In the mid- to late-1500s France was torn apart by the French Wars of Religion. Many French nobles and commoners alike had embraced the Protestant faith – they became known as the Huguenots – and, in an age before freedom of religion, were in a life-and-death struggle with their Catholic compatriots for control over France.
The conflict was brutal, with thousands massacred on each side. France was torn apart for decades. The culminating point of much of the violence was the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of August 1572, in which thousands of Protestants were murdered in the streets of Paris.
One of the leaders of the Huguenots, Henry of Navarre, escaped only by pretending to convert to Catholicism: something he renounced as soon as he was again safe.
The wars continued, but after a complex series of events, Henry found himself the strongest heir to the French throne. His elevation to the throne would never be accepted by most of the nobles and commoners, however, if he remained a Protestant. So according to legend, after a long discussion with his mistress, he declared that “Paris is well worth a Mass”, and converted to Catholicism. He was crowned Henry IV of France.
Although regarded as a traitor by the Huguenots, Henry would end the Wars of Religion and eventually sign the Edict of Nantes which granted Protestants some rights and protection within France.
This historical episode came to my mind while watching the recent NATO summit in Turkey, and, in particular, the attendance of Ahmed al-Sharaa, the President of Syria, formerly known by his more infamous name, Abu Mohammad al-Julani.
Al-Sharaa’s political trajectory over the past few years is one of the most remarkable in recent history.
Born in Riyad in Saudi Arabia and raised in Damascus in a middle-class Syrian family, al-Sharaa became religious at 17 and describes himself as being “radicalized” by the Palestinian second intifada in the early 2000s. In 2003 he travelled from Syria to Iraq and joined al-Qaeda to fight against the incoming American invasion. He rose through the ranks quickly, but in 2006 he was arrested by American troops whilst planting a bomb, and imprisoned.
Before the rebellion
Through cunning and a false identity, he managed to get the Iraqi government to release him from prison in 2011, days before the rebellion against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Later that same year he was ordered by al-Qaeda to establish a local branch in Syria to join in the war against the Syrian government.
As leader of the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, al-Sharaa’s group (at first called al-Nusra Front and later Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham) was one amongst hundreds of factions in the Syrian rebellion. Some, like his, were Jihadist groups, the most infamous of which is ISIS. Others represented more secular nationalist ideologies. Some represented ethnic or religious groups.
During the early years of the war especially, al-Sharaa and his troops carried out numerous attacks on civilians, and targeted and murdered religious minorities such as Christians, Alawites and Druze. In this period al-Sharaa was allied to the group which would become ISIS, but would stay loyal to al-Qaeda when the two groups fell out and then fought against ISIS.
In 2016, five years into the Syrian civil war, al-Sharaa’s group was under pressure from more moderate factions of his organization to merge with more mainstream Syrian rebel groups. The rebels were under pressure after the recapture of the city of Aleppo by Russian and Iranian troops supporting the government’s forces, and many saw the possibility of losing the war.
In response, al-Qaeda’s leadership suggested to al-Sharaa that he loosen his group’s ties with al-Qaeda to attract more mainstream support. Al-Sharaa proceeded to do just that, but after reports in western media suggested he had completely cut ties with al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda reversed their instruction and ordered him to publicly reaffiliate with them.
Emerge victorious
Al-Sharaa was now stuck between the moderates who wanted to join the rest of the rebel movement and the hardliners who wanted to rejoin al-Qaeda. The relationship with al-Qaeda soon broke down completely and al-Sharaa went on to rebrand his group as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). It was now in open conflict with al-Qaeda. By late 2017, relations between the groups had been permanently damaged, and al-Sharaa would eventually emerge victorious as the most important rebel leader in the governorate of Idlib in Northwestern Syria.
After the break with al-Qaeda, al-Sharaa drew closer to Turkey, which by this point in the conflict had become the main backer and protector of the remaining rebel-held territory in Idlib. The east of the country was held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, allied with the United States, and the south and west were controlled by the government.
Al-Sharaa governed his territory in Idlib as an Islamic state, but one far more pragmatic and technocratic than the rival Islamic state run by ISIS. Members of Syria’s urban and educated elite who were not committed ideologues were used to help run the state. Al-Sharaa still ruled with an iron fist, however, and dissent was violently put down. When a village refused to pay a new olive oil tax, al-Sharaa’s troops bombed the village and killed five people.
It was around this time that in an effort to broaden HTS’s appeal, al-Sharaa began to soften his rhetoric on religious minorities and non-Islamist groups. By 2023 he was describing Christians and Druze as being welcome in Syria. Al-Sharaa ruled his small slice of Syria, but remained essentially just one warlord amongst many, in a Syria still deeply divided between warring factions.
Everything changed in November 2024.
The weakening of Russia in the Ukraine war and the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon had left the Assad regime without much foreign support. So, when al-Sharaa’s troops began some attacks on regime forces to retake ground, they found them weak and suffering from low morale. Without much warning, the forces of the Assad regime began to completely disintegrate, and al-Sharaa and his forces found themselves in control of the capital within the span of a few weeks. Over a decade of war had suddenly ended in the blink of an eye.
