Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani (L) meeting with Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Doha, Qatar on January 5, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

Syria’s new Foreign Minister met with his Qatari counterpart and Qatar’s Prime Minister in Doha on Sunday (January 5, 2025), as Syria’s new de facto authorities under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, establish diplomatic ties with regional and global governments.

Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani posted on X that he’s also set to visit Jordan and the United Arabs Emirates to develop strategic partnerships, and support Syria’s security and economic recovery.

Mr. Al-Shibani met with his Saudi counterpart in Riyadh on Thursday (January 2, 2025). And he also welcomed the Foreign Ministers of Germany and France in Damascus on Friday (January 3, 2025).

HTS led a lightning insurgency that ousted President Bashar Assad on December 8 and ended his family’s decades-long rule. From 2011 until Mr. Assad’s downfall, Syria’s uprising and civil war killed an estimated 500,000 people.

Much of the world ended diplomatic relations with Mr. Assad because of his crackdown on protesters, and sanctioned him and his Russian and Iranian associates.

Now, Syria under Islamist rule hopes to reestablish those ties and lift sanctions slapped on HTS and leader Ahmad al-Sharaa to help make Syria’s battered economy viable again. Mr. Assad was backed by Russia, Iran and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. HTS now hopes Syria can strengthen ties with Arab countries in the region.

Qatar supported opposition groups that fought against Mr. Assad and his allies, and was one of a few Arab countries that opposed restoring ties with the ousted Mr. Assad and Syria’s return to the Arab League in 2023.

“We conveyed to Doha our concerns about the challenges related to the economic sanctions imposed on the Syrian people, and we renew our call on the United States to lift those sanctions,” Syrian radio station Sham FM quoted Mr. Al-Shibani as saying.

Around 90% of Syrians live in poverty, while more than half of the population doesn’t know where their next meal will come from, according to the United Nations.

Mr. Al-Sharaa has said he will hold a national dialogue summit that includes different groups across Syria to agree upon a new political road map leading to a new constitution and an election.

He vowed to dissolve HTS during the summit and has said in an interview with Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya that the de facto rulers are all of the same political background during this transitional phase for the sake of efficiency in running the country.

Still, it’s unclear whether Washington will lift sanctions anytime soon. Europe, meanwhile, appears hesitant because of fears over how religious minorities and women will be treated.

A Syrian youth holds signs during a rally next to Damascus Opera House in Umayyad Square, after Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was ousted, in Damascus, Syria, December 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Diplomats from the United States have arrived in Syria to speak directly to the new Islamist-led rulers, hoping to encourage a moderate, inclusive path and to find clues on missing Americans, the State Department said Friday (December 20, 2024).

Also read: What lies ahead for Syria after Assad’s exit? | Explained 

This is the first formal US diplomatic mission to Damascus since the early days of the brutal civil war that broke out in 2011 and culminated in a surprise lightning offensive that toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad this month.

The diplomats will meet representatives of victorious group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — which is designated a terrorist group by Washington — as well as activists, civil society and members of minority groups, the State Department said.

The U.S. officials will speak with Syrians about “their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them,” a State Department spokesperson said.

The delegation includes Barbara Leaf, who is the top State Department official for the Middle East, and Daniel Rubinstein, a veteran US diplomat in the Arab world who is being put in charge of engagement on Syria, the spokesperson said.

Also present is Roger Carstens, the US point man on hostages, who has been seeking clues on missing Americans including Austin Tice, a journalist who was kidnapped in August 2012.

The trip comes a week after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States had been in direct contact with HTS as he toured Syria’s neighbors.

At talks in the Jordanian resort of Aqaba, Western and Arab powers as well as Turkey jointly called Saturday for an “inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government” that respects the rights of all of Syria’s diverse communities.

‘No guarantees’

HTS has roots in Al-Qaeda, causing the United States to keep a distance throughout the civil war even while Washington also sought to isolate the more secular Assad, whose family’s dictatorship ruthlessly suppressed dissent for a half-century.

Since the fall of Mr. Assad, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has struck a conciliatory tone, calling for Syrian unity, the protection of minorities and the disbanding of rebel factions.

Mr. Blinken has said it is too early to assess Jolani’s sincerity and that any sanctions relief would depend on actions.

