Who is Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s interim president?

Ahmed al-Sharaa, former rebel leader turned Syria's interim president, promises tolerance and unity after toppling Assad.

Islamist former rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has been appointed as Syria’s interim president after his Islamist group led a lightning offensive on December 8 that toppled Bashar al-Assad. The appointment of Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with al-Qaeda, came after a meeting of the former insurgent factions in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Sharaa has been Syria’s de facto leader since leading the offensive that deposed Assad after more than 13 years of civil war.

Formerly known as Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, al-Sharaa is the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the lightning offensive that toppled Assad in early December. The group was once affiliated with al-Qaeda but has since denounced its former ties.

In recent years, al-Sharaa has sought to cast himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance and promised to protect the rights of women and religious minorities. The tall, sharp-eyed Sharaa has held a succession of interviews with foreign journalists, presenting himself as a patriot who wants to rebuild and reunite Syria.

Born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia, Sharaa is from a well-to-do Syrian family and was raised in Mazzeh, an upscale district of Damascus.

In 2021, he told U.S. broadcaster PBS that his nom de guerre was a reference to his family’s roots in the Golan Heights. He said his grandfather was among those forced to flee the territory after its capture by Israel in 1967.

According to the Middle East Eye news website, it was after the September 11, 2001 attacks that he was first drawn to jihadist thinking.