"External experts are divided as to how HTS might govern. Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former UN terror expert and senior adviser to the Counter Extremism Project, said “good academic experts know HTS and disagree very sharply with each other. Some will tell you it is reformist and will be law abiding; others will say it is the Taliban all over again” – a reference to the Islamist group that took over Afghanistan again after the US withdrawal in 2021."