Soon after the fall of Aleppo last week, rumors began to circulate that the longtime head of Syrian Al-Qaeda (now called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS) Abu Mohammad al-Julani, was killed in a Russian retaliatory airstrike in Idlib. These claims made it into Lebanese and Israeli media, but with no verification.
But the rumors were laid to rest on Wednesday with Julani's unexpected appearance in the center of historic Aleppo. Al Jazeera featured footage (below) of the HTS leader descending the steps of the historic and iconic Aleppo citadel in what was clearly a 'victory' celebration.
The terror leader, who has a $10 million bounty on his head by the FBI and US Rewards for Justice program, is asserting ownership over the major northern Syrian city. His jihadist forces are currently threatening the central city of Hama as well.
According to the latest from the Associated Press, "Syrian insurgents captured four new towns early Tuesday, bringing them closer to the central city of Hama, opposition activists said, while government forces retook some territory they lost last week."
Large Syrian Army reinforcements have been observed heading north from Damascus over the last 24 hours. The HTS militants and AQ-aligned groups are less than six miles from Hama, and have threatened and taken adjacent towns on the edge of the city.
Julani is believed supported from Turkey, and likely by other allied Western nations' intelligence services as well, despite his Al-Qaeda background. Once known as the Nusra Front, which early in the Syrian war of the last decade cooperated at times with the Islamic State, the group now known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has long attempted a rebranding campaign.
HTS has gone through many names and iterations over the years while holding on to much of Idlib province bordering Turkey, even as much of the rest of Syria came back under the control of the Assad government.
Still, Washington has long admitted it is a terror organization. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that HTS remains "a terrorist organization designated by the United States" and expressed that the US has "real concerns about the designs and objectives of that organization." But he also admitted that the US will not "cry" over the pressure the Syrian government and its allies are facing from the successful offensive on Aleppo.
Meanwhile, just like in the opening years of the war, the US mainstream media is once again working overtime trying to whitewash Syria's Al Qaeda factions, presenting them as mere 'rebels' and 'revolutionaries'. The below is a real line from The Wall Street Journal this week:
Once affiliated with Islamic State and al Qaeda, Jawlani professes religious tolerance.
Likely there will much more such obvious propaganda efforts to come. But the supposedly 'tolerant' Julani is still on the FBI's 'most wanted' list, and no amount of obfuscation or Gulf think tank sponsored rebranding campaigns will change that.
Given that the terror chief just appeared out in the open, posing on top of the Aleppo Citadel, the CIA or US military likely could have taken him out with a drone... but they won't.