On May 2, the U.S. and Turkish governments jointly designated Abu Ahmed Zakour (aka Omar Alsheak or Jihad Isa al-Sheikh), a senior leader with the Syrian jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The bilateral action with Ankara suggests that both countries are signaling their unhappiness with the group’s push into areas controlled by the Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish proxy militia. Zakour has been a key HTS liaison to those areas.
The designation also represented both good news and bad news for HTS on the sanctions front. On one hand, the announcement is the first U.S. government document to acknowledge that HTS broke with al-Qaeda years ago; all prior designations and reports claimed they were still together. On the other hand, this is the first U.S. designation of an HTS official since July 2021, indicating that group leader Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani’s various pleas for delisting have not gained traction in Washington.
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