Promise to lift US sanctions brings closer the opportunity for fresh start that began with toppling of Bashar al-Assad

In 2006, Ahmed al-Sharaa was sitting in a US prison in Iraq, then an al-Qaida fighter waging jihad against what he viewed as an American occupation of the Middle East. Nearly two decades later, on Wednesday, he posed for a photo with the US president Donald Trump in Riyadh after discussing normalising ties with Israel and granting US access to Syrian oil.

The transformation of Sharaa over the last 20 years from al-Qaida fighter to the president of Syria , sharing the world’s stage with foreign leaders like Trump, is staggering. For Syrians, the pace of change has been whiplash-inducing.