> Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa[g] ... has served as the president of Syria since 2025.
> Born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a Syrian Sunni Muslim family from the Golan Heights, he grew up in Syria's capital, Damascus. Al-Sharaa joined al-Qaeda in Iraq shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and fought for two years in the Iraqi insurgency. From 2005 to 2011, he was captured and imprisoned by American and Iraqi forces. His release coincided with the onset of the Syrian revolution against the Ba'athist regime of Bashar al-Assad. In 2012, with the support of al-Qaeda's central command, al-Sharaa founded Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as al-Nusra Front, to depose the Assad regime.
I'm sure his CIA handlers showed him an ominous powerpoint of all the Taliban officials circa 2001 and where they are now (hint: basically all dead) and made it quite clear that you don't screw around too much externally if you want to keep your job.
That whole region is a real fucking shame. Iran, Syria, Lebanon, they all could've been doing at least as well as Turkey if history had taken a different path.
You don’t seem to understand the nexus between Al-Sharaa's ethnic and religious identity and what kind of man that makes him. I bet my left nut he is laughing his ass off about the CIA just like Sirajuddin Haqqani does.
Sunni Muslims perceive any external threat to their tribe as a parallel
threat to Islam and a provocation to incite Jihad. Tribalism is what drives them.
The man is dangerous, because to reach his goals, it doesn’t matter if he lives or dies, only if the tribe continues, and he is very well aware of that.
It never works to let people like Al-Sharaa or Sinwar live and try to instrumentalise them for your own goals.
The Israelis thought they could handle Sinwar after releasing him from prison.
He taught them a lesson they are never going to forget, and while all the Mossad and IDF commanders’ names will never be said again five years after they are dead, people will still read up on Sinwar in hundreds of years and take the stuff that works and implement it into their own fight against insertrandomenemy here.
I am confident the man died laughing because he had already won. His survival was never a condition to reach his Goals. You can not imagine how dangerous this mindset is until you had to shoot a sixteen years old boy because he kept running at you with an explosives vest at a checkpoint.
The Americans think they can control Shaara aka Abu Mohammed al-Golani. I think they can’t. And I think we are all going to have to pay the price for it sooner or later.
It’s true, the man reinvented himself to be perceived as a charismatic leader. He looks pretty slick in his suit.
Personal reinvention, however, is not the same as institutional transformation.
The clever question to ask is, does the governing system consolidating in Damascus reflect a break from Golani’s earlier framework, or its realisation?
The evidence points clearly to continuity. Before assuming formal state authority, Golani outlined a political order grounded in religious legitimacy, hierarchical inclusion, and phased consolidation.
Today, executive authority is concentrated, religious oversight is embedded in lawmaking, and security institutions are structured around ideological alignment. Alternative centres of sovereignty are absorbed or dismantled.
Syria’s trajectory becomes clear when measured against the institutional framework its current president articulated as a jihadist years before taking office. What Golani once described as an insurgent now operates through state institutions.
The wolf has put on a sheep’s coat and is now constructing the kind of state he always wanted to construct, one where it doesn’t matter who rules it, because
he embeds the same philosophy that brought war and terror to most parts of the world into the heads of the Syrian people with American money through governmental institutions.
It’s not the region that is a real fucking shame. It’s the way America produces warzones to feed young American souls into the machine the US is running on. War is a business, and the United States of America is the biggest manufacturer of war on the planet.
Syria will just be another showroom to sell other countries advanced weaponry made in the USA in 15 years.
Great news! I'm sure when the students had an uprising (funded by US spy agencies) to overthrow Asad, this is exactly who they wanted- an Al Queda fundamentalist to rule over them! Another win for the West!
Please let's wait and see a bit before judging him a 'fundamentalist'.
He joined Al-Qaida when he was young, during the US invasion of Iraq, and spent years in a US prison where he grew his network, link to a particular faction of Al-Qaida that isn't that religious (ok, Islam is weird and way too hard to explain in a digression, let's leave it at 'not that religious' to avoid a 500 lines tunnel).
Kurds were extremely skeptical at first, but it seems at least some are happy with how things are proceeding (they are more involved than expected in drafting the new constitution that will take place in 2030).
It might sadly go to a dual government like Iran use to have before 2026, which is hurting my atheist self, but let's be honest, a dual government in the region is way, way more democracy than expected.
Ahhh yes, he was just a little boy. And boys will be boys.
Even when they later go on to create terrorist organizations such as Jabhat al Nusra (Al Nusra Front). Boys will be boys.
Even when he got sent to Syria by Al Qaedas AQI (Which later became ISIS)
It baffles me that people like you justifies this man as a legitimate leader. Kurds and other minorities in Syria suffer immensely from this US and Turkish-forced government.