“There are no guarantees at all. We’ve seen too many times one dictator can be replaced by another,” Blinken told The Foreign Affairs Interview podcast on Wednesday (December 18, 2024).

“So this is fraught, but we know almost certainly that absent our engagement, absent our leadership, that’s the way it will go,” he said.

“We have a chance, and the Syrian people have a chance, if concerned countries, including the United States, work to move this in a good direction.”

U.S. yet to decide on removing HTS’ terror tag

No decision on removing the HTS terrorism designation is likely in the month until the return of president-elect Donald Trump, who has made clear that he does not want a heavy U.S. involvement in Syria.

Mr. Trump has described Assad’s fall as an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkey, which has supported HTS and bitterly opposes Washington’s alliance with Syrian Kurdish fighters, who have cooperated in Washington’s paramount goal of keeping down the ultra-violent Islamic State group.

World powers have moved quickly since Mr. Assad’s fall to revive diplomacy in Syria, whose war set off an exodus of migrants that rocked Western politics.

Mr. Jolani met UN envoy for Syria, Geir Pederson on Monday (December 16, 2024) with the, and a day later with a German delegation.

French diplomats returned to their embassy in Damascus, raising the tricolor flag for the first time since 2012.

The United States closed its own embassy in Damascus in February 2012 and has made no immediate move to reopen it, with the Czech Republic representing US interests in the country.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s military chief Abu Hassan al-Hamwi is pictured during an interview in the Syrian western port city of Latakia, on December 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The military chief of Syria’s victorious Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham said on Tuesday (December 17, 2024) it would be “the first” to dissolve its armed wing and integrate into the armed forces.

“In any state, all military units must be integrated into this institution,” Murhaf Abu Qasra, known by his nom de guerre Abu Hassan al-Hamawi, said in an interview with AFP, adding that “we will be, God willing, among the first to take the initiative [to dissolve our armed wing]”.

Also read | Syria’s new rulers step up engagement with the world

He added that Kurdish-held areas of Syria would be integrated under the country’s new leadership, adding that the group rejects federalism and that “Syria will not be divided”.

“The Kurdish people are one of the components of the Syrian people… Syria will not be divided and there will be no federal entities,” he said.

A U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led administration controls swathes of north and northeastern Syria, and has recently been battling Turkish-backed groups which have captured several Kurdish towns.

Abu Qasra also called on the international community to “find a solution” to repeated Israeli strikes and an “incursion” into Syrian territory.

“We view the Israeli strikes on military sites and the incursion into southern Syria as injust… we call on the international community to find a solution to this matter,” he said.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian military assets in what it says is a bid to prevent them falling into hostile hands.

It has also sent troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.

Abu Qasra also called on Western governments to lift the “terrorist” designation from HTS and its leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“We call on the United States and all countries to lift this designation… on his person and the whole group,” he said, describing it as “unjust” and saying that the group “will ultimately be integrated into state institutions”.

The radical Sunni Islamist group has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Western governments including the United States and Britain.

It has recently sought to moderate its rhetoric and assure the international community that religious and other minorities will be protected.

Damascus:

The military chief of Syria’s victorious Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham called on the international community Tuesday to find a solution to Israel’s repeated strikes and “incursion” into Syrian territory.

“We view the Israeli strikes on military sites and the incursion into southern Syria as injust… we call on the international community to find a solution to this matter,” Murhaf Abu Qasra, known by his nom de guerre Abu Hassan al-Hamawi, said in an interview with AFP.

He also called on Western governments to lift the “terrorist” designation from HTS and its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Geir Pederson, the United Nations’ special envoy to Syria, center, listens to a woman who was looking for her missing relative in the Saydnaya prison, during his visit to the infamous Saydnaya military prison, in Saydnaya north of Damascus, Syria, on December 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The United Nations told the leader of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group which toppled Bashar al-Assad that Syria must have a “credible and inclusive” transition.

The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen who arrived in Damascus on Sunday, has met Abu Mohammed al-Jolani — who now goes under his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa — Mr. Pedersen’s office said Monday in a statement on Telegram.

He also met interim Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir, it said.

Mr. Pedersen met them after Saturday’s international meeting on Syria in Jordan, and stressed “the need for a credible and inclusive Syrian-owned and led political transition based on the principles of United Nations Security Council resolution 2254 (2015)”.

