Jolani has learnt from history

The victorious Syrian rebel leader now in control of Damascus has already learned a key lesson in history. After his forces swept into the capital, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, head of the Islamic militant group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), might have been expected to lay waste to all the institutions which had helped to keep the repressive Assad dynasty in power for 53 years, but instead he chose pragmatism. He announced he would do business with the Syrian government and wanted civil service staff to stay in their jobs to keep the country functioning.

This doesn’t make al-Jolani or Ahmed al-Sharaa as he now wants to be called (his real name rather than his nom de guerre), a Kissinger-style diplomat whom the world can embrace as a long-awaited saviour. However, he only had to look back 21 years to see what the Americans did when the US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein from power in 2003, to know what to avoid at all costs.

Against the advice of the CIA and the US military who warned of dire consequences, the so-called ‘viceroy’ of Iraq, Paul Bremer, a Pentagon official delegated by then-president George W.