On Friday, the Biden Administration ended the $10 million bounty that had been placed on Ahmed al-Sharaa, a militant Islamist in charge of one of the rebel groups that ultimately overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
As reported by Fox News, the Biden Administration’s envoy to the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, talked to reporters about her meeting with al-Sharaa, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), saying that “we had a good, thoroughgoing discussion on a range of regional issues.”
“It was a policy decision…aligned with the fact that we are beginning a discussion with HTS,” Leaf continued. “So if I’m sitting with the HTS leader and having a lengthy detailed discussion about the interests of the US, interests of Syria, maybe interests of the region, it’s suffice to say a little incoherent then to have a bounty on the guy’s head.”
In exchange for lifting the bounty, Sharaa allegedly agreed to prevent terrorist groups in Syria from making threats against the U.S. and Syria’s neighbors in the region.
HTS was one of several groups that participated in a long march through the country, taking back virtually all of the nation’s territory before storming the capital city of Damascus on December 7th. With the city surrounded, Assad and his family fled on a private jet to Moscow, where they were granted asylum by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
HTS has emerged as one of the most powerful of the rebel groups since Assad’s fall. It was founded in 2016 as a breakaway group from Al-Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist organization responsible for the 9/11 attacks. It was previously affiliated with Nusrah Front, which was also designated a terrorist organization in 2012, before HTS itself was added to the list of terrorist groups in 2018.
Sharaa has claimed that he wants to expel the extremist elements of his organization, even saying that he supports womens’ rights in education.
“We’ve had universities in Idlib for more than eight years,” said Sharaa in an interview, referring to a territory that HTS has been in control of since 2011. “I think the percentage of women in universities is more than 60%.”
The future of Syria remains uncertain due to the wide variety of rebel groups involved in the overthrow of Assad, from HTS to U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, as well as Turkish-backed groups and the remnants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). President-elect Donald Trump has stated that he believes the United States should remain uninvolved in the coming regime change in Syria.
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