The West’s rehabilitation of former Al-Qaeda* figures like Abu Mohammed al-Jolani reflects a longstanding US strategy of weaponizing extremist groups for geopolitical aims, now directed increasingly against Russia, China, and their partners.

Al-Jonali’s rebranding follows that of the terrorist organization he nominally heads, most recently referred to as “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” (HTS*) but previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra, a notorious terrorist organization heading the US-engineered proxy war against the government, military, and people of the now decimated and divided Syrian Arab Republic.

Side-by-side with the likewise US-sponsored “Islamic State” (ISIS*), HTS openly documented its war crimes spanning the 2011-2024 period the US proxy war unfolded.

By 2025, however, like al-Jolani himself, the terrorist organization he headed previously featured on the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations was inexplicably removed.

The Washington Post, in its recent article, “Syrian president meets with Trump in White House after unlikely ascent,” depicts the rise of al-Jolani as “improbable,” noting his journey from “al-Qaeda* to the West Wing.” 

As in the Past, So Too in the Present… 

Short memories are shocked by recent developments, but considering the trajectory of another infamous al-Qaeda* leader, Osama Bin Laden, recent developments seem as natural as the sun rising and setting daily.

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In 2013, Business Insider published an article reflecting this trajectory. Titled, “This Mind-Boggling Profile Of Osama Bin Laden Came Out Exactly 20 Years Ago Today,” it would exclaim:

This article from Dec. 6, 1993, by Robert Fisk of The Independent with the title “Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace” is stunning to consider 20 years later. 

Osama bin Laden, fresh off the US-backed mujahedin’s victory over Russia in 1989, flew his men, materials, and money down to Sudan, ostensibly to start public works projects.

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It then notes:

The piece is fascinating because it is a positive profile of a man who would become a global terrorist mastermind.

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Al-Jolani’s career mirrors that of Osama Bin Laden. Just as a mirrored reflection shows a similar but reverse reflection, al-Jonali has gone from a “terrorist mastermind” with a 10 million USD bounty on his head, which the US only recently withdrew, to an open ally in America’s continued war for primacy over the Middle East and beyond.

Just as Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda* were originally created and sponsored by the United States government to wage proxy war against its designated adversaries, including the Soviet Union (later, against the Russian Federation), China (particularly in Xinjiang), and their partners, al-Jolani and al-Qaeda* today (along with ISIS*and other extremist organizations) have been and will continue to be used to wage proxy war or serve as a pretext for actual war against Russia, China, and other nations investing in a multipolar future.

Bigger Picture: Syria as an Epicenter for Exporting US-Sponsored Terrorism  

It is abundantly clear the US will continue backing al-Jolani and the terrorist network now posing as Syria’s new “armed forces”— not to defend Syria but to continue the fight against US-targeted nations and organizations across the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, and even Iran itself.

The US will also seek to export Syrian-based extremism far beyond the region, including all along Russia’s and especially China’s peripheries.

Among al-Jolani’s extremist forces is the so-called “Turkestan Islamic Party” (TIP), also known as the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM).

TIP/ETIM was disingenuously removed from the US Foreign Terrorist Organizations list in 2020 specifically to provide it with wider and more overt support.

DW, in its article titled, “US removes China-condemned group from terror list,” would claim TIP/ETIM was removed as a terrorist organization by the US government “because  for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist.”

This, however, is untrue. The US Department of Defense (now “Department of War”) admitted to having carried out airstrikes against the group in Afghanistan only 2 years prior to its delisting, NBC News would report. This is just one of many instances of US narratives and who it designates as “terrorists” changing based solely on what advances US foreign policy, not any sort of actual metric based on national or international security.

Now, the organization the US government claims no longer exists, is in Syria and constitutes an entire military unit alongside al-Jolani’s HTS*, having aided in the overthrow of the Syrian government late last year. Since then, it has announced ambitions to expand its operations far beyond Syria.

The London Telegraph, in a December 13, 2024 article titled, “Uyghur fighters in Syria vow to come for China next,” claims “a Uyghur militant group that helped to topple Bashar-al Assad has vowed to take the fight to China.”

The ability to do so — “take the fight to China”— is only possible with continued US government backing, including training, weapons, and logistics via regional proxies including Turkey, who prepared and incorporated the militants in the invasion force that toppled Syria’s government in the first place.

The US is also clearly rehabilitating the terrorist organization, its HTS*partners, and HTS’ leader, al-Jolani himself — both enabling greater, more open support from the US for these terrorist attacks and enabling the US to condemn any measures China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partners attempt to take to stop it.

Short of fighting in China itself, the Telegraph, in an accompanying video would note, “can TIP take the fight to China, home to the world’s largest military with 2 million active troops? It’s easier said than done. Still, TIP could target Chinese projects or embassies abroad.” 

This fits into an already ongoing US-sponsored campaign of targeting Chinese BRI projects across Eurasia, including in Baluchistan, Pakistan, and Myanmar.

An army of well-trained, well-armed, experienced terrorists fresh from the battlefield in Syria and now being recognized and more openly backed by the US directly, are poised to significantly escalate what is already a US war on China by proxy along the length of Beijing’s BRI and ultimately aimed at China itself.

This in turn fits into a long-standing US global policy of eliminating all rivals through persuasion, coercion, sanctions, US-sponsored sedition, terrorism, and military confrontation – by proxy and directly.

The fall of Syria and other nations like it contributes toward a more dangerous world where larger and more stable nations may be targeted, undermined, and toppled next.

Going Beyond Counter-Terrorism to Preempt US Aggression 

Among the most effective and so far unanswered weapons the United States government wields is its dominion over global information space and its global-spanning network of political interference and capture, centered around the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and adjacent government- and corporate-funded foundations.

Russian and Chinese military and economic power continues to rise, and both nations have successfully protected their respective information spaces from US interference or capture. However, the US continues, unopposed, undermining nations along both Russia’s and China’s peripheries, politically capturing nations and transforming them into political and even military battering rams against both targeted nations.

Syria’s collapse in the first place began through a decades-spanning process of politically undermining Syria’s previous government and through the US-sponsored rise of opposition groups, including armed terrorist organizations, funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) up until the 1980s when the NED assumed many of the CIA’s regime change roles.

While China may have successfully uprooted US-sponsored extremism in Xinjiang, the US continues arming, backing, and promoting these same extremists out of China’s reach in recently decimated Syria and even closer to home in neighboring Pakistan and Myanmar.

Through Washington’s control over information space outside of China and the political capture and control this grants the US, these terrorists are being created, backed, and positioned inside targeted or captured nations and then presented as “freedom fighters” in much the same way the US has presented HTS* and, decades before, the “anti-Soviet warrior,” Osama Bin Laden.

Russia and China aid partner nations in the defense of their traditional national security domains – air, land, and sea – but have failed to export their own domestic success in securing a 21st-century national security domain – information space.

Should Russia and China succeed in doing this, Washington will be denied one of its last and most effective weapons used to sustain global hegemony, greatly reducing or even eliminating the US’ ability to build armies of global-spanning terrorists, upending peace and stability, and making multipolarism inevitable rather than a mere possibility.

*– Terrorist organizations banned in Russia

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

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