Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa leads a country struggling to get back on its feet after decades of brutal dictatorship and a civil war that has devastated its population.
He led a rebel group that was central to the lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al Assad’s regime last year, and now finds himself on the world stage.
The meeting with President Donald Trump on Wednesday is a historic moment for Syria, and particularly interesting given that Mr al Sharaa was once labelled a terrorist by the US, with a $10m (£7.8m) bounty on his head due to his past.
He has spent years trying to distance himself from his former ties to al Qaeda, saying he has renounced his past as a hardline jihadi extremist and now embraces pluralism and tolerance.
Early years and pivot to jihad
Now 42, Mr al Sharaa was born in 1982 in Syria to a middle-class family displaced from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
His political views were reportedly shaped by the 2000 Palestinian Intifada and the 2001 September 11 attacks.
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, al Sharaa was one of many Syrians who crossed into Iraq to fight US forces, there establishing ties with al Qaeda.
He was detained by the US military in Iraq and spent time in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
In the early 2000s, the extremist Islamic State of Iraq – led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi – grew out of the remnants of al Qaeda.
Syria uprising
In 2011, a popular uprising in Syria sparked a brutal crackdown by regime forces – a conflict that deteriorated into more than a decade of civil war.
Mr al Sharaa was directed by al Baghdadi to establish a branch of al Qaeda called the Nusra Front. The new group was labelled a terrorist organisation by the US – a designation that remains in place.
His influence grew and he defied orders from al Baghdadi to dissolve his group and merge it with what had become the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
In his first interview in 2014, he kept his face covered and told a reporter that his goal was to see Syria governed under Islamic law and made clear that there was no room for the country’s Alawite, Shiite, Druze and Christian minorities.
In 2016 he revealed his face to the public for the first time and announced two things: his group was renaming itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham – the Syria Conquest Front – and it was cutting its ties with al Qaeda.
He was able to assert control over fragmented militant groups and consolidated power in Idlib. He again rebranded his group, calling it Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – Organisation for Liberating Syria – as it has been known since.
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A genuine transformation or an image change?
Few could have predicted what happened next. Secure in his position, Mr al Sharaa sought to transform his image. He swapped his military garb for a shirt and trousers.
What’s more, he appeared to renounce some tenets of hardline Islamic law and began calling for religious tolerance and pluralism.
“We don’t want the society to become hypocritical so that they pray when they see us and don’t once we leave,” he said, pointing to the example of Saudi Arabia, where social controls have been relaxed to a degree in recent years.
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He gave his first interview to an American journalist in 2021, wearing a blazer and with his short hair gelled back. He argued that his group posed no threat to the West and said sanctions against it were unjust.
“Yes, we have criticised Western policies,” he said. “But to wage a war against the United States or Europe from Syria, that’s not true. We didn’t say we wanted to fight.”
He added that his involvement with al Qaeda had ended, and that even in the past his group was “against carrying out operations outside of Syria”.
Fall of Assad – and a new Syria?
After decades of ruling Syria, the Assad regime fell in December, in large part because of Mr al Sharaa’s fighters and their astonishing lightning offensive that saw them sweep down to the Syrian capital from the north.
After entering Damascus as part of the victorious rebel column, he spoke in the city’s landmark Umayyad Mosque and declared the regime’s defeat as “a victory for the Islamic nation”.
Dr Burcu Ozcelik, a Middle East expert from the RUSI thinktank, said: “The real test will be how committed he is to govern via the democratic playbook, and not just borrow the vocabulary.”
Since then, an interim government led by Mr al Sharaa has been set up to run Syria.
While Syrians have been jubilant at the fall of Assad, the new transitional government has had its difficulties, with violent sectarian clashes as well as the continued threat of Israeli strikes.
Mr al Sharaa is now seen in a suit and tie rather than combat fatigues and has taken up a role on the diplomatic stage, representing Syria in the region and beyond.
In his meeting with Mr Trump, the US leader told him he has a tremendous opportunity to do something historic in his country.
Mr Trump had a list of five demands for him:
– Sign onto the Abraham Accords with Israel
– Tell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria
– Deport Palestinian terrorists
– Help the US to prevent the resurgence of ISIS
– Assume responsibility for ISIS detention centres in Northeast Syria
