“So far, HTS has undertaken no ideological updating. They prefer to maintain a kind of vagueness rather than taking a clear line which might antagonise the conservatives still belonging to the movement. With the fall of Damascus, that ideological clarification is of course more necessary than ever ; at stake are, on the one hand, the movement’s local acceptance and, on the other, the international recognition of the new Damascus authorities. In fact when the movement’s leaders are asked to define themselves, there are as many different answers as there are individuals questioned.
“At present it is a sort of Thermidorian logic – a kind of post-revolutionary moderate pushback – which prevails. The page of Terror has been turned and the movement is banking on the different silent majorities as much to consolidate its grip on domestic affairs and eliminate the remains of a radical minority as to present themselves as a national alternative.
“HTS is not a mass movement with dependable roots in the professional sectors and the middle classes.”
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