The Media Line: ‘A Little Bit Amazing’: Former al-Qaida Leader Joins US in Fight Against ISIS

‘A Little Bit Amazing’: Former al-Qaida Leader Joins US in Fight Against ISIS

The White House’s outreach to Ahmed al-Sharaa has produced the first publicly acknowledged joint operation against ISIS and opened a new chapter in US engagement with Damascus

By Giorgia Valente / The Media Line

The first publicly acknowledged joint operation between US forces and Syria’s new government against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has formalized a strategic shift that, until now, was largely confined to diplomatic corridors.

In late November, US Central Command said American forces and units from Syria’s Ministry of Interior found and destroyed 15 ISIS weapons caches in the Rif Dimashq Governorate, the region that surrounds the capital. The operation followed Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa—a former jihadist leader—being received at the White House by US President Donald Trump less than a month earlier.

“It was a little bit amazing to see a former al-Qaida leader and jihadist running Syria, who, after visiting the White House, joined a cooperation with the Americans in targeting ISIS,” Prof. Joseph Young, director of the Patterson School at the University of Kentucky, told The Media Line.

For Washington, the move opens a path to work directly with Damascus on counterterrorism while seeking to limit Iran’s reach and manage tensions with Israel and Kurdish allies. It also introduces serious risks: potential internal clashes between al-Sharaa’s forces and the Kurds, pressure on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and questions about the discipline and intentions of Syria’s reconstituted security apparatus.

The shift began when the United States moved to lift sanctions on Syria and invited al-Sharaa to Washington, effectively recognizing his government after years in which Western states kept their distance.

Prof. Jean Marcou, emeritus professor at Sciences Po Grenoble, sees the sanctions decision as the turning point that made the White House meeting possible.

Marcou said that lifting US sanctions on Syria opened the way for a wave of international engagement and helped soften earlier Western reluctance about al-Sharaa’s background and regime. “But the visit to the US, and especially the reception by Donald Trump in the White House, was very important to confirm him in power,” he told The Media Line.

Inside Syria, the symbolism resonated beyond al-Sharaa’s political base.

“This has been perceived positively not only by al-Sharaasupporters, but also by a large part of Syrian public opinion, because they were proud that a Syrian was received in the White House,” Marcou added.

At the same time, the US quietly maintained a military presence in northern Syria throughout the transition.

Marcou added that the US has been entrenched in northern Syria for nearly a decade, backing Kurdish forces against ISIS and deploying special units in Rojava in a way that continues to shape regional power dynamics. “It is not a big intervention, but it is efficient and has an effect on the balance of powers in the region,” Marcou said.

The White House meeting capped a longer ideological shift by al-Sharaa himself—one that, in Young’s view, began during President Trump’s first term, when the Syrian leader distanced himself from a global jihadist agenda, focused more on internal governance, and sought to rein in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. “They haven’t been perfect, and there has been unfair treatment of minorities, but they haven’t proven to be as scary as ISIS or other global jihadists in the sense that their concerns are local and about governing Syria,” he said.

That evolution—from transnational jihad to domestic governance—helps explain why Washington now feels able to test al-Sharaaas a potential partner, even as doubts remain about his record and his control over the forces on the ground.

The recent joint anti-ISIS operation in southern Syria was, in military terms, modest. Analysts say its importance lies less in the scale of the strikes than in what it signals about the new relationship.

Ahmed Sharawi, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, described it as the first formal, public acknowledgment of US–Syrian cooperation.

“This is the first acknowledgment of US–Syrian cooperation in the counter-ISIS mission,” he told The Media Line.

He stressed that this was deliberately kept small in scope.

“This cooperation is quite soft; it is not really a large military operation. But it comes at a critical time, trying to showcase Syria’s intent in becoming a counterterrorism partner for the US. At the same time, more has to be done from their end in terms of counterterrorism, especially when we look at radical elements within the Syrian military and police forces.”

Behind the scenes, the joint operation is part of a broader test: what the US can obtain from Syria, and what it is prepared to offer in return.

On the counterterrorism front, Young said the goal is less about eliminating ISIS outright and more about limiting its ability to re-emerge.

