This is the story of a man who joined jihad at the age of 21, fought the “Great Western Satan” for two decades, seized power by force, and was “elected” president of the republic—not through the ballot box but through Bay’a, the oath of allegiance sworn by his followers. And now, here he is, received with honors at the Élysée and presented as a “moderate” who has renounced jihadist violence and is supposedly leading a democratic transition! All while his followers continue to massacre minorities in his country.
The new master of Damascus, Ahmed al-Charaa, alias Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, welcomed with honors at the Élysée Palace! On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Nazi surrender, Emmanuel Macron chooses to make Paris the first Western capital to embrace the former jihadist leader who seized power by force, following the flight of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
In an effort to appear “moderate,” the new Raïs abandons his war name (Abu Mohammad al-Joulani), removes his jihadist turban to don military fatigues—long enough to pose as the military leader of the “liberation” (Tahrir)—before trimming his beard in Muslim Brotherhood style and appearing in a suit and tie once he is inaugurated as “President of the Syrian Arab Republic.” His investiture came not through ballots, but through Bay’a—the oath of allegiance—given by the various armed factions that took part in the anti-Assad uprising, during a “Victory Congress” held in Damascus on January 29, 2025.
By receiving this controversial figure—while the jihadist militias of the organization that brought him to power (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) continue to commit abuses against Alawite, Kurdish, and Druze minorities—the Élysée is choosing to lend credibility to the fiction that after two decades of jihadist activism (in Zarqawi’s network, the Islamic State in Iraq, and al-Qaeda), al-Joulani has, in just six months of rule, transformed into a “moderate” politician, committed to democracy, pluralism, and… inclusion!
Laurent Fabius must be turning in his hospice bed—he who, as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2012, famously said that “Jabhat al-Nusra” (al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, founded and led by Syria’s current president) was “doing a good job”…
Who really is Ahmed al-Charaa, aka Abu Mohammad al-Joulani? Has he truly renounced jihadism? Will his presidency be the start of a pluralistic regime? Or is it merely the prelude to a new form of despotism, replacing Baathist authoritarianism with radical Islamism?
A seven-part portrait of a true chameleon, who has spent the past two decades constantly shifting both appearance and ideological allegiance…
Pakistan has recently been rocked by a number of large-scale terrorist attacks. The Majeed Brigade of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is responsible for two attacks in Balochistan. The first was aimed at the Turbat naval air base, which would deploy Chinese drones, and the second at the port authority complex in the port of Gwadar, which would be operated and expanded by the Chinese. The third attack, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), killed five Chinese engineers working on the Dasu hydroelectric project on the Indus, part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
It is little known in Europe. Yet this force in charge of external operations for the Revolutionary Guards Corps – the Iranian regime’s paramilitary militia – is behind most of the terrorist attacks commissioned by the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is also at work in the Red Sea and the Straits of Hormuz, where its drones attack tankers and international commercial vessels. In the space of thirty years, it has woven a network of spies that operate even in European capitals, which it threatens more than ever. Here’s how it works.
Pakistan’s intelligence service, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has for years waged a proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) by aiding and abetting terrorism through terrorist outfits such as Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Hizbul Mujahideen (HM). The service continues to support this proxy war, now being carried out not just through the above mentioned groups but also through their various offshoots like The Resistance Front (TRF), People’s Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF), Jammu Kashmir Gaznavi Force (JKGF), United Liberation Front of Jammu & Kashmir (ULF-J&K) , Kashmir Tigers etc.
One cannot understand Afghanistan if one does not know its history, written in wars and punctuated by invasions from Alexander the Great, to the Soviets (20th century), via the Mongols (13th century) and, of course, the British in the 19th century. Each occupation obviously provoked a war of liberation until the invaders left. And every liberation of the country has been followed by a civil war. This is the Afghan curse. Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw the last 2,500 American soldiers, along with 7,700 NATO and allied troops, may therefore have far-reaching consequences.
“May Allah curse France!” headlined the Islamic State’s French-language magazine, Dar al-Islam, a few weeks after the Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Casher shooting. These words, always the same, saturate the atmosphere in the manifestations of anti-French hatred that are regularly unleashed, on any grounds, in the Islamic world. The jihadists massacred in France because France embodies the major resistance to their barbarism.
The term “Islamo-leftism” is controversial. Imprecise and too conflating, we prefer, at Global Watch Analysis, the more explicit terms “leftist collaborators of Islamism” or “useful idiots of Islam”! However, “Islamo-leftism”, in the sense of the compromise of certain components or movements of the extreme left with Islamism (political or jihadist) does exist. A long investigation carried out in 2004, for the needs of our book “Ben Laden, la destruction programmée de l’Occident” published that year by Jean Picollec, shows that this “Islamo-leftism” does not only kill the debate of ideas in French universities!
Deprived of its former bases in the Iraqi-Syrian areas, ISIS is retreating into the Internet. A trend accentuated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which incites the terrorist organisation to intensify its online activity.
Five years have passed since the terrorist attacks in Paris, on November 13, 2015. At the time when France commemorates the event and round tribute to the victims of these attacks, President François Hollande, who was in office during these tragic events, granted an exclusive interview to Global Watch Analysis.
The former President evokes the memory of the attacks, the pain of the victims and their families and his concern not to fall into the trap set by the terrorists: to divide the French and to pit them against each other.
Commenting on the recent polemics, which have inflamed certain Muslim countries, on the subject of the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, François Hollande addresses the Muslim populations “who may have been struck by these cartoons”. While reassuring them that French secularism does not mean “the crushing of religions”, but their recognition as elements of freedom, he reminds them that “freedom is a rule in France” where law authorizes caricature and derision, but not hatred. And that no one in France has the right to attack people because of their religious affiliation.
