This time last year, Abu Mohammed al-Golani was busy preparing for a major offensive against the Syrian regime led at the time by dictator Bashar al-Assad. The Islamist militant group under al-Golani’s command, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, had spent years building up its military arsenal, consolidating power over rival militias in the northwest and coordinating with other rebel factions in the south. They would soon launch a lightning campaign that would end the brutal Assad dynasty and, with it, Syria’s 14-year civil war. Ahmed al-Sharaa, as he is now known, arrived in New York on Sunday to represent Syria as the country’s interim president at this week’s high-level meetings of the U.N. General Assembly. He is the first Syrian leader to do so since 1967.