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A Jihadist at the Élysée Palace!

The new master of Damascus, Ahmed al-Charaa, alias Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, welcomed with honors at the Élysée Palace! On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Nazi surrender, Emmanuel Macron chooses to make Paris the first Western capital to embrace the former jihadist leader who seized power by force, following the flight of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
In an effort to appear “moderate,” the new Raïs abandons his war name (Abu Mohammad al-Joulani), removes his jihadist turban to don military fatigues—long enough to pose as the military leader of the “liberation” (Tahrir)—before trimming his beard in Muslim Brotherhood style and appearing in a suit and tie once he is inaugurated as “President of the Syrian Arab Republic.” His investiture came not through ballots, but through Bay’a—the oath of allegiance—given by the various armed factions that took part in the anti-Assad uprising, during a “Victory Congress” held in Damascus on January 29, 2025.
By receiving this controversial figure—while the jihadist militias of the organization that brought him to power (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) continue to commit abuses against Alawite, Kurdish, and Druze minorities—the Élysée is choosing to lend credibility to the fiction that after two decades of jihadist activism (in Zarqawi’s network, the Islamic State in Iraq, and al-Qaeda), al-Joulani has, in just six months of rule, transformed into a “moderate” politician, committed to democracy, pluralism, and… inclusion!
Laurent Fabius must be turning in his hospice bed—he who, as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2012, famously said that “Jabhat al-Nusra” (al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, founded and led by Syria’s current president) was “doing a good job”…
Who really is Ahmed al-Charaa, aka Abu Mohammad al-Joulani? Has he truly renounced jihadism? Will his presidency be the start of a pluralistic regime? Or is it merely the prelude to a new form of despotism, replacing Baathist authoritarianism with radical Islamism?
A seven-part portrait of a true chameleon, who has spent the past two decades constantly shifting both appearance and ideological allegiance…