Mick Hartley

Joan Smith casts a jaundiced eye over western media's propensity to emphasise the positive with the new Syrian leader:

Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, understands the symbolism of clothes. For his interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) abandoned his customary military fatigues in favour of a smart overcoat and open-necked shirt. His appearance sent a powerful message to Western leaders, who have it in their power to lift sanctions, that he is no longer an extremist.

It’s striking, however, that he continues to evade questions about dress codes for Syrian women, many of whom are anxious about the prospect of HTS forcing them to cover their heads.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s imposition of a strict religious dress code was a sign of much worse to come. If HTS really wanted to signal a break with its Islamist past, it could rule out compulsory hijab in Syria not just for now, while the world is watching, but in the future.

Its behaviour towards women will be the litmus test of whether Sharaa’s bland assurances about a secular state are genuine, yet Western reporters seem reluctant to press him. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the world’s media is so desperate for a positive outcome in Syria that they’re too quick to discount the possibility that the country will become another Afghanistan.

The signs are not good.

Just two years ago, a report described HTS’s “restriction of religious freedom” in Idlib as “deeply burdensome, especially for women and girls”. It said that schools set up by the organisation enforce segregation by sex and allow little room for dissent from a jihadist version of Islam. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom reported that HTS had given orders to ban married female students, including girls subjected to forced marriage, from attending public schools and universities.

This is Taliban-like behaviour, reinforcing the need for follow-up questions when the group’s leaders make sweeping statements about their attitude towards women’s education. Instead, they are met with a surprising degree of naïveté or, worse, an assumption that the status of women matters less in Syria than security and financial stability. But the idea that the country might one day look like Afghanistan isn’t far-fetched.

HTS emerged from an Islamist militia, the al-Nusra Front, which was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria until 2016. Sharaa had a long association with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of Isis, which notoriously abducted and trafficked women, including thousands of Yazidis. Baghdadi himself repeatedly raped an American hostage, Kayla Mueller, who was killed in Syria in 2015. This is a history few Western reporters raise as they marvel at HTS’s rapid advance in Syria and Sharaa’s supposed conversion to secular politics….

Scenes of celebration in the streets of Damascus after the ignominious flight of Bashar al-Assad were moving to watch, but they also filled me with trepidation. They reminded me of Tehran after the removal of the Shah, when a popular revolution was hijacked by mullahs who rule Iran to this day with their pitiless brand of misogyny. Instead of romanticising Syria’s new leader, Western correspondents have a duty to ask searching questions. Sending sceptical female journalists to interview him, instead of jovial male interrogators, would be a start.

It's all part of the carefully honed "moderate jihad" approach. There are very good reasons to have concerns about the direction Syria may be taking.