The UN envoy also underlined “the intention of the United Nations to render all assistance to the Syrian people”, and was briefed on their “challenges and priorities”, the statement added.

It said Mr. Pedersen had several engagements planned in the days ahead, but did not elaborate.

Mr. Assad was toppled by a lightning 11-day rebel offensive that swept down from northwest Syria, with fighters entering the capital on December 8.

Abandoned by his Russian and Iranian backers, Mr. Assad fled into exile in Moscow, bring to an end five decades of abuses by his clan.

The HTS group that led his overthrow is a former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria, and the United States and other Western governments still classify it as a “terrorist” group.

While hailing Mr. Assad’s downfall, several nations have said they will wait to see how Syria’s new Sunni Muslim authorities treat minorities in the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country.

Several countries including the United States and Britain have said they have already made contact with Jolani.

The United States said Saturday it had made contact with Syria’s victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels, as Western and Arab states along with Turkey jointly voiced support for a united, peaceful Syria.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s comment on “direct contact” with the HTS rebels came despite the United States having designated the group as terrorists in 2018.

While Blinken and other diplomats held talks on Syria in Aqaba, Jordan, Turkey reopened its embassy in Damascus, nearly a week after the Islamist-led rebels toppled president Bashar al-Assad –and 12 years after Ankara’s diplomatic mission was shuttered early in Syria’s civil war.

“We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken told reporters, without specifying how the contact took place.

Ankara has been a major player in Syria’s conflict, holding considerable sway in the northwest, financing armed groups there, and maintaining a working relationship with HTS, which spearheaded the offensive that toppled Assad.

In a joint statement after the meeting in Jordan, diplomats from the United States, Turkey, the European Union and Arab countries “affirmed the full support to the Syrian people at this critical point in their history to build a more hopeful, secure and peaceful future”.

They called for a Syrian-led transition to “produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government formed through a transparent process”, with respect for human rights.

“Syria finally has the chance to end decades of isolation,” the group said.

The head of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, in the country’s northeast, on Saturday appealed on X for Kurds “to adopt a favourable position toward the Syrian dialogue”.

UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen urged participants in the Jordan talks to provide humanitarian aid and to ensure “that state institutions do not collapse”.

A Qatari diplomat said Friday that a delegation from the Gulf emirate would visit Syria on Sunday to meet transitional government officials for talks on aid and reopening its embassy.

Unlike other Arab states, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in Jordan that the bloc, Syria’s biggest aid provider, is “interested in rebuilding and reconstruction of Syria”.

Assad fled Syria last weekend, hours before rebel forces seized Damascus, five former officials told AFP.

His flight left Syrians in joyous disbelief at the sudden end to an era in which suspected dissidents were jailed or killed.

It capped more than a decade of war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

‘So much tragedy’

Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and is designated a “terrorist” organisation by many Western governments.

But the group has sought to moderate its rhetoric. The interim government insists the rights of all Syrians will be protected, as will the rule of law.

“We appreciate some of the positive words we heard in recent days, but what matters is action — and sustained action,” Blinken said.

If a transition moves forward, “we in turn will look at various sanctions and other measures that we have taken”, he added.

Pubs and liquor stores in Damascus initially closed following the rebel victory, but are now tentatively reopening.

“‘You have the right to work and live your life as you did before’,” Safi, the landlord of Papa bar in the Old City, said the rebels had told him.

But in Abu Dhabi, Anwar Gargash, a presidential adviser in the United Arab Emirates, said “we need to be on guard” despite HTS’s talk of unity.

Thousands of Syrians have swarmed the country’s notorious detention centres over the past week, seeking evidence that might lead them to loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s repressive rule.

Some former prisoners, like Mohammed Darwish, are also returning as free men to where they were once incarcerated, trying to find closure.

“When the door closed behind us, we were plunged into the depths of despair. This cell was witness to so much tragedy,” he said, back at his former windowless cell in a Damascus prison.

Syrians also face a struggle for necessities in a country ravaged by war, runaway inflation and years of sanctions.

The country’s situation remains highly volatile.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an ambush Saturday had killed at least four rebel fighters when they were ambushed by “loyalist elements of the former regime” near a villa belonging to an Assad relative on the Mediterranean coast.

