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Once affiliated with Islamic State and al Qaeda, Jawlani professes religious tolerance. Many have doubts.

Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani boarded a bus in Damascus in March 2003, heading across the desert to Baghdad with fellow volunteers eager to repel the looming American invasion of Iraq.

When he returned home in 2011, after a five-year stint in an American-run prison camp in Iraq, it was as the emissary of Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Jawlani arrived in Syria with bags full of cash, and a mission to take the extremist movement global.

Last week, 42-year-old Jawlani triumphantly entered Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, as the leading commander of the Turkish-backed rebel force dominated by his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Unexpected and swift, his victory marks one of the most dramatic moments in a Middle East that has had no shortage of drama.

Compared in its shock value—and strategic importance—to Islamic State’s seizure of Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul in 2014, the fall of Aleppo has been a very different affair so far.

Far from engaging in a murderous spree against religious minorities, the hallmark of Baghdadi’s self-proclaimed caliphate, Jawlani issued edicts ordering the protection of Christians and Shiites, and demanding that his men not exact retribution. “In the future Syria, we believe that diversity is our strength, not a weakness,” said the latest such decree on Monday. There have been no reports of massacres in Aleppo so far, and Jawlani’s HTS has allowed encircled Kurdish forces to leave unharmed.

“The day they said they took over Aleppo, before seeing them, I felt like the Titanic was sinking,” said a Christian woman in Aleppo who didn’t want to be named because she feared retribution from the Syrian regime. But there was no looting, and shops and restaurants reopened the next day, she said. “Everyone was shocked because they were treating us nicely. They look scary. They look exactly the way you imagine when someone says a terrorist: long beards and crazy hair. But they’re nice.”

Jawlani’s Aleppo victory—which sets up a man the U.S. still designates as a terrorist as a potential contender to become Syria’s ruler should President Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapse—follows a remarkable political transformation of the kind rarely seen in the region.

Born Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, he adopted the nom de guerre of Jawlani, a reference to his family’s roots in the Golan Heights that Israel seized from Syria in 1967. The militant leader broke with Islamic State in 2012. He cut ties with al Qaeda in 2016, and since then he has fought both organizations in bloody campaigns.

In doing so, he steered the HTS away from the transnational jihadist movement that is more interested in waging war on America and the West—and that sees national borders in the Muslim world as an artificial construct imposed by the infidel colonialists.

“His and his group’s break with Islamic State and al Qaeda is very genuine. They haven’t been part of these entities longer than they were with them, and it’s now been essentially 8½ years that they have forsworn global jihad,” said Aaron Zelin, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of a recent book on HTS.

Instead, Jawlani has turned HTS—which has run a statelet of its own in Syria’s northern Idlib province since 2015—into a well-disciplined force that focuses squarely on Syria, a blend of Islamism and nationalism that is closer to Afghanistan’s Taliban and the Palestinian Hamas. Instead of the banner of Islam, HTS troops choose to fight under the Syrian flag that dates back to the republic that existed before the 1963 Baath Party revolution that eventually brought the Assad family to power.

“HTS from its very foundation said that we don’t have transnational objectives, we are focused on Syria, we want to fight in Syria, and that has been the essence of its disagreement with other jihadist groups,” said Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group who has met Jawlani repeatedly in Syria.

“The HTS leadership is pragmatic and utilitarian, and less ideological,” she added. “Jawlani is not a cleric, he is a politician who is ready to strike deals and is very compromising on a lot of things—except fighting against the regime. Don’t underestimate this guy’s ambition.”

Despite all the differences, HTS remains listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S., and Washington offers a $10 million bounty on Jawlani. Yet the U.S. hasn’t targeted Jawlani or other top HTS commanders since he proclaimed nearly a decade ago that he doesn’t seek to be America’s enemy. Since the first Trump administration, which negotiated a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Jawlani and HTS have sought an agreement that would lift the Syrian group’s terrorist designation.

