BREAKING: Syria's ex-Al Qaeda leader gets U.S. sanctions relief ahead of visit to Washington
The move is a stark policy reversal from the U.S. government, which once put a $10 million bounty on Abu Mohammad al-Jolani's head.
The U.S. government dropped sanctions Friday against Syria’s leader and former Al-Qaeda member Abu Mohammad al-Jolani ahead of his visit with President Trump in Washington.
The move comes hours after the United Nations Security Council removed its own sanctions on al-Jolani through a resolution drafted by the United States.
The decision to drop sanctions by Washington marks one of the starkest foreign policy reversals in recent months. Not too long ago the U.S. government was promising $10 million to whoever could kill al-Jolani.
Much of the change of heart comes from al-Jolani’s own evolution.
The 43-year-old came to power this year as a somewhat moderate figure after his forces toppled Bashar al-Assad, the longtime dictator in Damascus whose fall concluded a bloody 14-year civil war that left the country largely in ruins.
But al-Jolani, whose birth name is Ahmed al-Sharaa, had once fought against practical moderation he now embraces.
In his younger years, he developed a close relationship with the now-deceased leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who hand-picked al-Jolani to establish an Al-Qaeda footprint in Syria.
He later denounced the group in 2017, choosing instead to form a coalition—called HTS—focused on removing Assad from power. HTS, however, was declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. government until this July, when that designation was removed.
Now, with economic sanctions gone too, al-Jolani has won the very thing he left Al-Qaeda to establish: legitimacy on the world stage.