‘Dumb politics’

Assad was propped up by Russia — to where a former aide told AFP he had fled — as well as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.

The rebels launched their offensive on November 27, the same day a ceasefire took effect in the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, in which Assad’s ally suffered staggering losses.

Naim Qassem, the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, admitted on Saturday that, with Assad’s fall, his group could no longer be supplied militarily through Syria.

He also said he hoped Syria’s new rulers saw Israel “as an enemy” and do not normalise ties with the country.

Both Israel and Turkey have carried out military strikes inside Syria since Assad’s fall.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported more than 60 Israeli strikes across Syria in several hours on Saturday.

To Gargash, the UAE adviser, such strikes are “dumb politics”, even though “to structurally degrade Syrian capabilities might be seen as a sensible thing from an Israeli practical point of view”.

Israel has also ordered troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, a move the UN said violated a 1974 armistice.

HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, said the Israeli move “threatens a new unjustified escalation in the region”.

But “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts,” he said in an online statement.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A torn posters shows the late Syrian President Hafez Assad and his son the ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad, that were set at the entrance of the notorious security detention centre called Palestine Branch, in Damascus, Syria, on December 14, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The story so far:Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria for 24 years, has fallen. He and his family have taken refuge in Russia. Syria now has a transitional government, headed by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist militant group that was controlling the northwestern province of Idlib. Many Syrians are celebrating the collapse of Mr. Assad’s dictatorial regime, but remain anxious about what is to come. Turkey, as the main backer of the HTS, sees an opportunity to expand its influence in West Asia, while Iran and Russia, the main backers of the Assad regime, have taken a setback. Israel, in the meantime, is exploiting the vacuum in Syria to grab more territories.

Why did the Assad regime fall?

Mr. Assad held on to power for 13 years after the civil war broke out in 2011, only for his regime to collapse in 12 days. By 2017, the Assad regime had taken over most of its lost territories, with help from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. But he hadn’t defeated the militants. The strongest of them was the HTS, which was formerly called Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda arm in Syria. Abu Muhammed al-Jolani, today the ‘emir’ of the HTS, was an al-Qaeda leader. The HTS-controlled Idlib emerged as a rebel stronghold. Jolani established a mini-administration in Idlib — the Syrian Salvation Government. He had been planning a large-scale offensive against the regime forces for months, if not years.

Also read | Twelve days that shook Syria 

On the other side, a host of domestic, regional and international factors weakened Mr. Assad’s position. Syria’s economy is in a very bad shape. Its GDP shrank by 87% in the past 13 years, from $68 billion in 2011 to just $9 billion in 2023. Western sanctions stifled an already deteriorated economy further. The poorly paid soldiers of the Assad regime lacked motivation to preserve it. Syrian armed forces were also weakened by repeated Israeli air strikes, which picked up pace over the past year, after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack. Mr. Assad was heavily reliant on his external allies for security. However, their priorities also changed in recent years. Russia’s focus is now on the Ukraine war. Iran is involved in a hot and cold war with Israel. Hezbollah lost most of its leaders and thousands of fighters in its year-long war with Israel. The militants knew Mr. Assad was weak.

They launched an offensive on November 27 in the western outskirts of Aleppo, probably aimed at cutting the underbelly of his decaying regime. What happened next was a rapid collapse of the regime itself.

Who is in charge now?

Syria today has roughly four militant coalitions. The first one is the HTS, led by Jolani. The HTS says it has broken its ties with al-Qaeda, and promises to respect Syria’s ethnic and religious diversity. But its rank and file comprise transnational jihadists, who travelled to Syria from across the world, to fight “jihad” against the Assad regime. The HTS’s main ally is the Syrian National Army (SNA), another northern militia. The core of the SNA is the Free Syrian Army, a Turkish proxy that was formed with defected Syrian soldiers and officers. The HTS and the SNA launched the November 27 offensive together.