Why don't you tell the people of HN about the absolute massacre and manhunt of thousands of Alawites after Al-Julani came to power in Syria?
He won the civil war, that's where he gets his legitimity. No terrorist attacks since 2015, and even then the terrorist group leaders said it wasn't on their orders. No transnational terrorism is also a good sign. The Kurds were very skeptical a year ago, and probably afraid too, but from the little I heard, they seem relieved about what is currently happening (Lebanese too, I don't have close friends in other related communities). I know the SDF would be a better winner overall, but you have to make with what you get.
Also the Kurd I know have family in the Hatay province and around idil, so he is _very_ confident that economically at least it will be a success.
And like I said elsewhere, you can see the Turkish/ottoman Sunni influence in his religion (in islam culture and religion are extremely close), which is a very good sign. And concerning the massacre: we mostly forgot about Smyrna, and even Dersim isn't cited when we talk about Atatürk (both at least one order of magnitude bigger). It is very sad, but at the time European powers wanted stability in the area, and Atatürk gave them that. I only wish for the war to end and to have the area stabilise, and unlike Iran or even Irak, I see a slight chance that that it might end correctly for the minorities (10%?). Which isn't much, but I would rather wait a year or two before casting judgment.
That makes him a defacto leader, not legitimate by any democratic means. He is not chosen by the people, but by external governments such as the turkish dictatorship and the american oligarchic government.
Stability can be achieved without murdering and cleansing out Alawites, Kurds, christians and Druze. Only a barbaric mindset would think otherwise.
And somehow trying to whitewash them with "No terrorist attacks since 2015" shows me that you are clearly of different mindset than me. Have a good day!
Many essential tech services like ChatGPT, Gemini, Coursera, Udemy, Stripe and many others are still sadly unavailable to people in Syria even though sanctions have been lifted and the legal barrier no longer exists.
I returned to Syria recently and so did 2 millions in the past 2 years. The country is doing better relatively speaking. It's not a first world country but most people have food and safety, and there's aid organizations to help those in need.
There's no conflation in priorities. Every bit helps. People are trying to start businesses and rebuild the country but this tech blockade contribute to making life harder unnecessarily.
Hopefully the Syrian state officials are not corrupt and sign the best deals for the country, rather than siphoning off bribes for themselves and selling Syria to foreign companies who extract egregious profits.
> Hopefully the Syrian state officials are not corrupt
They're already literally Al-Qaeda islamist terrorists. Imagine if, moreover, they were also corrupt.
Rotten to the core doesn't begin to describe such individuals. They've got buddies at the helm in Iran: they slaughtered 30 000 unarmed civilians and publicly hung athletes... In January 2026.
Shows how ignorant you are of the dynamics of the region. Iranian regime belong to the Shia sect, and backed Assad in the civil war. Sharaa/Jolani's faction are Sunnis, principally backed by Turkey. Shia and Sunnis generally dislike and often fight each other.
Religious fundamentalists tend to be less corrupt than whatever your baseline for politicians and rulers is because within their in-groups they're scoring each other based on those ideals. Not to say they won't loot like every other ruling class does, but they're not gonna behave like Saddam (most obvious local comparison point for this subject IMO) and just light money on fire for their own flamboyant luxury.
Their values may be garbage, but that's tangential.
Talibans are the obvious counter-example. No, the reason they might be less corrupt than the average dictator in the area is that they seem to have a plan, and until it is implemented, we can expect the leaders to behave.
Also culturally, Syrian are very close to Turks and benefitted a lot from ottoman administration and Sunni legalism, which is a big reason why I believe it is possible for them to have a (mostly) secular government. Sadly I think it is likely they will implement a dual government like Iran had, a theocracy with a democratically elected secular government. Which are more resilient, but bad news overall (still better than Assad regime tbh).
> Religious fundamentalists tend to be less corrupt than whatever your baseline for politicians and rulers
Citation and some kind of proof needed here. It is very dubious proposition.
> because within their in-groups they're scoring each other based on those ideals
Their ideals dont tend to be "transparency, anti-corruption and fairness". Those three tend to be fairly low on the list of ideals they score each other on. For example, Iranian regime is considered very corrupt.
> they're not gonna behave like Saddam and just light money on fire for their own flamboyant luxury.
That is just a matter of aesthetics. Not a measure of coruption.
> Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa[g] ... has served as the president of Syria since 2025.
> Born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a Syrian Sunni Muslim family from the Golan Heights, he grew up in Syria's capital, Damascus. Al-Sharaa joined al-Qaeda in Iraq shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and fought for two years in the Iraqi insurgency. From 2005 to 2011, he was captured and imprisoned by American and Iraqi forces. His release coincided with the onset of the Syrian revolution against the Ba'athist regime of Bashar al-Assad. In 2012, with the support of al-Qaeda's central command, al-Sharaa founded Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as al-Nusra Front, to depose the Assad regime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_al-Sharaa#Split_from_al-...
