(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) The US is asking the UN Security Council to lift sanctions on Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda leader, and other members of his government, before he visits the White House next week, The Associated Press has reported.
Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, was first sanctioned by the UN in 2013 for his association with al-Qaeda. The UN listing notes that, at the time, Sharaa was an associate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda leader who was known for helping Osama bin Laden plot the 9/11 attacks, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS.
The UN listing says that Sharaa was deputized by Baghdadi to lead Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate, known at the time as the Al Nusra Front, and his position as the leader of the al-Qaeda group was confirmed by Zawahiri. Sharaa got his start with al-Qaeda in Iraq, where he fought against US troops and was imprisoned from 2006 to 2011 before traveling to Syria.
In 2016, Sharaa claimed the al-Nusra Front was cutting ties with al-Qaeda and thanked the “commanders of al-Qaeda for having understood the need to break ties.” In 2017, he merged his group with several other Islamist factions to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that marched into Damascus in December 2024, ousting former President Bashar al-Assad.
HTS was previously designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization, but it has been removed since the regime change. The group remains listed as a terrorist organization by the UN.
According to The National, the US’s resolution for the UN Security Council initially called for HTS to be removed from the list of terrorist organizations, but China objected due to HTS’s ties with Uyghur fighters in Syria who seek to establish an Islamic State in China’s Xinjiang province. The resolution has since been narrowed to lift sanctions on Sharaa and his interior minister, Anas Hasan Khattab.
Sharaa is expected to visit the White House on Monday, making him the first Syrian president to do so since the country gained independence in 1946. Sharaa met with President Trump in Saudi Arabia in May and on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York City in September.
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