The second group is the Southern Front, a loose coalition of dozens of militias in Syria’s south (Daara and Quneitra). Some of them were backed by Jordan, which shares a border with southern Syria. When the HTS-SNA combine advanced towards regime-held cities from the north, the southern militias started an offensive from the south. And they reached Damascus first, on December 8. The third main group is the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The core of the SDF is the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of Syrian Kurdistan. The SDF enjoys relative autonomy in the Syrian Kurdish region. The SDF was armed by the U.S. in the past in its fight against the Islamic State. The fourth group is the Alawite militias in the coastal region. Alawites are Mr. Assad’s sect, who enjoyed power for over five decades in the country. The HTS, a Sunni Islamist group, had in the past targeted Alawites, who make up roughly 15% of Syria’s population. The HTS has asked the Alawite community to cut ties with the fallen regime. Of these four, the HTS is the most powerful force now. The transition government in Damascus is a replica of the HTS Salvation government in Idlib.

Why does geopolitics matter?

Syria has immense geopolitical significance. It hosts Russia’s Mediterranean naval base in Tartus, its only naval base outside the former Soviet territory. Russia also has built an air base in Syria. For Russia to project force, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and then to the Atlantic, it is essential to retain access to the Tartus base. It could also be one of the reasons Russia made a military intervention in Syria in 2015, to protect the Assad regime. Now that the regime has collapsed, Russia’s focus would be on protecting its bases. For Iran, a sworn enemy of America and Israel, Syria was its only state ally in West Asia. Syria was also a key conduit between Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia. The fall of the Assad regime could disrupt Iran’s supply networks in the region, which could invariably weaken the country’s deterrence.

Turkey, on the other side, appears to be stronger. For years, it had tried to pull down the Assad regime. When the Russian intervention made it immediately impossible, Turkey shifted its focus towards playing a long game with its proxies. Now that Mr. Assad is gone and the HTS-SNA coalition is in Damascus, Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to have outwitted Vladimir Putin, and extended his influence from Ankara to the borders of Iraq, Jordan and Israel.

Will the militants build a new Syria?

Many think the fall of a dictatorial regime would lead to a new dawn. For now, Syria’s militants have made the right noises — about respecting the country’s diversity and rebuilding its dilapidated institutions and welcoming back refugees. But Syria still remains a complex case — with or without Mr. Assad. Before Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, captured power in 1971, Syria had seen multiple coups and counter-coups. It was Hafez and his Ba’ath party that stabilised the country and built its modern institutions. Today, the challenge the militants face is to rebuild the country once again, by demobilising the militias. But the HTS neither has ideological clarity for an inclusive Syria nor the resources to demobilise other militias. The HTS is a Salafi-jihadist outfit, which wants to remake secular Syria and retain its tight grip over state institutions. If the HTS’s rule in Idlib is an example, the group is not any less dictatorial than Mr. Assad. The southern militias, backed by Jordan, would want to get their due share of power. And in the east, the SDF, the Kurdish militia, wants to keep their hard-earned autonomy. But Turkey sees the SDF as a terrorist outfit, and Turkish-backed militias have already started attacking the SDF.

In Afghanistan, throughout the 1980s, the U.S. and Pakistan-backed Mujahideen fought together against the communist regime as well as the Soviet troops. But after the Soviet withdrawal and the collapse of the communist rule, Afghanistan fell into deeper chaos. In Libya, NATO made a military intervention in 2011 to “liberate” the country from Mohammed Gaddafi. After Gaddafi’s regime, one of the most stable governments in Africa, was toppled and he was killed, the country fell into a bloody civil war — which is still going on. Iraq never recovered from the scars of America’s regime change war of 2003. None of these examples are encouraging for Syria.

Damascus:

Syria’s Islamist-led rebel alliance had been planning the surprise ouster of President Basher al-Assad for a year, an opposition military leader told the Guardian in an interview published Friday.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist group, which says it has moved away from its roots in  Al-Qaeda, has long-controlled a part of northwest Syria.

After being weakened in a 2019 government operation, the group realised the “fundamental problem was the absence of unified leadership and control over battle”, Abu Hassan al-Hamwi, an HTS commander and former leader of the group’s military wing, told the UK daily.

Correcting those mistakes, HTS began last year preparing for a retaliatory operation dubbed “Deterring Aggression” to oust Assad.

It strengthened its control over opposition groups in the northwest and trained up its own militia, developing a “comprehensive military doctrine”.

HTS then tried to bring together rebel and jihadist forces in southern Syria, under Assad’s control for the past six years, to create a “unified war room”, according to the Guardian article.