You have to jog to keep up with politics in the Middle East.
Most of IS is now in Europe. Thanks USA.
Europe’s own fault for not protecting their borders.
I'm sure his CIA handlers showed him an ominous powerpoint of all the Taliban officials circa 2001 and where they are now (hint: basically all dead) and made it quite clear that you don't screw around too much externally if you want to keep your job.
That whole region is a real fucking shame. Iran, Syria, Lebanon, they all could've been doing at least as well as Turkey if history had taken a different path.
You don’t seem to understand the nexus between Al-Sharaa's ethnic and religious identity and what kind of man that makes him. I bet my left nut he is laughing his ass off about the CIA just like Sirajuddin Haqqani does.
Sunni Muslims perceive any external threat to their tribe as a parallel threat to Islam and a provocation to incite Jihad. Tribalism is what drives them.
The man is dangerous, because to reach his goals, it doesn’t matter if he lives or dies, only if the tribe continues, and he is very well aware of that.
It never works to let people like Al-Sharaa or Sinwar live and try to instrumentalise them for your own goals.
The Israelis thought they could handle Sinwar after releasing him from prison.
He taught them a lesson they are never going to forget, and while all the Mossad and IDF commanders’ names will never be said again five years after they are dead, people will still read up on Sinwar in hundreds of years and take the stuff that works and implement it into their own fight against insertrandomenemy here.
I am confident the man died laughing because he had already won. His survival was never a condition to reach his Goals. You can not imagine how dangerous this mindset is until you had to shoot a sixteen years old boy because he kept running at you with an explosives vest at a checkpoint.
The Americans think they can control Shaara aka Abu Mohammed al-Golani. I think they can’t. And I think we are all going to have to pay the price for it sooner or later.
It’s true, the man reinvented himself to be perceived as a charismatic leader. He looks pretty slick in his suit.
Personal reinvention, however, is not the same as institutional transformation.
The clever question to ask is, does the governing system consolidating in Damascus reflect a break from Golani’s earlier framework, or its realisation?
The evidence points clearly to continuity. Before assuming formal state authority, Golani outlined a political order grounded in religious legitimacy, hierarchical inclusion, and phased consolidation.
Today, executive authority is concentrated, religious oversight is embedded in lawmaking, and security institutions are structured around ideological alignment. Alternative centres of sovereignty are absorbed or dismantled.
Syria’s trajectory becomes clear when measured against the institutional framework its current president articulated as a jihadist years before taking office. What Golani once described as an insurgent now operates through state institutions.
The wolf has put on a sheep’s coat and is now constructing the kind of state he always wanted to construct, one where it doesn’t matter who rules it, because he embeds the same philosophy that brought war and terror to most parts of the world into the heads of the Syrian people with American money through governmental institutions.
It’s not the region that is a real fucking shame. It’s the way America produces warzones to feed young American souls into the machine the US is running on. War is a business, and the United States of America is the biggest manufacturer of war on the planet.
Syria will just be another showroom to sell other countries advanced weaponry made in the USA in 15 years.
Great news! I'm sure when the students had an uprising (funded by US spy agencies) to overthrow Asad, this is exactly who they wanted- an Al Queda fundamentalist to rule over them! Another win for the West!
Please let's wait and see a bit before judging him a 'fundamentalist'.
He joined Al-Qaida when he was young, during the US invasion of Iraq, and spent years in a US prison where he grew his network, link to a particular faction of Al-Qaida that isn't that religious (ok, Islam is weird and way too hard to explain in a digression, let's leave it at 'not that religious' to avoid a 500 lines tunnel).
Kurds were extremely skeptical at first, but it seems at least some are happy with how things are proceeding (they are more involved than expected in drafting the new constitution that will take place in 2030).
It might sadly go to a dual government like Iran use to have before 2026, which is hurting my atheist self, but let's be honest, a dual government in the region is way, way more democracy than expected.
Ahhh yes, he was just a little boy. And boys will be boys.
Even when they later go on to create terrorist organizations such as Jabhat al Nusra (Al Nusra Front). Boys will be boys.
Even when he got sent to Syria by Al Qaedas AQI (Which later became ISIS)
It baffles me that people like you justifies this man as a legitimate leader. Kurds and other minorities in Syria suffer immensely from this US and Turkish-forced government.
Why don't you tell the people of HN about the absolute massacre and manhunt of thousands of Alawites after Al-Julani came to power in Syria?
