A militant’s transformation
Years before Ahmed al-Sharaa became president of Syria, he was the commander of a jihadist rebel group allied with Al Qaeda. He dispatched suicide bombers to blow up military posts and pledged to create an Islamic state.
Today al-Sharaa wears suits, matches the color of his ties to the flags of the countries he visits, and is welcomed at the White House.
It’s a staggering evolution. But al-Sharaa is not the only person with a “strong past,” as President Trump once put it, to find himself suddenly walking the halls of power. And the stories of leaders who left their own strong pasts behind can tell us something about what led al-Sharaa to this point, and whether he might be able to transform Syria, too.
A means to an end
I spoke to Véronique Dudouet, a researcher who studies conflict transformation. One thing she underscored was that much about al-Sharaa’s circumstances is unique.
Al-Sharaa came to power through a military takeover, not the years of negotiated settlements that often end conflicts. In that sense, the speed of his role change has been especially striking. He’s also leading a society that faces a particularly complex set of challenges: Syria is emerging from full-blown war, and faces a multitude of sectarian divisions.
Still, in our conversation, we talked about some examples that might nonetheless offer some lessons. One was Martin McGuinness, the former I.R.A. member who eventually became deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. Another was Nelson Mandela, who participated in armed struggle against the apartheid regime.
To compare al-Sharaa to Mandela, a global icon for justice, might feel jarring. But what they share, Dudouet noted, is the kind of pragmatism that helps lead societies out of conflict toward normal politics. Mandela and McGuinness saw armed struggle as a means to an end and knew when to let it go, Dudouet said. We’ve seen signs that al-Sharaa does too.
I spoke to Jerome Drevon at the International Crisis Group, who has interviewed al-Sharaa multiple times over the past decade. Drevon told me that while al-Sharaa remains an Islamist, he cut ties with the Islamic State in 2014 and Al Qaeda in 2016 because their extremism and violence were hurting his cause. Many Syrians found them terrifying.
When he took control of the northwestern region of Idlib in Syria, he created a religious police force — then got rid of it when the population pushed back. He’s also dialed back on imposing a strict vision of Islamic law, particularly when it comes to physical punishment.
Uniting a divided country requires compromise. And compromise requires leaders who avoid getting entrenched in immovable ideological positions.
The importance of credibility
Negotiating with your opponents is only one part of transitioning away from conflict. The harder part is often negotiating with your own supporters about how to give ground, Dudouet said. Leaders need another quality for those discussions: credibility.
Dudouet said one thing many of the leaders who’ve walked similar paths share is prison time. McGuinness was imprisoned twice. Mandela spent 27 years in prison.
Prison time is time to reflect and read. It also signals a readiness to sacrifice personal freedom for the cause, Dudouet said. That credibility is what helped Mandela start the conversations that would lead to the end of apartheid against the will of his base.
Al-Sharaa also spent time in prison in Iraq for his jihadist activities. But perhaps the main source of his credibility is being the man who overthrew Bashar al-Assad.
This matters. He’s already made moves that aren’t popular with all his supporters. He’s courted Western countries and struck a measured tone on Israel, in order to secure vital international support for Syria.
He has, however, also had to deal with incidents of sectarian violence, including one over the weekend, involving government forces — an early sign perhaps, that one of his biggest challenges in postwar Syria might come from those with whom he once shared a worldview.
A changing region
But the success or failure of al-Sharaa’s ongoing transformation — and Syria’s — doesn’t just hinge on personal characteristics. External circumstances are important too.
The collapse of apartheid in South Africa coincided with the end of the Cold War, when the West lost interest in supporting the regime. The Good Friday Agreement was aided by the process of E.U. integration, which helped Britain and Ireland see each other as partners.
Al-Sharaa has taken charge of Syria during a moment of enormous change in the Middle East. The region’s power dynamics are evolving fast. (The decline of the Iranian power that supported Assad is part of how al-Sharaa became president in the first place.)
We don’t yet know if this will help or hinder his efforts to forge a new Syria, a task so challenging it’s hard to imagine the person who could pull it off. Perhaps, though, al-Sharaa has a better chance than most.
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