The “war room” convened commanders of 25 opposition groups who could steer the offensive against Assad from the south, with HTS driving in from the north, and converging in the capital and Assad’s stronghold Damascus.

The moment to launch the operation came in late November, with Syria’s staunch allies Iran and Russia distracted by other conflicts.

Over the weekend, the rebels succeeded in entering Damascus after sweeping through the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs in the north, causing Assad to flee the country and ending five decades of brutal rule by his clan.

“We had a conviction, supported by historical precedent: that ‘Damascus cannot fall until Aleppo falls'”, Hamwi said.

“The strength of the Syrian revolution was concentrated in the north, and we believed that once Aleppo was liberated, we could move southward toward Damascus,” he added.

The plan also involved developing better weapons to counter the technology Tehran and Moscow provided to the government forces.

“We needed reconnaissance drones, attack drones and suicide drones, with a focus on range and endurance,” Hamwi said, with drone production beginning as early as 2019.

Hamwi named a new exploding or “suicide drone” the “Shahin” drone, meaning falcon in Arabic, which “symbolised their precision and power”, the military leader said.

The “Shahin” drone was deployed for the first time against Assad’s forces this month, according to the Guardian, disabling artillery vehicles.

HTS is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by several Western powers, but has sought to reassure religious minorities and other governments since coming to power that it will usher in an inclusive leadership.

“We affirm that minorities in Syria are part of the nation and have the right to practice their rituals, education, and services like every other Syrian citizen,” Hamwi said.

“The regime planted division, and we are trying, as much as possible, to bridge these divides,” he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Syria’s Islamist militant leader on Tuesday (December 10, 2024) vowed to pursue former senior government officials responsible for torture and war crimes, a day after he began talks on the transfer of power following President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster.

Mr. Assad fled Syria as the Islamist-led opposition alliance swept into the capital Damascus, bringing a spectacular end on Sunday to five decades of brutal rule by his clan.

Also read | After Assad’s ouster, India calls for peaceful, inclusive political process in Syria

He oversaw a crackdown on a democracy movement that erupted in 2011, sparking a war that killed 5,00,000 people and forced half the country to flee their homes, millions of them finding refuge abroad.

“We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people,” militant leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, said on Tuesday in a statement on Telegram.

“We will offer rewards to anyone who provides information about senior army and security officers involved in war crimes,” he said, adding the incoming authorities would seek the return of officials who have fled abroad.

Sharaa held talks on Monday with outgoing Prime Minister Mohammed al-Jalali “to coordinate a transfer of power that guarantees the provision of services” to Syria’s people, according to an earlier statement on Telegram.

While Syria had been at war for over 13 years, the government’s collapse came in a matter of days in a lightning offensive led by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Even as some Syrians rejoiced and others rushed to search for loved ones in Mr. Assad’s notorious jails, Israel continued to carry out air strikes aimed at destroying the former government’s military capabilities, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Early on Tuesday, AFP journalists heard more loud explosions in Damascus.

Israeli strikes

The Syrian Observatory said on Tuesday that Israel had “destroyed the most important military sites in Syria” with a flurry of air strikes since the fall of Mr. Assad.

It said Israel has carried out “about 250 air strikes on Syrian territory” over the last 48 hours.

They targeted weapons depots, boats from the Assad government’s navy, and a research centre that Western countries suspected of having links to chemical weapons production, it said.

Near the port city of Latakia, Israel targeted an air defence facility and damaged Syrian naval ships as well as military warehouses.

In and around the capital Damascus, strikes targeted military installations, research centres, and the electronic warfare administration.

Israel, which borders Syria, also sent troops into a buffer zone east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights after Assad’s fall, in what Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described as a “limited and temporary step” for “security reasons”.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which had been allied to Mr. Assad, condemned the strikes late Monday and lambasted Israel for “occupying more land in the Golan Heights”.

Prison nightmare

At the core of the system of rule that Mr. Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centres used to eliminate dissent by those suspected of stepping out of the ruling Baath party’s line.

Thousands of Syrians gathered on Monday outside a jail synonymous with the worst atrocities of Mr. Assad’s rule to search for relatives, many of whom had spent years in the Saydnaya facility outside Damascus.