“They’ve learned how to play the game,” said Alberto Miguel Fernandez, vice president of the Middle East Media Research Institute and a former State Department coordinator for counterterrorism communications. “They still have what we would call extremist ideology, but they are not stupid extremists, and they are nationalist extremists. Jawlani knows that he has to moderate his tone, for example, on minorities, because this is something that people in the West will throw in his face.”

It is unclear to what extent Jawlani’s transformation is genuine, and to what extent his appeals to moderation are designed to lull other Syrians and the West into complacency as he pursues his quest to replace the Assad regime. The Taliban in Afghanistan also promised an inclusive government and greater respect for women’s rights before seizing power in 2021, but has since ousted women from the workplace and education, returning to the way it governed before the 2001 U.S. invasion.

“The transformation from a small-time Syrian jihadist in Iraq to the leader of the Syrian revolution? I am rather doubtful,” said Fabrice Balanche, a specialist on Syria at the University of Lyon 2. “Yes, Jawlani probably became more bourgeois with age, and may have renounced part of his radical ideology. But I think it’s more likely that he’s playing taqiya—concealing his real intentions.”

Rights groups have accused HTS of arbitrarily detaining activists, journalists and other civilians voicing critical opinions, and have alleged torture and ill-treatment of those in detention, charges that Jawlani denies.

“They went from global jihad to local regime—and now they are similar to a lot of regimes in the Arab world in their authoritarian tendencies,” said Zelin.

After overrunning Aleppo, Jawlani’s fighters knocked on the doors of some Christian homes and told the residents that they came in peace, according to George Meneshian, an Athens-based foreign policy analyst with relatives in the city. “They told them, ‘You can celebrate your Christmas,’” he said. A Christmas tree is visible in a video filmed at a market in a predominantly Christian neighborhood after the HTS takeover. Despite those assurances, many remain wary.

“Even if their leadership says that they will respect the minorities, you can’t control every individual fighter,” Meneshian said.

Indeed, the presence of hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign fighters within the HTS ranks—Chechens, Turks, Iraqis, Central Asians and especially Uyghurs from Xinjiang, China—represents a major issue for the international community. Jawlani, when asked in a meeting with the International Crisis Group in 2020 about these men, said that they don’t pose a threat to anyone outside Syria.

“As Uyghurs, they face persecution in China—which we strongly condemn—and they have nowhere else to go. Of course, I sympathize with them,” he said. “But their struggle in China is not ours, so we tell them they are welcome here as long as they abide by our rules, which they do.”

In a 2021 interview with PBS’s “Frontline” in Idlib, Syria, Jawlani said he had no regrets about celebrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America by al Qaeda, or about fighting against U.S. troops in Iraq.

“If there was no American presence, there would not have been a resistance,” he said about Iraq. “Anyone who lived in the Islamic or Arab world at the time who tells you he wasn’t happy about [the Sept. 11 attacks] would be lying. But people regret the killing of innocent people, for sure.”

Absorbing Aleppo—with a diverse population of more than two million—will pose a formidable challenge for Jawlani, especially as the Syrian regime and its allies strike back.

“The situation is really chaotic,” said Mohammed Eisha, an activist who returned in recent days to Aleppo—which he last saw 14 years ago—and who has been living in HTS-administered Idlib.

Security and administration are better in areas under Jawlani’s control than in those held by other rebel factions in northern Syria, he said. In recent years, the group has interfered less in people’s lives. Unlike Islamic State, which used to impose a hard-line interpretation of Islam, HTS didn’t ban the smoking of waterpipes or force men to dress and style their hair a certain way, Eisha said. The nongovernment organization he works for runs several women’s shelters without interference from HTS—for now.

“We are always scared,” Eisha said, “about whether they will stay that way or not.”

Human arbiters are set to be increasingly phased out as machines become more efficient at making critical decisions

When US sprinter Noah Lyles pipped his Jamaican rival Kishane Thompson to the 100 metres gold medal in Paris this summer, five thousandths of a second separated the two men. The race was the closest in Olympic history — yet the outcome was known almost instantly, thanks to new cameras able to capture and process 40,000 images a second.

