Meeting Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani: A Conversation with Martin Smith

In February, Martin Smith traveled to Idlib, Syria, where he became the first Western journalist to conduct an interview with Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, a U.S.-designated terrorist and the leader of the jihadi group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Once an official branch of al-Qaida under a different name, HTS controls Syria’s northwestern Idlib Province, where it has set up a government to manage the affairs of the province’s more than 3 million people. Jawlani has distanced himself from al-Qaida and seeks to improve his image in the West, but his terrorist pedigree has proven an obstacle. Will the U.S. ever lift the terrorist designations? Has Jawlani really changed? What’s it like to interview one of the major jihadi personalities of the past decade?