Rescuers from the Syrian White Helmets group had earlier said they were looking for potential secret doors or basements in Saydnaya.

“I ran like crazy” to get to the prison, said Aida Taha, 65, searching for her brother who was arrested in 2012.

“But I found out that some of the prisoners were still in the basements. There are three or four floors underground.”

Crowds of freed prisoners wandered the streets of Damascus distinguishable by the marks of their ordeal: maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger.

‘We are reborn’

In central Damascus on Monday, despite all the uncertainty over the future, the joy was palpable.

“It’s indescribable. We never thought this nightmare would end. We are reborn,” Rim Ramadan, 49, a civil servant at the finance ministry, told AFP.

“We were afraid for 55 years of speaking, even at home. We used to say the walls had ears,” Ramadan said, as people honked car horns and rebels fired their guns into the air.

Syria’s parliament, formerly pro-Assad like the Prime Minister, said it supports “the will of the people to build a new Syria towards a better future governed by law and justice”.

The Baath party said it will support “a transitional phase in Syria aimed at defending the unity of the country.”

Syrian state television’s logo on the Telegram messaging app now displays the rebel flag.

During the offensive launched on November 27, rebels met little resistance as they wrested city after city from Assad’s control, opening the gates of prisons along the way and freeing thousands, many of them held on political charges.

Some, like Fadwa Mahmoud, whose husband and son are missing, posted calls for help on social media.

“Where are you, Maher and Abdel Aziz? It’s time for me to hear your news. Oh God, please come back,” wrote Mahmoud, herself a former detainee.

Rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda, HTS is proscribed by Western governments as a terrorist group but has sought to soften its image in recent years.

Germany and France said in a statement they were ready to cooperate with Syria’s new leadership “on the basis of fundamental human rights and the protection of ethnic and religious minorities.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in Saudi Arabia on Monday, said HTS must reject “terrorism and violence” before Britain can engage with the group designated “terrorist” by London.

Washington’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, said the United States — with hundreds of troops in Syria as part of a coalition against Islamic State group jihadists — is determined to prevent IS from re-establishing safe havens.

“We have a clear interest in doing what we can to avoid the fragmentation of Syria, mass migrations from Syria and, of course, the export of terrorism and extremism,” Mr. Blinken said.

Assad in Moscow?

The United Nations said that whoever ends up in power in Syria must hold the Assad regime to account. But how the ousted leader might face justice remains unclear, especially after the Kremlin refused on Monday to confirm reports by Russian news agencies that he had fled to Moscow.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, said that if Russia granted asylum to Assad and his family, it would be a decision taken by President Vladimir Putin.

The Syrian embassy in Moscow raised the opposition’s flag, and the Kremlin said it would discuss the status of its bases in Syria with the new authorities.

Russia played an instrumental role in keeping Assad in power, directly intervening in the war starting in 2015 and providing air cover to the army during the rebellion.

A drone view shows buildings in Damascus, after Syrian rebels ousted President Bashar al-Assad, Syria December 10, 2024
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Syrian Islamist militant group, had been preparing for months for a large-scale offensive against regime forces. The civil war was quiet for years, particularly after the regime of President Bashar al-Assad captured most of its lost territories — including Aleppo, Hama and Homs. The HTS, formerly al-Nusra Front, the Syrian arm of al-Qaeda, had built a statelet in Idlib, in northwestern Syria, under the leadership of its ‘emir’, Abu Muhammed al-Jolani. The HTS and its ally Syrian National Army (SNA), formerly the Free Syrian Army, had informed Turkiye, their patron, at least six months ago about the offensive plan, according to a Reuters report. And Ankara had given its tacit approval.

Mr. Assad’s troops were in a bad shape. Soldiers were poorly paid and lacked motivation. The country never recovered from the scars of the civil war. Under crippling American sanctions, its finances were in shambles. During the peak of the civil war, in 2015-16, Mr. Assad had heavily relied on his external allies for security — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Now, the situation was different. The Russians were focused on Ukraine. Iran lost a host of its Syria commanders to Israeli strikes. Hezbollah had been weakened in a year-long war with Israel. The HTS launched its offensive on November 27, the day Israel and Lebanon signed a ceasefire. On the 12th day, the Assad regime fell, sending tremors across the region.

