section_path: Early life and military career/Iraq war
section_name: Iraq war
paragraph_text: Iraq war
  
  Al-Sharaa traveled from Damascus to Baghdad by bus just weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 2003, al-Sharaa was detained and questioned by the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate for his illegal departure from Syria to Iraq, but he was released after denying any affiliation to any political parties or extremist groups. Once in Iraq, al-Sharaa quickly rose through the ranks of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The Times of Israel newspaper claimed in 2013 that al-Sharaa was a close associate of AQI leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In his 2021 interview with Frontline, al-Sharaa denied ever meeting al-Zarqawi and asserted that he served only as a regular foot-soldier under al-Qaeda against American occupation. The Economist reported in 2025 that Iraqi intelligence believed al-Sharaa was Zarqawi's deputy in 2004.
  
  It is claimed that after Zarqawi was killed in a US airstrike in 2006, al-Sharaa left Iraq and briefly stayed in Lebanon, where he provided logistical support to the Jund al-Sham militant group. Before the beginning of the Iraqi civil war in 2006, al-Sharaa returned to Iraq to continue fighting. However, he was arrested by American forces while planting explosives and imprisoned for over five years in various detention centres, including Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, Camp Cropper and Camp Taji prisons. Al-Sharaa convinced the Iraqi authorities holding him that he was a local Iraqi, not a foreign fighter. It is said that during this time, al-Sharaa taught classical Arabic to other prisoners, increasing his popularity.