He won the civil war, that's where he gets his legitimity. No terrorist attacks since 2015, and even then the terrorist group leaders said it wasn't on their orders. No transnational terrorism is also a good sign. The Kurds were very skeptical a year ago, and probably afraid too, but from the little I heard, they seem relieved about what is currently happening (Lebanese too, I don't have close friends in other related communities). I know the SDF would be a better winner overall, but you have to make with what you get.
Also the Kurd I know have family in the Hatay province and around idil, so he is _very_ confident that economically at least it will be a success.
And like I said elsewhere, you can see the Turkish/ottoman Sunni influence in his religion (in islam culture and religion are extremely close), which is a very good sign. And concerning the massacre: we mostly forgot about Smyrna, and even Dersim isn't cited when we talk about Atatürk (both at least one order of magnitude bigger). It is very sad, but at the time European powers wanted stability in the area, and Atatürk gave them that. I only wish for the war to end and to have the area stabilise, and unlike Iran or even Irak, I see a slight chance that that it might end correctly for the minorities (10%?). Which isn't much, but I would rather wait a year or two before casting judgment.
That makes him a defacto leader, not legitimate by any democratic means. He is not chosen by the people, but by external governments such as the turkish dictatorship and the american oligarchic government.
Stability can be achieved without murdering and cleansing out Alawites, Kurds, christians and Druze. Only a barbaric mindset would think otherwise.
And somehow trying to whitewash them with "No terrorist attacks since 2015" shows me that you are clearly of different mindset than me. Have a good day!
Many essential tech services like ChatGPT, Gemini, Coursera, Udemy, Stripe and many others are still sadly unavailable to people in Syria even though sanctions have been lifted and the legal barrier no longer exists.
Stretching the definition of the word "essential" there.
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for alternatives (like Chinese models) to move in
They don't have food and safety, ChatGPT, Gemini, Coursera, Udemy, Stripe are way low on their priorities.
I'm speaking from first hand experience.
I returned to Syria recently and so did 2 millions in the past 2 years. The country is doing better relatively speaking. It's not a first world country but most people have food and safety, and there's aid organizations to help those in need.
There's no conflation in priorities. Every bit helps. People are trying to start businesses and rebuild the country but this tech blockade contribute to making life harder unnecessarily.
Give them some time - the rescinding of the designation only just happened.
Woah, what a loss. I'm pretty sure that's one of the worst problems they are going through as a country /s
Hopefully the Syrian state officials are not corrupt and sign the best deals for the country, rather than siphoning off bribes for themselves and selling Syria to foreign companies who extract egregious profits.
>are not corrupt
They got promoted and de-sanctioned precisely because they are corrupt and worse, actual terrorists.
> Hopefully the Syrian state officials are not corrupt
They're already literally Al-Qaeda islamist terrorists. Imagine if, moreover, they were also corrupt.
Rotten to the core doesn't begin to describe such individuals. They've got buddies at the helm in Iran: they slaughtered 30 000 unarmed civilians and publicly hung athletes... In January 2026.
Wonderful people.
> buddies at the helm in Ira
Shows how ignorant you are of the dynamics of the region. Iranian regime belong to the Shia sect, and backed Assad in the civil war. Sharaa/Jolani's faction are Sunnis, principally backed by Turkey. Shia and Sunnis generally dislike and often fight each other.
Religious fundamentalists tend to be less corrupt than whatever your baseline for politicians and rulers is because within their in-groups they're scoring each other based on those ideals. Not to say they won't loot like every other ruling class does, but they're not gonna behave like Saddam (most obvious local comparison point for this subject IMO) and just light money on fire for their own flamboyant luxury.
Their values may be garbage, but that's tangential.
Talibans are the obvious counter-example. No, the reason they might be less corrupt than the average dictator in the area is that they seem to have a plan, and until it is implemented, we can expect the leaders to behave.
Also culturally, Syrian are very close to Turks and benefitted a lot from ottoman administration and Sunni legalism, which is a big reason why I believe it is possible for them to have a (mostly) secular government. Sadly I think it is likely they will implement a dual government like Iran had, a theocracy with a democratically elected secular government. Which are more resilient, but bad news overall (still better than Assad regime tbh).
> Religious fundamentalists tend to be less corrupt than whatever your baseline for politicians and rulers
Citation and some kind of proof needed here. It is very dubious proposition.
> because within their in-groups they're scoring each other based on those ideals
Their ideals dont tend to be "transparency, anti-corruption and fairness". Those three tend to be fairly low on the list of ideals they score each other on. For example, Iranian regime is considered very corrupt.
> they're not gonna behave like Saddam and just light money on fire for their own flamboyant luxury.
That is just a matter of aesthetics. Not a measure of coruption.
[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49430240
There's not much discussion there. That submission was raided by comments from new accounts and it got penalized by HN.