Offensive begins

When they launched the offensive, the militants’ initial target was the western suburbs of Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city which Mr. Assad’s forces recaptured in 2016, after four years of a brutal battle. When HTS and SNA militants advanced towards Aleppo, they faced little resistance from government forces. Within four days, they reached Aleppo’s city centre.

The rapid collapse of government forces in Aleppo stunned both the militants and the regime alike. And Mr. Assad’s allies took note of it. The HTS’s victory triggered rebellion elsewhere in the country. In the south, local militias, who were backed by Jordan, started attacking government positions. In the northeast, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish militia, started advancing towards the eastern city of Deir Ezzour. The HTS, the main militant group, marched south from Aleppo towards Hama. On December 5, they entered Hama. Mr. Assad’s forces did not fight back. Some of them crossed the border to Iraq, seeking refuge. Others abandoned their uniforms and fled. The militants raided military depots and grabbed more weapons, making their position stronger. Mr. Assad turned to Iran and Russia for help. But Syrian and other Arab officials say both Russia and Iran told the Syrian President that they could not help him much this time. Iran, according to some reports, evacuated its personnel from Syria.

Shrinking circle

Mr. Assad’s circle was shrinking. His troops are not fighting back. He is not getting any external help. The militants are on a march from multiple fronts. From Hama, the HTS advanced towards Homs, a strategically important city that sits at an intersection between Syria’s Mediterranean coast and Damascus, the seat of power. If Homs falls, Damascus would be cut off from Mr. Assad’s coastal stronghold. On December 7, HTS-linked militants entered Homs, Syria’s third largest city. The next day, the Southern Front, militants from the south who had already taken Daara, entered Damascus first, followed by the HTS. Syria’s Prime Minister Muhammad al-Jalali said he would ensure a peaceful transition of power. The army chief said Mr. Assad’s government was over, bringing the almost 60-year rule of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party in Syria to a dramatic end. Later in the day, Russia said Mr. Assad and his family were in Moscow and granted political asylum.

Different rebel groups

The fall of the regime leaves a huge vacuum in Syria. Until December 8, the opposition militias had a common enemy–’Assad the tyrant’. Now, they are facing each other while trying to expand their influence. Roughly, there are four rebel coalitions in Syria. One, the HTS, led by Jolani. It is the most prominent one. HTS telegram channels already call him ‘President’ Shara, referring to his real name, Ahmed Hussein al-Shara. The HTS has built a statelet in Idlib and some 25,000 soldiers under its command. But that’s not enough to run a vast country like Syria. But the HTS certainly wants to play a key role in the new Syria, and has sent reconciliatory messages to the country’s different sects and militias. The SAA, another northern militia, is an ally of the HTS and a proxy of Turkiye.

Two, local militias in the south. They would not like to give up their privileges. That they entered Damascus first was a clear message to Jolani that he was not the only ‘rebel’ in the game. Three, the SDF, the Kurdish militia. In the northeast, the Kurds have enjoyed relative autonomy since the beginning of the civil war. But Turkiye was alarmed by the Kurds’s growing strengths and had launched incursions into Syria in the past, grabbing territories on the border. The SDF would not like to give up their autonomy, which could put them on a collision course with the HTS and the SAA, the Turkish backed groups. And lastly, there are Alawites, Mr. Assad’s sect who live mostly in the mountainous coastal regions of Latakia and Tartus, and enjoyed power for nearly 50 decades. The Alawites were the backbone of the Syrian army. They are unlikely to immediately trust Jolani, a committed Salafi Islamist militant, whose group in the past had carried out targeted attacks against Alawites.

Syria is a diverse country. It now has a diverse set of militias, without a central authority. And then there are external players. Turkiye, as the main supporter of northern militias (HTS and SAA), would seek to extend its influence in the government formation. Jordan would like to see the southern militias getting their due. The Gulf Arabs, who are wary of both Islamists and Turkiye, would be alarmed by the developments. Iran risks losing its territorial link with Hezbollah. Russia’s primary objective would be to safeguard its Tartus naval base and Khmeimim air base. And Israel has already sent troops to capture land in Syria’s Golan Heights and is carrying out massive air strikes aimed at destroying the Syrian army’s military capabilities.