The Arrest of Bilal Abdul Kareem in Syria

Some context

Yesterday, ‘On the Ground News’, an outlet belonging to American journalist and activist Bilal Abdul Kareem who has resided in Syria for more than a decade, reported that Bilal himself had been arrested by the Syrian government security apparatus in the Aleppo province town of al-Bab (where he has been residing). This marks Bilal’s second arrest within Syria- having previously been arrested by the security apparatus of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in August 2020 only to be released in February 2021, with accusations of working with groups that ‘violate public security,’ spreading and concocting falsehoods and interviewing people wanted by the ‘security apparatus.’

Photo of Bilal Abdul Kareem shared by On the Ground News in relation to his recent arrest.


This time, the arrest shortly follows a video Bilal recently put out in which he strongly criticised the Syrian government’s partnership with the United States in the global coalition against the Islamic State, saying that the American presence in Syria has no legitimacy and that America is the ‘enemy of the Syrian people.’

In light of this latest controversy regarding Bilal, I thought it would be worthwhile to shed some more light on his views and activities in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime, based on my personal experiences with Bilal inside Syria. Although it is superficially easy to dismiss him as hot-headed and extreme, he taps into some legitimate concerns about the direction of the current leadership under Ahmad al-Sharaa, who previously led HTS (which played the leading role in bringing down the regime).