would be to prioritize reevaluation of HTS’s global standing with an emphasis on building government and political party communications with HTS on the basis of humanitarian aid and the rebuilding of infrastructure. U.S’s reassessment also has the potential to create a domino-affect among international parties.
Strides have been made towards a positive relationship between the US and HTS. America dropped a $10 million “Rewards for Justice” bounty from al-Sharaa after talks in Damascus. Former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, who spoke with press after the talks, said that the US under the former Biden administration “fully support[s] a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process that results in an inclusive and representative government which respects the rights of all Syrians, including women, and Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious communities.” The statement alludes that US talks with al-Sharaa affirmed his alignment towards these ideals.
Potential Future Policy Paths
Reconsidering HTS’s designation as a terrorist organization does not imply an overt endorsement of the group, nor an overlooking of its authoritarian practices. Instead, it calls for a more nuanced approach that acknowledges the complexities of Syria’s conflict and the evolving role of HTS. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, al-Sharaa, and the head of the Fatwa Council of HTS, Abd al-Rahim Atoun, must learn to clearly distinguish between repression and reformation.
The US can recalibrate its policy toward HTS by adopting an approach that reflects the complexities of the situation. It involves supporting local stability by encouraging pragmatic actors within HTS to continue prioritizing stability and distancing themselves from extremist ideologies. It also includes conditional engagement, establishing channels for dialogue with HTS based on clear conditions— including improved governance practices and cooperation with humanitarian organizations. Facilitating aforementioned aid delivery is another critical component, which requires easing restrictions on humanitarian engagement in Idlib to address the urgent needs of civilians.
Promoting accountability by closely monitoring HTS’s actions to ensure compliance with international norms and standards would be essential to upholding a more balanced and effective international policy. These efforts, though bluntly stated, are ones that would take years to enforce and to observe the effects of. Those who have wished for a free Syria for the past 54 years, though, may be willing to wait just a bit longer.
The US designation reflects a reliance on counterterrorism tools that often fail to capture the nuances of evolving conflicts. While HTS’s history is steeped in extremism, its transformation into a localized governing entity in northwest Syria suggests a more complex reality. By reassessing its policy toward HTS, the United States has an opportunity to address Syria’s challenges with greater effectiveness.
The United States has removed groups from the FTO list in the past, so the action is not completely unheard of. It is, however, difficult for an array of reasons, but institutional dysfunction has proved to affect FTO standing in the past in an unjust manner. Nelson Mandela remained a designated terrorist in the eyes of the US just before his death, twenty years after denouncing terrorist ideals.
For the Middle East, broadly Islamophobic and Orientalist paradigms hold non-state actors to a different—and lower—standard. Unlike in regions such as Latin America, where non-state armed groups like cartels historically avoided formal terrorist labels until recent exceptions, jihadist organizations face irreversible stigma: no jihadist group has ever been removed from a terrorist designation list while remaining operational, and since 9/11, this has only affected five defunct jihadi groups. This discrepancy underscores how Islamaphobic and Orientalist biases shape which threats are deemed permanently irredeemable.
When the U.S. removed a set of groups across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe in 2022, then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote that “the circumstances that were the basis for the designation … have changed in such a manner to warrant revocation of the designation.” This description so clearly applies to the current-day rebrand of HTS that a lack of reevaluation could be considered offensive and inaccurate.
In a 2021 PBS interview, al-Sharaa said the organization’s terrorist designation was “a political label that carries no truth or credibility, because 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. We call on countries that took these measures to revise their policies towards this revolution.”
Despite an otherwise painstakingly slow policy reassessment, the US has shown some willingness to reconsider its approach to HTS. US State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Natasha Franceschi handed a list of demands to Syrian foreign minister Asaad al-Shibani on the sidelines of the March 18th Brussels donor conference, detailing conditions like the exclusion of foreign nationals from Syrian government roles, commitment to full chemical weapons disarmament, and the establishment of a liaison for the search of detained journalist Austin Tice in exchange for partial sanctions waivers and the issuance of “a statement supporting Syria’s territorial integrity.” These are promising steps, but additional commitments are needed.
A nuanced approach that balances pragmatic engagement with accountability could pave the way for more sustainable solutions to the Syrian conflict. Such a shift would not only benefit the people of Idlib but also contribute to broader regional stability, underscoring the importance of policies grounded in a comprehensive understanding of the realities Syrians have faced—and will have to remember—for years to come.
