Ahmed al-Sharaa

Biography

Ahmed al-Sharaa was born in Riyadh in 1982 to a Syrian family from the Golan Heights and grew up in Damascus, where he studied at Damascus University. Shortly before the 2003 American invasion of Iraq he joined al-Qaeda in Iraq and fought in the insurgency. Captured by US forces in 2005, he spent six years in detention, including at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, and was released in March 2011 as the Syrian uprising began.

With al-Qaeda's backing he became the emir of the al-Nusra Front, announced in January 2012, using the name Abu Mohammad al-Julani. He built a base in Idlib Governorate, and his forces committed abuses against civilians. He refused Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's attempt to fold al-Nusra into the Islamic State, which led to open war between the two groups. In 2016 he cut ties with al-Qaeda and renamed his group, and in 2017 merged it with other factions to form Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which set up the Syrian Salvation Government to run its territory.

In November 2024 he launched an offensive that within days took Damascus and drove Bashar al-Assad into exile. He led the caretaker administration from 8 December 2024 and was named president at the Syrian Revolution Victory Conference on 29 January 2025. He signed a constitutional declaration setting a five-year transition, oversaw a parliamentary election in October 2025 and later brought the Kurdish-led SDF into the state, while massacres of Alawites and clashes with Druze involving government-aligned forces marked his first year.