Via The Cradle
Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, previously known as the Al-Qaeda chief Abu Mohammad al-Julani, was selected as one of Time magazine’s yearly list of the 100 ‘most influential’ people.
Former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who played a role in and advocated for Washington’s regime change policies in the country, put forward Sharaa for the Time 100 list. “Last December, after years of building a powerful armed faction – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), classified internationally as a terrorist group – Ahmad al-Sharaa and his rebel alliance toppled Bashar Assad’s brutal government in Syria,” the write-up reads.
“Once aligned with Al-Qaeda and then ISIS, the soft-spoken Sharaa later fought both groups aggressively to ensure his fighters answered to him. More recently, he assembled alliances with other Syrian rebels, often at gunpoint, and secured Turkish support. He also established a religiously conservative statelet in northwest Syria that ruled effectively and reached out to reassure minority group – to beat Assad, the ambitious Sharaa understood he had to become a political leader as well as a military force,” Ford wrote.
He went…
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