Do Not Incline Toward the Oppressors

Dr. Hassan Issa Al-Talib

The US is, as it seems, attempting to use Mohammed Al-Joulani (whose official name is now Ahmad Al-Shar’a) as a key witness to advance its regional strategic agenda, including reshaping the “New Middle East” map. This agenda aligns with a premeditated geostrategic vision aimed at sidelining Russia from the Mediterranean, pushing its ally Iran out of Syria and Lebanon, assigning Turkey to lead the New Middle East, and fostering conditions for establishing friendly political regimes modelled after the Turkish system. Such regimes would emphasise peaceful power transitions, pluralistic democracy, cooperation on counter-terrorism, and normalisation of diplomatic relations with Israel.

The US’s relationship with Al-Joulani is controversial. He was arrested in 2003 while fighting alongside the Iraqi resistance against the US invasion. After his release, he joined Jabhat Al-Nusra in 2011 under the leadership of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who appointed him as emir of Syria under the framework of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). The US subsequently designated him as a terrorist and placed a $10 million on his head.

However, Al-Joulani later fell out with Al-Qaeda and Al-Baghdadi. In 2016, he formed Jabhat Fath Al-Sham, and in 2017, he announced the creation of Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (Levant Liberation Board). During this period, he publicly declared to the American press that “it is not permissible, according to Sharia, to attack Americans or Europeans who are non-Muslims.”

Americans are pragmatists when it comes to public policy and national security. They are willing to collaborate with adversaries when necessary, including drug lords, hardened criminals, and even nation-leaders. The US intelligence apparatus often works under secret protocols developed outside the courts and coordinates with prosecutors to turn dangerous defendants into assets against their own networks for intelligence gathering and dismantling operations.

Unfortunately, many of these collaborators meet grim fates—either through assassination or life imprisonment—unless they successfully disappear at the right moment. Historical examples include Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, detainees from Guantanamo Bay, and Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian president who worked as a CIA asset before his regime was toppled in the 1989 US invasion. He was later imprisoned in Florida and then France.

Some analysts extend this cautionary tale to figures like Dr John Garang De Mabior, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Garang had expressed his preference for Sudanese unity over secession, even after the 2005 Naivasha Agreement, witnessed and signed by then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Garang’s sudden death in a helicopter crash under mysterious circumstances in 2005 sparked widespread speculation. Similar theories surround the 1988 death of Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, whose plane also crashed under unclear conditions.

These incidents reinforce a well-known adage that warns against aligning with oppressors:

“Whoever aids an oppressor, God will empower that oppressor over him.”

The Almighty warns believers about the dire consequences of collaborating or aligning with the oppressors:

“And do not incline toward those who oppress, lest the Fire touch you.”

(Holy Quran, 11:113)