And this is just one of the many advances that have been made in determining outcomes in sport. Although referees, umpires and judges have always been the ultimate arbiters of the sporting rule book, technology has long had a part to play. The London Olympics in 1948 featured the first use of photo finish cameras while, at the Mexico City games 20 years later, electronic timekeeping became standard across all Olympic sports.

In recent years, advances in both software and hardware have brought increased automation into officiating. In football, goal-line technology, which instantly determines whether a goal has been scored, made its debut during the 2012 Club World Cup, while semi-automated offsides were rolled out during the group stages of the Uefa Champions League a decade later.

Now, many in the industry believe a new technological revolution in sport is under way that will lead to more on-field decisions being made or informed by automated systems, rather than human beings alone.

At the Paris Olympics, Swiss Timing — which, through its sister company Omega, has links to the games going back to its role as timekeeper in Los Angeles, 1932 — introduced a new system for diving. It was able to track the distance between a high diver’s head and the diving board — information that judges could use to determine whether a jump had been executed safely, or whether to impose a points penalty.

Alain Zobrist, chief executive of Swiss Timing, says breakthroughs in visual data-collection and processing speed have opened up a world of new possibilities.

“We can track both athletes’ performance or body movement in a very, very accurate way, something that we couldn’t do before,” he says. “There’s a potential in some sports where technology — automated technology — could be the decision maker.”

In a further sign of the changing times, at next summer’s Wimbledon tennis championships line judges will no longer appear courtside. The oldest of the four tennis Grand Slams has made the decision to replace its human line judges with a fully automated ball tracking system, marking the end of an era that had lasted for more than a century.

Hawk-Eye, which developed the electronic line call system, has been providing officiating technology to Wimbledon since 2007. The UK-based company is owned by Sony Sports, and now works with 23 of the top 25 sports leagues in the world. It recently announced a joint venture with Fifa, football’s global governing body, to build a technology centre to explore how algorithms can help improve on-field decision making by referees.

Rufus Hack, chief executive of Sony Sports, says that the advance of technology in elite sports is likely to be gradual, even as recent breakthroughs in areas such as skeletal tracking and machine learning open the door to new applications.

“Ultimately, the long term direction of travel, I think, is to have more technology in sports,” Hack says. “I think most people recognise that it is faster and fairer and more objective than the humans making decisions. But it has to be done in a phased and thoughtful way.”

Progress could be quicker in rolling out technology that is already used at elite level to lower leagues and even grassroots sports, he adds. And existing systems are being improved. For example, when automated offside technology was first deployed, it took 90 seconds to reach a verdict. Now, that wait has been cut to one second.

Genius Sports, which provides semi-automated offside technology to the English Premier League, initially developed much of its technology to help teams, leagues and broadcasters track performance and generate live data. Capturing players’ movements and biometric data, for example, can help to identify when tiredness is beginning to take its toll, or if a tactical change by the opposing team requires a response.

But being able to track and analyse an increasing number of points on a single athlete’s body has quickly led to applications in officiating. Matt Fleckenstein, chief product officer at Genius, points to advances in several areas, including camera technology and data processing, that have made it easier to build systems to help enforce the rules.

For example, it is possible to track up to 10,000 points on an athlete’s body during a live match, information that can be used to build a 3D model of the action on the field. That, in turn, can determine where players are in relation to each other, as well as in relation to the ball, and the lines on the field. That makes it possible to measure simple decisions such as offsides almost instantly, and help human beings making decisions on the pitch, such as whether a ball is in play. But, in the future, the potential applications could go much further.

“It’s about helping an official get to a better outcome in a faster period of time. And then, I think, you’ll see those more complex use cases mature at some point down the road,” says Fleckenstein. “Whether it’s 10 years, or 15 years, who knows? They’ll mature into being probably fully automated, like what we’re starting to see with line calls in tennis.”

Court rejects Truong My Lan’s appeal against death sentence over embezzlement

Vietnamese tycoon Truong My Lan can avoid execution for orchestrating a $12bn fraud if she repays three-quarters of the misappropriated funds, a court ruled on Tuesday.

The chair of property developer Van Thinh Phat Group was sentenced to death in April after being found guilty of embezzling 304tn dong from Vietnam’s Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB). She was also found guilty of abuse of power and bribing government officials.

