Not too long ago, Ahmed al-Sharaa – better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – would have been arrested on arrival in the US. The former head of Syria’s al-Nusra Front had a $10m bounty on his head for organising “multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria, often targeting civilians”.
This week, however, after toppling the dictator Bashar al-Assad in a lightning offensive last December, he is being feted in New York as he meets with world leaders in the first visit to the United Nations general assembly by a Syrian head of state since 1967.