Dominant power
Al-Sharaa and his group HTS were now the dominant power in Syria. But this did not mean absolute control. Even within al-Sharaa’s coalition there were numerous groups with different agendas, most infamously foreign Islamist fighters, people who had come to Syria for Jihad and were the most hardline of al-Sharaa’s troops. In the North-East of Syria were the various militias and factions of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF): an American -backed group led by mainly Kurdish fighters.
The weeks after it took control were chaotic, with al-Sharaa scrambling to set up a new central government. Bedouin tribes clashed with the Druze in the South. Israel carried out strikes against targets in the country, and Assad-supporting Alawites on the western coast clashed with the new government’s forces.
Around this time, I wrote an article suggesting that adopting core liberal ideas such as freedom of religion were the only path forward for Syria. I kept some hope alive but remained pessimistic about Syria’s future.
In the immediate aftermath of my writing that in January of 2025, things were not looking good. Al-Sharaa’s forces carried out massacres of both Alawites and Druze in March 2025. Although the SDF signed a peace agreement with Damascus in March 2025, by July this was falling apart, and government and SDF forces were exchanging fire. Syria’s more liberal and more left-leaning urban populations protested in the streets.
Also in March, al-Sharaa’s government created an interim constitution which is supposed to guide the country through the next five years. It establishes a very powerful president, a parliament one-third of which is picked by the president, with the remaining two-thirds being chosen by government-established committees across the country.
Constitutional court judges are selected by the president with the approval of parliament, and national jurisprudence is supposed to be downstream of Sharia law. The Syrian state is also to remain centralized and not federal.
All of this looks very bleak indeed, and a recipe for another civil war in Syria.
And yet.
His vision
In a May 2025 interview with The Jewish Journal, al-Sharaa outlined what he claimed is his vision for a new Syria:
“A stable Syria will not be built through speeches or slogans — it will be built through action: in the marketplace, in classrooms, on farms, and in workshops. We will rebuild supply chains. Syria will return as a hub for trade and commerce.”
Not quite what one would normally expect from the Jihadi warrior.
Al-Sharaa’s government has been relentless in efforts to project Syria as an investment destination. Rather than keep the appearance of an Islamist Mujahadeen, the new government has tried to project itself to the world as a normal modern state. Al-Sharaa attends world events dressed in a neat suit wearing almost identical attire to France’s Macron, an example of which can be seen in this slick propaganda video put out by Al-Sharaa’s X account to celebrate Macron’s first visit to the country:
Agreements have been signed declaring Kurds part of Syria, and stablishing Kurdish new year as a holiday. A Christian was appointed to the cabinet (a woman named Hind Kabawat as minister of social and labour affairs), and some Christians have entered the new parliament.
One of al-Sharaa’s appointments to parliament was a Syrian actress, Rouzaina Lazkani, no doubt to soothe the fears of urban Syrians.
In Homs, an Islamist twitter account lamented a video of a recent rave led by a female DJ.
Even when the new government declared a ban on bikinis on Syria’s beaches, the policy received backlash both domestically and abroad, and was then downplayed with government officials trying to claim it wasn’t a “ban”, and many exceptions were applied to the bikini policy, such as allowing bikinis at four-star-and-above hotels.
Female recruits
In June of this year Syria’s Ministry of the Interior put out a video of it training female recruits in weapon-handling and counter-terrorism. The new government has in some parts of northeastern Syria added Kurdish names to government buildings and road signs, a move deeply opposed by Arab supremacists.
Macron in his recent visit said he and al-Sharaa had discussed the possibility of reopening French-speaking Christian schools, which had been closed by the Assad regime. New pipelines through Syria carrying gas and oil from the Middle East to Europe are being planned and announced as I write.
The US and EU have warmly embraced al-Sharaa, seeing his Syria as both a hedge against Iran and a source of or transit route for oil and gas. In more concrete terms, the Americans forced their Kurdish allies to disarm and make peace with Damascus, and have now removed Syria from the “State sponsors of terror” list, opening up the door for the lifting of sanctions.
Trump seems a fan of al-Sharaa, saying after the recent NATO conference: “He’s done a great job, he’s unified Syria”, and even the most pro-Israel senator in the US, the late Lindsey Graham, just a few weeks ago expressed his support for al-Sharaa as president of Syria. The Israelis for their part remain unconvinced, and continue to support anti-government Druze groups in Southern Syria.
The situation in Syria remains extremely delicate. The potential for more widespread violence and chaos remains. Al-Sharaa continues to perform a delicate balancing act between Syria’s secular and Islamist factions, between Muslims and minorities, between its Arabs and Kurds. A few wrong moves, and the whole thing could once again collapse into horror. The complexity of the situation astounds me, and even this piece leaves out much detail about al-Sharaa’s many lives and the nation of Syria.
So, what does the future have in store for Syria? It’s still too early to say. Al-Sharaa could simply be another Assad in waiting, tightening his grip and rebuilding his strength until he throws off the mask. Many around the world and in Syria seem to think so. Others declare him the Lee Kuan Yew of Syria, an authoritarian reformer who will make his country stable and rich.
Others still hold out hope he is a genuine reformer who might transform Syria into a different country. Perhaps, however, he is none of these things. Perhaps he is just a man eager for power who believes that only he can rule his country; a pragmatist who knows when to deal and when to fight. A Henry IV.
Perhaps, Damascus is worth a NATO summit.
[Image: Chickenonline from Pixabay, and Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, CC BY 4.0, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=189488626]
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