Assad Has Fallen. Who Is Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the Syrian Militant Who Led The Rebel Offensive That Toppled Him? (2025)

On Dec. 8, Syrian rebels stunned the world by seizing Damascus and toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, more than 13 years into the country’s brutal war.

The offensive by the Islamist militant group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, and other rebel groups was led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who has been designated a terrorist by the United States since 2013.

Who is Jolani? Where did he come from? In 2021, FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith became the first Western journalist to interview Jolani. The documentary that followed, The Jihadist, investigated Jolani’s origins, his group, his fight with Assad and his ambitions for Syria.

As the documentary reported, over most of two decades, Jolani’s life was a roadmap of Islamist militancy in Iraq and Syria. He battled U.S. forces in Iraq and was jailed by the Americans for several years. He had risen through the ranks of the group then known as the Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI, and then with help from ISI’s successor, ISIS, Jolani founded an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra.

Read more: Interview: Abu Mohammad al-Jolani

In 2021, Jolani said he was seeking a new relationship with the West. By then, he had broken with ISIS and Al Qaeda and said that his fight was with Assad, not the U.S. He said he focused on military targets in Syria, not civilians. He told Smith he wanted “to confront an unjust, tyrannical regime that is killing people.” He said, “We are defending the people.”

Smith’s interview with Jolani took place in Idlib province after Jolani and HTS — which the U.S. labeled a terrorist group in 2018 — helped establish a civic authority governing more than 3 million civilians there, many of them displaced from other areas of Syria by the war.

“There are more than 400,000 to 500,000 students enrolled in schools,” Jolani told Smith at the time of Idlib. “There are fully functioning hospitals in the liberated areas. I don’t claim that the situation in Idlib is ideal.” But I’m saying that given the current circumstances … there’s a self-asserting model that is capable of running the whole area’s affairs according to Islamic rule.”

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have died in the Syrian conflict, which began in 2011 with a bloody Assad regime crackdown on the Syrian uprising. As Syrians took to the streets to protest and to call for more freedoms, the response by Assad and his security forces was swift and brutal, following a playbook for crushing dissent that his ruling family had honed over 40 years. But the killings sparked further anti-Assad anger instead of suppressing it, and what began as peaceful protests evolved into an armed opposition movement as the government’s tactics escalated.

Read more: As Syrian Rebels Re-Ignite Conflict And Take Aleppo, Revisit FRONTLINE’s Reporting

In the coming years, Assad and his allies would attempt to put down the revolution through a variety of means, including airstrikes that killed civilians, the use of chemical weapons and the Russian-aided bombing of hospitals. As foreign actors poured fuel on the fire, the tactics of some opposition groups also grew more brutal.

In his 2021 interview with Smith, Jolani claimed there was common ground between the U.S. and his group, which had been fighting against Assad, Assad’s Russian and Iranian allies, ISIS and Jolani’s own former allies in Al Qaeda.

“First and foremost, this region does not represent a threat to the security of Europe and America,” Jolani told Smith. “This region is not a staging ground for executing foreign jihad.”

As he investigated whether Jolani could be trusted, Smith also tracked down and interviewed Jolani’s critics and victims. Jolani’s group and its earlier incarnations stand accused of human rights violations, including indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, torture and arbitrary arrests of civilians. Jolani denied to Smith that he had imprisoned and tortured his critics.

Read more: Syrian Militant and Former Al Qaeda Leader Seeks Wider Acceptance in First Interview With U.S. Journalist

“There is torture, and it’s brutal torture, and there are barbaric methods being used by these terrorists,” a man whose brother was imprisoned and executed after criticizing HTS on social media told Smith.

But Smith found that some U.S. experts and veteran diplomats in the region credited Jolani with establishing a semblance of stability in Idlib province and acting as a buffer against forces hostile to the United States. James Jeffrey, a top diplomat in the region during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, indicated at the time that it might be wise to work with Jolani.

“Look, he’s the least bad option of the various options on Idlib, which is one of the most important places in Syria, which is one of the most important places right now in the Middle East,” Jeffrey told Smith in the documentary.

“I came to this story fully aware of the controversy it would generate. I would be speaking to a designated terrorist,” Smith said in the documentary. “But after 20 years of covering the region, I thought this was an important opportunity.”

For the full story, watch The Jihadist in the article above, in the PBS App or on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel. FRONTLINE has been covering the war in Syria since it began in 2011, tracing its origins and evolution, its impact on the country’s people, and how the U.S. has responded. Find our full coverage here.