In 2004, a newly ascended Bashar al-Assad, eager to shield his regime from the blowback of the American invasion of Iraq, encouraged young Syrians and Muslims to cross into Iraq to resist the US occupation.

Among those who heeded the call was a soft-spoken 22-year-old named Ahmed al-Sharaa, a media student with middling grades and a quiet disposition. I was another student at Damascus that year, and the regime’s mobilization at the university and elsewhere was not so subtle.

I remember being shocked when, during university break, a cab driver on my way to my village in Albu Kamal, near the Iraqi border, openly spoke about ferrying fighters to Anbar.

Two decades later, al-Sharaa played a pivotal role in toppling the regime that once urged him to jihad.

His journey from a Damascus schoolboy to a rebel commander at the helm of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) reveals not only the complex intersections of Syria’s fractured history but also the evolution of global jihadist movements.