Ahmed al-Sharaa

Recent weeks have seen a political and military earthquake in Syria. Nearly 14 months after driving Bashar al Assad from Damascus, President Ahmad al-Sharaa is on the point of extending his transitional government’s complete control over the third of Syria east of the Euphrates. For all practical purposes, this will mean the end of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which had been the West’s allies against Isis. Time is being called on the semi-independent and self-declared autonomous Kurdish province of Rojava which has been created by the SDF during Syria’s civil war.

As Washington rolls out the red carpet today for the former al-Qaeda chieftain and now Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s minorities continue to live in terror. An army of destruction, half Mad Max, half Lollapalooza is rolling through the desert somewhere south of the country’s capital, Damascus. Who has ordered these militants into action? No one knows. What do they want? It isn’t clear. But, as a former prisoner of al-Sharaa’s band of jihadists, I can’t say I’m surprised by what is unfolding in Syria. Whatever else might be said about the old regime of Bashar al-Assad, no one was ever in doubt as to who was in charge.

Few career arcs in modern history can be as remarkable as that of Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa – or Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, to give him the nom de guerre under which he fought American troops in Iraq back when he was a firebrand member of al-Qaeda. Twenty years ago al-Sharaa was languishing in a US military prison in Baghdad, held on suspicion of terrorism. Today, as Syria’s new interim President, he shook hands with Donald Trump posing for photo-calls alongside the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman. Trump was evidently impressed by al-Sharaa, who has swapped the turban and dusty fatigues that he habitually wore before taking Damascus by storm last winter for a plain blue suit and purple tie. “He’s a young attractive guy.