{"id":307518,"date":"2025-11-17T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=307518"},"modified":"2025-11-14T08:15:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T08:15:51","slug":"al-qaeda-goes-to-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/11\/al-qaeda-goes-to-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"Al-Qaeda Goes to Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Portion of a poster by the U.S. State Department\u2019s Rewards for Justice program, 2017. (Rewards for Justice \/ Wikimedia Commons\/ CC0)<\/p><\/div>\n

Al\u2013Sharaa\u2019s White House visit is a reminder of Washington\u2019s longstanding abhorrence of democratic processes and anyone \u2014 beyond the perimeter of the West and sometimes within it \u2014 who stands for them. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

11 Nov 2025\u00a0<\/em>– I never thought I would see the day, but the day came yesterday, when Ahmed al\u2013Sharaa arrived at the White House for a sit-down with President Donald Trump and the usual gaggle of misfits who must be there to make sure the Trumpster understands at least a little of what is being said.<\/p>\n

A freak-show terrorist amid all that retro Oval Office elegance: Who could have imagined so offensive a tableau?<\/p>\n

Al\u2013Sharaa, alert readers will know, is one of those dripping-with-blood Sunni jihadists who, during the West\u2019s extended covert operation against the Assad regime in Syria, had the habit of changing their names and the names of their murderous militias whenever the world figured out who they were and the extent of their savagery.<\/p>\n

Al\u2013Sharaa was known back then as Abu Muhammad al\u2013Jolani, the surname translating as \u201cHe of the Golan.\u201d Past beneficiary of C.I.A.\u2013MI6 profligacy during those years when American and British intel financed, armed and trained primitive killers of al\u2013Sharaa\u2019s kind, he is now the president of Syria \u2014 the result of a final Anglo-American push that put him in Damascus a year ago next month.<\/p>\n

Al\u2013Sharaa\u2013al\u2013Jolani began his brilliant career in 2003, when, at 21, he joined al\u2013Qaeda in Iraq to fight against the American occupation (which, one has to say, was a creditable thing to do in and of itself). Then he hooked up with the Islamic State, via the infamous Abu Bakr al\u2013Baghdadi, to get the Sunni barbarism going back in his native Syria.<\/p>\n

After the C.I.A. and MI6 turned \u201cArab Spring\u201d protests in Syria into a bloody armed conflict in 2011 (early 2012 at the latest), al\u2013Jolani (as he was by this time) helped form Jabhat al\u2013Nusra, al\u2013Qaeda\u2019s front organization in Syria.<\/p>\n

But by 2017 al\u2013Nusra was getting an other-than-brilliant press, and al\u2013Jolani changed its name to Hay`at Tahrir al\u2013Sham, HTS, via a merger with\u2026 let\u2019s see\u2026 by my count, six other not very nice Salafist militias.<\/p>\n

HTS was designated a year later as a terrorist organization by the United States and the U.N.; al\u2013Jolani, with the same designation, had a $10 million price on his head.<\/p>\n

The world is run in secrecy, I long ago concluded. And it is hard to tell when the invisible powers that determine global events decided to buy al\u2013Jolani some suits, tell him to change his name back to what it was and make him legit.<\/p>\n

Rehab Operation<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first clocked that some kind of rehab operation was afoot when, in April 2021, PBS broadcast the first interview with al\u2013Jolani<\/a> ever to appear in a Western medium. In it, the specially designated terrorist in a blue blazer and a buttoned-down shirt promised to found a \u201csalvation government\u201d in Syria. Martin Smith, a correspondent with a good reputation (at least until April 2021) nods credulously.<\/p>\n

Three years and change later, al\u2013Jolani leads his expensively armed forces in a lightning march toward Damascus, backed, as it was all along, by the Western powers, this time by the Turks and probably but not demonstrably the Israelis.<\/p>\n

HTS had not even got to Damascus before you read of how terrific it was all going to be. Headline in the Dec. 3 editions of The Telegraph<\/i><\/a>: \u201cHow Syria\u2019s \u2018diversity-friendly\u2019 jihadists plan on building a state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sectarian violence for which al\u2013Sharaa has lived and breathed all these years has not stopped since he declared himself president for the next five years \u2014 violence against the Druze, violence against Christians, violence against Alawites.<\/p>\n

The place is a riot of Sunni-driven brutality, so far as one can make out from the spotty reporting. Some of this is reportedly the work of foreign Salafists who have continued to operate \u2014 under al\u2013Sharaa\u2019s direction? with his tacit approval? \u2014 since the Assad regime fell.<\/p>\n

The American edition of The Spectator<\/i> ran an interesting piece in its Monday edition<\/a> by Theo Padnos, who spent a year as a prisoner of HTS, under the headline, \u201cThe jihadist I knew: my life as al\u2013Sharaa\u2019s prisoner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is Padnos\u2019s lead:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Washington rolls out the red carpet today for the former al\u2013Qaeda chieftain and now Syrian president, Ahmed al\u2013Sharaa, Syria\u2019s minorities continue to live in terror. An army of destruction, half Mad Max<\/i>, half Lollapalooza is rolling through the desert somewhere south of the country\u2019s capital, Damascus.<\/p>\n

Who has ordered these militants into action? No one knows. What do they want? It isn\u2019t clear. But, as a former prisoner of al\u2013Sharaa\u2019s band of jihadists, I can\u2019t say I\u2019m surprised by what is unfolding in Syria.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Al-Sharaa at the U.N. General Assembly in September. (UN Photo\/Manuel El\u00edas)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

You don\u2019t read much about what is unfolding in Syria in the mainstream American press. Instead, you read about \u201cMr. Sharaa\u2019s journey from a jihadist intent on killing American soldiers to today\u2019s suave, impeccably dressed, conciliatory leader wooing nations across the globe\u201d \u2014 this from Roger Cohen in Monday\u2019s New York Times<\/i><\/a> under the headline, \u201cA Syrian Village and the Long Road to the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slather on the uplift, Roger.<\/p>\n

Or, from Christina Goldbaum in the same paper, same day<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. al\u2013Sharaa\u2019s meeting in Washington is the latest turn in the transformation of the Islamist former rebel leader, who was once designated as a terrorist by the United States with a $10 million bounty on his head.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Suave? Conciliatory? Impeccably dressed? No, no, and those suits look like cheap schmatta<\/i> to me. The latest turn in the transformation?<\/p>\n

You see what is happening here, I hope. Just take this criminal as the powers behind him present him and think no more about what was on that long road, or the beheadings, or who financed the journey.<\/p>\n

Ms. Goldbaum informs us that al\u2013Sharaa went to Washington this week \u201cto sign an agreement to join 88 other countries in the global coalition to defeat the Islamic State, which remains active in Syria.\u201d Say whaaa?<\/p>\n

Al\u2013Sharaa, no stranger to the Islamic State, was sanctioned as a terrorist until the Treasury Department removed him<\/a> last Friday; Syria is still designated a state sponsor of terrorism. And al\u2013Sharaa is in the Oval Office for some kind of enlistment ceremony?<\/p>\n

Age of Comprehensive Secrecy\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In our Age of Comprehensive Secrecy we may never know why Trump and his people had al\u2013Sharaa into the Oval Office. My surmise: At issue Monday was how al\u2013Sharaa is to manage \u2014 how he will be told to manage \u2014 his relations with Israel, given the Zionist state\u2019s objective is to reduce what is still formally called the Syrian Arab Republic to a smashed mosaic mess as it proceeds with its \u201cseven-front war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Al\u2013Sharaa is, in short, now a fully certified instrument of the imperium and its appendages. He is to serve an assigned purpose.<\/p>\n