He argued that while ISIS has lost much of its capacity to hold ground, its ideology and networks can still regenerate if left unchecked. “These strikes are about destroying weapons caches and trying to remove their capabilities to reconstitute and come back,” he said.

Young describes ISIS today as an ideology with residual networks rather than a conventional army.

“Getting rid of ISIS once and for all takes a long time, maybe a generation,” Young said. Right now, it is more of an idea than a physical fighting force. The goal should be to contain and restrict the expansion of these Salafi-jihadist movements and keep them inside their own countries, instead of allowing them to expand into the West and other parts of the world,” he added.

From Sharawi’s perspective, the political and regional dimension of the bargain is equally important. The US president has publicly linked Syria to his broader vision for expanding the Abraham Accords, even if both sides acknowledge that formal peace is distant.

Sharawi said Syria’s place in the president’s regional strategy is tied to the broader effort to expand Arab–Israeli normalization, even though Damascus is not ready for full diplomatic ties with Israel. “President Trump has voiced his wish for Syria to join the Abraham Accords, but al-Sharaa has denied any form of normalization or peace in the near future.” He added that, for now, both sides are focused on incremental steps such as security arrangements, with Washington hoping these can eventually create the basis for a more formal agreement.

“This is a country that has fought Israel in the past and has a territorial dispute with Israel. So they need to build that relationship first with coordination and cooperation against the common threat, which is Iran and its proxies—mainly Hezbollah, which continues to smuggle weapons into Lebanon through Syria,” he added.

According to regional diplomatic sources, President Trump has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale back recent operations inside Syria, particularly after strikes near Mount Hermon and in southern Syrian territory. The rationale, these sources say, is that aggressive Israeli action at this stage could push Damascus to lean more on Iran and Hezbollah at the very moment Washington is trying to pull it in the opposite direction.

Young, looking at Israel’s broader conduct since October 7, sees both risk and restraint.

He argued that Israel’s conduct since October 7 reflects both a willingness to use force widely and a pattern of keeping even heavy strikes within certain limits. “Israel has shown in the post-October 7 world to have very few boundaries over its war-making,” he said.

Damascus itself, Sharawi expects, will try to avoid direct participation in a future Israel–Hezbollah confrontation, more out of capacity constraints and public sentiment than formal alignment.

Sharawi said he expects Damascus to avoid being drawn directly into any future war between Israel and Hezbollah, both because many Syrians view Hezbollah as an enemy and because the state lacks the capacity to confront sprawling smuggling networks so soon after the change in power. “Syria will try to stay away from any conflict between Hezbollah and Israel,” he noted.

“They will crack down on whatever they can, but I don’t think they will crack down on a lot, again, because of capacity. If Israel’s goal is to prevent Hezbollah’s rearmament and we see a full-scale military campaign with the Syrian border closed, then chances for Hezbollah’s revival and regeneration become slimmer,” he added.

The new US–Syria relationship does not replace Washington’s Kurdish allies, but it does complicate their position. Kurdish-led forces, especially the SDF, have been central to the anti-ISIS campaign and remain the backbone of the US presence in northern and eastern Syria.

For Marcou, the Kurds are still one of Washington’s primary levers on the ground.

“The Kurds can permit the Americans to stay in the region, to have leverage. They are also in northern Kurdistan and Rojava. It is quite a cheap intervention, because they have only a few troops, but it permits them to be efficient in the region,” he said.

He noted that the US has actively tried to mediate between al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi, the SDF commander.

“The Americans were supporting the rapprochement between al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi. They were also playing a sort of role between these actors and Turkey. It is interesting to see what kind of balance is going to be established between the new Syrian regime, the Kurdish actors, the US and Turkey,” he noted.

Sharawi, meanwhile, focused on Washington’s attempt to avoid choosing outright between Damascus and the SDF.

He said Washington is trying to reconcile its support for Kurdish forces with pressure from regional powers that want closer ties with al-Sharaa’s government, even as it weighs the cost of abandoning a long-standing partner against ISIS. “The US can’t forget Syria; Syria is a vital country in the Middle East.” He argued that this is why US policymakers are reluctant to “throw the Kurds or the SDF under the bus” and instead are attempting a delicate balancing act.

