Jerome Drevon
Senior Analyst, Jihad and Modern Conflict, International Crisis Group (ICG)
Research Associate, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID)
Welcome and thank you for stopping by my page.
Here, you’ll find insights into my latest research and publications, including my newly published book on Syrian Jihadis and their political transformation. My publications bring together years of study and practical insights, aiming to engage both scholars and practitioners in meaningful dialogue.
Transformed by the People
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's Road to power in Syria
Hurst / Oxford University Press, 2025 (forthcoming in July)
Few had predicted that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate collaborating with other rebels, could topple Syria’s Assad regime with such swiftness and determination. In this gripping chronicle, Patrick Haenni and Jerome Drevon unravel the dramatic transformation of HTS, from a besieged insurgent enclave in Idlib to architects of a new government in Damascus. Drawing on interviews with HTS leaders—including ministers, civil society figures and Ahmad al-Sharaa himself— the authors reveal the group’s pragmatic evolution. Through firsthand observation, they uncover how HTS approached religious minorities, redefined its understanding of Islamic law, navigated relations with Syria’s neighbours and confronted both al- Qaeda and Islamic State.
From 2019 onwards, global and local constraints prompted HTS to reshape its identity—allying with Turkey, a NATO member and secular state; coexisting with a non-radical conservative society; and embracing the lower clergy’s popular, mosque-based Islam. It also adopted a bold ‘Thermidorian’ strategy, betting on the silent majority to marginalise die-hard radicals.
This book offers a glimpse into HTS’s alternative governance model in northwest Syria, blending frontline narratives with sharp analysis to account for the group’s success as it outmanoeuvred the Assadist regime and mapped its own path to power in a war-torn society.
From Jihad to Politics
How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics
Oxford University Press, 2024
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The Syrian regime unleashed unprecedented violence to suppress large-scale non-violent protests amid the Arab uprisings. Hundreds of armed groups formed throughout the country to defend the protesters and fight back. However, in contrast to other conflicts previously dominated by al-Qaeda and Islamic State, the two largest Syrian Jihadi groups, Ahrar al-Sham and then Jabhat al-Nusra, rejected global jihad and began to cultivate new ties with the population, other armed opposition groups, and even foreign states. This strategic shift is a response to the Jihadi paradox--a realization that while Jihadis excel at leading insurgencies, they fail to achieve political victories.
In From Jihad to Politics, Jerome Drevon offers an examination of the Syrian armed opposition, tracing the emergence of Jihadi groups in the conflict, their dominance, and their political transformation. Drawing upon field research and interviews with Syrian insurgents in northwestern Syria and Turkey, Drevon demonstrates how the context of a local conflict can shape armed groups' behavior in unexpected ways. Further, he marshals unique evidence from the Arab world's most intense conflict to explain why the trajectory of the transnational Jihadi movement has altered course in recent years.
Institutionalizing Violence
Strategies of Jihad in Egypt
Oxford University Press, 2022
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Institutionalizing Violence offers a detailed focus on the two most influential Egyptian jihadi groups—al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya and Islamic Jihad. From the killing of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 to their partial association with al-Qaeda in the 1990s, the two groups illustrate the range of choices that jihadis make overtime including creating political parties. Jerome Drevon argues that these groups’ comparative trajectories show that jihadis embracing the same ideology can make very different strategic decisions in similar environments. Drevon’s analysis of these groups’ histories over the past four decades illustrates the evolution of jihadism in Egypt and beyond.
Institutionalizing Violence develops an institutional approach to radicalization to compare the two Egyptian groups’ trajectories based on ethnographic field research and hundreds of interviews with jihadi leaders and militants in Egypt. Drevon provides a unique perspective on how jihadi groups make and implement new strategic decisions in changing environments, as well as the evolution of their approaches to violence and non-violence.