From Al-Qaeda to leading the Syrian revolution: Who is Abu Mohammed al-Golani?

Words by ITV News Producer Jamel Smith
Rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who ousted President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria on Saturday, has a complex history with links to Al-Qaeda and the late ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Now, after renouncing ties with both militant terror groups, al-Golani has spent years working to remake his public image from being a jihadist to a bastion of pluralism and tolerance in Syria.
Even as he entered the Syrian capital of Damascus behind his rebel fighters on Sunday, he abandoned his former jihadist moniker and used his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
He also shed his hard-line Islamist attire and began wearing suits for press interviews.
His reinvention is aimed at boosting his legitimacy and that of his Islamist militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as it leads other rebel factions and positions itself as the country’s interim governing force.
In an interview with ITV News’ US partner CNN last week, al-Golani said: “Syria deserves a governing system that is institutional, not one where a single ruler makes arbitrary decisions,” possibly hinting that HTS may eventually dissolve.
“Don’t judge by words, but by actions,” he said.
The 42-year-old’s transformation will now be put to the test.
Beginnings in Iraq
al-Golani’s journey as a jihadist started in Iraq in 2003 when he joined insurgents battling US troops.
In 2005, al-Golani was imprisoned at Camp Bucca by the US, where he formed connections with what was then an offshoot of al-Qaeda, ISIS, which was formerly known as the al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria.
This is the place where he met and started to work under al-Baghdadi.
After the Iraq war, al-Baghdadi sent al-Golani to Syria to establish a branch of al-Qaeda called the Nusra Front during the 2011 Syrian uprising against Assad. The uprising triggered a brutal government crackdown, which eventually escalated into an all-out war.
The US then designated al-Golani and the Nusra Front as a terrorist organisation, a label that remains in place. The US government still offers a $10 million (£8.2 million) bounty for his capture.
Friend turned foe
As the Syrian civil war intensified in 2013, al-Golani’s relationship with al-Baghdadi began to falter.
He defied al-Baghdadi’s calls to dissolve the Nusra Front and merge it with al-Qaeda’s operations in Iraq to form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
His decision to defy al-Baghdadi was driven largely by his desire to distance himself from ISIS’s increasingly violent tactics.
To protect himself, al-Golani pledged his allegiance to al-Qaeda, which later disassociated itself from ISIS.
The Nusra Front then fought against ISIS, eliminating much of its competition within the Syrian armed opposition to Assad.
Consolidating power and rebranding
In 2016, al-Golani announced his group was renaming itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham – the Syria Conquest Front – and cutting its ties to al-Qaeda.
This paved the way for al-Golani to assert full control over fracturing militant groups.
A year later, his alliance rebranded again as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – meaning Organisation for Liberating Syria – as the groups merged, consolidating al-Golani’s power in northwest Syria’s Idlib province.
HTS later clashed with independent Islamist militants who opposed the merger, which further emboldened al-Golani and his group as the leading power in northwestern Syria.
al-Golani then began remaking the group’s and his own public image.
He began calling for religious tolerance and pluralism, and appealed to the Druze community in Idlib, which the Nusra Front had previously targeted, and visited the families of Kurds who were killed by Turkish-backed militias.
In 2021, he had his first interview with an American journalist on PBS, where he said his group posed no threat to the West and that sanctions imposed against it were unjust.
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