“At the same time, the Syrian government is the actual government in Damascus. Working with it, bringing stability into Syria through that, will be essential for US interests as well. It might backfire, but that seems to be the most realistic approach right now,” he added.

A key piece of that balance is the March 10 agreement between al-Sharaa and Abdi, which is supposed to integrate Kurdish political and military structures into the new Syrian state.

“After Öcalan decided to dissolve the PKK, Mazloum Abdi, the leader of the Syrian Kurds, decided to sign an agreement with al-Sharaa on March 10,” Marcou explained.

Marcou said that the March 10 deal is meant to fold Kurdish institutions into the new order but has so far yielded little concrete change on the ground. “The core of that agreement is the integration of the Syrian Kurdish political and military forces into the new Syrian state.” He said that persistent fighting, repression of minorities, and deep mistrust between Kurdish leaders and the al-Sharaa regime have stalled meaningful implementation.

He stressed that this Syrian track is linked to a wider Kurdish peace process underway in Turkey.

“At the moment you have two Kurdish peace processes. The Turkish one, developed since last year, led to the dissolution of the PKK and to the setting up of a parliamentary commission supposed to propose reforms. At the same time, you have a Syrian peace process with al-Sharaa. Both have the same first deadline, the end of this year,” he said.

Recent developments around Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, together with a new statement from within PKK ranks, are viewed by Marcou as signs that the symbolic phase is ending.

Marcou said recent moves by Turkish lawmakers and Kurdish leaders, including outreach to imprisoned PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, suggest that both the Turkish and Syrian tracks are moving out of a purely symbolic phase. “We see that we are in a transition between goodwill declarations and concrete statements,” he noted, adding that the details of any promised reforms remain largely undisclosed.

A recent PKK statement, he noted, called for the Turkish state to move from symbolic measures to concrete reforms, including recognition of Kurdish rights and Öcalan’s release—demands he described as “quite unrealistic” in light of Ankara’s past positions, but revealing of internal pressure to move into a new phase.

Sharawi, for his part, sees mounting mistrust between the Kurds and Damascus over how the integration is supposed to work.

“The Kurds feel they need more constitutional rights—recognition of the Kurdish language, political rights. They also want decentralization and some sort of federalism, which al-Sharaadisagrees with. He wants a more centralized rule where he governs. That is the core of the issue,” he said.

He described the planned integration of SDF units into the Syrian armed forces as particularly fraught:

“The Kurds are more leftist and progressive; the Syrian government is more conservative. For example, there is a force composed of women within the SDF. That would be very hard to integrate into the current Syrian army. The deadline of the integration agreement is at the end of this month, and it is still uncertain what might happen if the SDF does not integrate,” he explained.

Clashes between SDF units and Syrian government forces since August have already signaled how fragile the situation is.

“The integration agreement is on the verge of collapse. The US is trying to revive it, because it does not want to see its counterterrorism partner, the SDF, dragged into a conflict with the Syrian government,” he said.

Marcou warned that any attempt by al-Sharaa to impose the agreement militarily could escalate quickly.

He stressed that any attempt to force Kurdish integration by arms would carry serious risks, given the strength of Kurdish forces and the hostility of other Syrian factions backed by Turkey. “Americans are in Rojava, and Mazloum Abdi has a good military force—70,000 efficient soldiers.” He warned that tensions between these units and the Syrian National Army, as well as the history of more pragmatic ties between Kurds and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, could make the situation highly volatile if al-Sharaa turns to coercion.

Beyond Kurdish relations, the composition and behavior of the new Syrian security forces remain a central question for Washington.

Young argued that the way al-Sharaa assembled his army after the collapse of the previous regime has produced serious command-and-control problems.

“My biggest concern is that al-Sharaa does not have full control over his forces. After he took over, he rushed into integrating the military. He added factions that were ideologically not aligned, that had their own interests and grievances. That created an army that, in my opinion, is undisciplined,” he said.

For Young, these internal dynamics matter as much as the external deals Washington tries to strike.

“We need to see a proper doctrine that can build the Syrian military before we can see them as a viable and trustworthy counterterrorism partner,” he said, adding that historically, alliances in the region have been highly fluid