Ahmed Hussein al-Shar'a (1982-), also known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani and Osama al-Absi al-Wahdi, was the emir of the al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in Syria) from 23 January 2012 to 28 July 2016, the leader of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham from 28 July 2016 to 28 January 2017, and the military commander of Tahrir al-Sham from 28 January 2017. al-Julani was a veteran of the Iraq War and a high-ranking al-Qaeda in Iraq leader before the Syrian Civil War, which allowed him to form the Islamist al-Nusra Front, one of the most powerful Syrian Opposition groups. While the group was very successful in 2013-2015, the group had many setbacks after the Russian Air Force began to help the Syrian Arab Army in counterattacks, and he was forced to separate his group from al-Qaeda in July 2016 in order to make it possible to receive aid from the West and the Middle East.
Biography[]
al-Julani in 2006 at Camp Bucca
Ahmed Hussein al-Shar'a was born in 1974/1981 in Daraa, Daraa Governorate, Syrian Arab Republic to a family of Sunni Muslim Syrians that hailed from Idlib Governorate. He entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Damascus, but in 2003 he left Syria to fight in the Iraq War as a member of al-Qaeda. In 2004 he joined al-Qaeda in Iraq, and rose to be a close associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and after Abu Musab's assassination in 2006 by the USAF in an airstrike near Baqubah, Osama headed to Lebanon to help train Jund al-Sham. He later returned to Iraq, but he was arrested and held at Camp Bucca by the US Army. He taught the other prisoners how to speak in Classical Arabic, and he was later released. In 2008 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State of Iraq's leader, made him the shadow governor of Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq.
al-Nusra Front leader[]
Julani in camouflage
In January 2012, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi tasked him with forming an al-Qaeda branch in Syria during the Syrian Civil War, and he founded the al-Nusra Front, which became a major militant group. Under the nom de guerre of "Abu Muhammad al-Julani" (meaning the "father of Muhammad from the Golan Heights"), he led al-Nusra into prominence, and in April 2013 he split from the newly-declared Islamic State of Iraq and Syria when he pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda's emir Ayman al-Zawahiri, and his group was strictly loyal to Zawahiri. al-Julani had an anti-Western stance, asking for his allied groups not to accept US assistance against the Syrian Arab Republic, but he stated that he had no intention of attacking Western interests because of his mission to fight Syria, Hezbollah, and ISIS, and stated that after the civil war, he wanted to create an Islamic state. In October 2015, he called for attacks on the homes of Alawites, and he remained committed to jihad.
Julani in 2021
However, the many setbacks for al-Nusra and the lack of international support led to separation from al-Qaeda being seriously considered, and on 28 July 2016 al-Julani appeared in a video that stated that the al-Nusra Front had been dissolved and replaced by Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. The group had no international affiliation, and its only goal was to create a state ruled by sharia through jihad. The separation was not due to ideological differences, but only as a way to garner support from the West and the Middle East. In January 2017, the weakened JFS group joined the Tahrir al-Sham alliance, and al-Julani became its military chief. By 2021, Julani was the most powerful anti-Assad warlord, and he attempted to rebrand his image, distancing himself from Al-Qaeda; while he remained a designated terrorist in the eyes of the US and the UN, some American officials saw him as a potential ally as the “least bad” option in Idlib.