Comic Strips

Dude what are you even talking about? Al Sharaa is not worse than Al Assad. We literally found multiple mass graves that are estimated to have over 100k bodies that were created during his reign. Don't get me wrong the rebranded Al Nusra front isn't good, and they certainly have genocidal tendencies towards minorities, but so did Al Assad. After the civil war started he became completely unhinged and started going after EVERYONE. There's a reason why Syrian inside and outside Syria celebrated his fall from power.

Also, idk where you're getting this from but the US doesn't have anything to do with how the current situation in Syria unfolded. In 2011, the Arab spring revolution came to Syria and people protested his rule and demanded change. Instead of agreeing to make reforms or stepping down, he started massacring his own people, which led the nation to openly revolt against his regime. Because of this, a bunch of factions were created around this time to overthrow the Al Assad regime and rule the country themselves. Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the US all backed different factions for their own self interests.

In this case, the Al Nusra front was one of these factions, which was found by Al Sharaa in 2012. It was indeed an evil terrorist group and the Al Sharaa himself was the leader of all of it. It's also very much true that he had ties to both Al Qaeda and ISIS before splitting with both and starting waging wars against them. During all of this, the US and Al Sharaa hated each other. Al Sharaa joined Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2003 to fight the US invasion, and the US imprisoned him for 5 years (2006-2011) for trying plant explosives against US troops. When he formed the Al Nusra front, the US designated him and his groups as terrorists in 2013. In 2014, when the US was bombing ISIS, Al Sharaa came and made public declarations about how these bombings were an attack on islam (even though Al Nusra was at war with ISIS at the time) and that anyone who cooperates or receives support from the US are traitors and his enemies who he will fight. In 2017, the US put out a $10 million reward for anybody who can give Al Sharaa's location.

Do you know who was okay with him? Turkey. The Al Nusra front occupied Idlib and the surronding area... which just happens to be near the Turkish border. Turkey had their own direct proxies, however, they never opposed and even indirectly helped the Al Nusra front. Why? Because they acted as a buffer zone between Turkey and the rest of Syria, and the Turkish government supported its existence as it deterred Syrian refugees from flooding into the country. Turkey also supported them because they were against the US, and the US was supporting Kurdish groups in Syria, which Turkey doesn't like.

The Syrian civil war went into a stalemate after the intervention from Russia and Iran in 2015 on behalf of the Al Assad regime. This remained the case until the US left Afghanistan, Russia's bogged itself down in Ukraine, and Israel destroying Hezbollah. Basically the Al Assad regime lost it's two most important allies, and the US wasn't willing to intervene. With no foreign power obstacles, the Al Nusra had the opportunity able to launch an offensive and overthrow the Al Assad regime. In other words, Al Sharaa and the HTS weren't put there by the US or the West, they came to power in a different way.

At that point, Western governments had 2 choices. They could either reject the new Al Nusra government and give them the Taliban treatment or they could celebrate the fall of the Al Assad regime and hope for the best, which is what they ended up doing. The former could've reignited the civil war which nobody wanted, and the latter isn't great but at least whatever happens by this regime will be contained within Syria. It's not the best outcome of the civil war, but it is better than still having the civil war.