A court in Ho Chi Minh City rejected her appeal against the death sentence, citing the “particularly serious consequences” from the corruption case, the country’s largest financial fraud, according to Vietnamese state media.

But the court took note of a Vietnamese law that allows for her sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment if she can repay at least 75 per cent of the misappropriated amount while on death row.

During a hearing last month, the prosecution had asked her to return at least $11bn. They argued against reversing the death penalty, saying her actions have resulted in “unprecedented” losses.

The graft case against Lan is part of a broader corruption crackdown in Vietnam by the ruling Communist party that has resulted in hundreds of government officials being arrested and the prosecution of several business executives.

The “blazing furnace” — as the crackdown is called in Vietnam — has also led to a stark slowdown in government activity, including approvals for projects and licences, as officials fear getting caught up in the anti-corruption campaign.

The crackdown has taken place as Vietnam became a global manufacturing hub, with companies shifting factories away from China due to escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Lan, 68, is the most high-profile businessperson to be prosecuted in the campaign. She can seek a review of Tuesday’s court decision or a presidential pardon.

She has denied wrongdoing, disputed the amount of money she is accused of embezzling from SCB and begged the court for leniency during the appeals process. Lan has also said the money she allegedly misappropriated from the bank was in fact spent on restructuring the bank. 

“Because of this case, the dreams, hopes and physical strength of myself and dozens of people here have been affected. That was the most terrible experience for me,” she said during an appeal hearing last month, state media reported.

Lan’s lawyers have told the court that the assets confiscated from the tycoon were sufficient to compensate for the losses at SCB. They also said foreign investors have shown interest in reviving some of Lan’s major real estate projects, which could then help offset some of the losses.

However, prosecutors say it is not possible to determine the value of many of Lan’s assets. 

“The losses in the case were especially large and unprecedented in history. It is unclear when these losses will be fully compensated,” they said during the appeal hearing. 

Vietnamese officials said Lan embezzled billions through illegal control of SCB using fake companies to take out loans and bribe government officials. There are 85 other people who are charged in the case, including her husband, niece and central bank officials.

Government authorities have previously said SCB gave loans worth more than $44bn to Van Thinh Phat and other companies controlled by Lan between 2012 and 2022, accounting for 93 per cent of the total loans disbursed by the bank. SCB was placed under the control of the central bank control after Lan’s arrest.

Lan has also been sentenced to life imprisonment in a second trial for money laundering, fraudulent appropriation of assets through bond issuances and illegal cross-border money transfers.

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The Paris-based company has been in the Chinese market for over 40 years

Sanofi SAN -0.29%decrease; red down pointing triangle plans to spend about $1.05 billion building a new insulin manufacturing base in China, the French company’s largest single investment in the world’s second-largest economy.

The French drugmaker said in a WeChat statement on Monday that the investment of about 1 billion euros, equivalent to $1.05 billion, will enhance the production and manufacturing of insulin, focusing on serving local diabetic patients. The new base, which will be located in Yizhuang, Beijing, marks Sanofi’s second production base in the capital and its fourth in the country.

Sanofi chairman Frédéric Oudéa in his first visit to China since taking on the role attended the contract signing ceremony in Beijing, together with Chief Executive Paul Hudson and a team of senior executives, the statement said.

The Paris-based company has been in the Chinese market for over 40 years, where as of end-2021 there were over 140 million adults with diabetes, or about 12% of the population, according to the statement.

U.S.-China disputes over trade and military issues in recent years have shaken the industry as U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies often depend on China for basic chemistry services and pharmaceutical ingredients.

Changes don’t mean a full severing of industry ties between China and the West.

Executives say the cost for top-notch Chinese work is typically lower than in the West, and U.S. and European drugmakers still see promise in selling their products in China, a country with a large drug market and a rapidly aging population.

China is expected to be the world’s fastest growing pharmaceutical market by volume over the next five years, according to health-data company IQVIA. Chinese spending on medicines reached $163 billion last year and is expected to grow by over $30 billion by 2028.