Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the leading group that overthrew the Assad regime in Syria, is not a direct terror threat to the UK, according to western intelligence assessments.
The judgment could mean that the UK, along with the US and EU, will soon remove HTS’s designation as a terror organisation. In the British case, that would help justify direct contact with Syria’s emerging leaders.
HTS’s principal focus appears domestic, consolidating its grip and helping to rebuild a country after 13 years of civil war. There are no indications that it has any appetite to foster global jihadism or allow a re-emergence of Islamic State, officials indicated.
Ministers and officials have hinted at a possible change of stance. Although on Monday Keir Starmer said it was “far too early” to make a decision on HTS, the Cabinet Office minister, Pat McFadden, said that any change would be a “relatively swift decision”.
The Home Office said “the situation on the ground in Syria is very fluid” and emphasised that “the priority must be the safety of Syrian civilians and securing a political solution to the unfolding events”. The designation of organisations as terrorist is kept under constant review, a spokesperson said.
The Sunni rebel group was an al-Qaida offshoot until 2016, leading to its designation as a terror organisation, but it has sought to soften its Islamist politics and emphasise improved governance during the years it governed in Idlib in north-west Syria.
Its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa – who has returned to using his birth name instead of a nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – has talked about the protection of minorities in a country with a complex ethnic balance.
He told CNN in an interview last week that sects “have coexisted in this region for hundreds of years” and “no one has the right to eliminate them”. His politics had evolved as he grew older, the HTS leader added.
On Sunday Joe Biden said that while “some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism”, there had been a change of tone as the dictator fell.
“They’re saying the right things now, but as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words but their actions,” the US president added.
Influential British figures were divided on whether HTS should be reclassified. Lord Ricketts, a former UK national security adviser, said he believed the UK should work with G7 partners to “do some very rapid due diligence and lift proscriptions together”.
The peer said he believed “the window of opportunity to influence the various insurgent groups to work together on inclusive governance may well be short” and that there was a “greater risk” in delay because it could foster instability and separatism in the country.
Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs select committee, cautioned against a hasty decision. “The last thing the Syrian people want is to have one tyrant replaced by another one who’s got an Islamic flag,” she said.
“For more than 10 years, the UN special representative in Syria has been in talks in Geneva with Syrians and various parties trying to draft up what a proper constitution for Syria would look like, what laws would look like.
“What we don’t want, therefore, is for people to just say, ‘Oh, well, he’s there. Let’s talk to him.’”
Government guidance says that terror legislation makes it an offence to arrange or manage a meeting “in the knowledge that it is to support a proscribed organisation”. It is also illegal, under UK laws, to invite support for a proscribed terror organisation.
A No 10 spokesperson said it believed that the terror legislation did not prevent the government from “engaging with HTS in the future” and “there’s no absolute offence of meeting a proscribed organisation”. Engagement could include meetings to “facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid”, they said.