Amy Pope, Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The raft of international sanctions on Syria must be reassessed to help the country rebuild following the ousting of president Bashar al-Assad, the head of the UN’s migration agency said on Friday (December 20, 2024).

Amy Pope also said Syria’s women must be empowered to play a full role in building a new society and bringing stability to the shattered nation.

Also read | U.S. diplomats visit Syria to meet new rulers

The lightning offensive that forced Mr. Assad’s departure was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch but has more recently adopted a moderate tone.

The international community has been in no rush to lift sanctions on either Syria or members of HTS, waiting to see how the new authorities exercise their power.

“In terms of the sanctions, we really are talking about all the sanctions: UN sanctions, U.S. sanctions, other sanctions,” said International Organization for Migration chief Pope after visiting the country.

“You can see that across the board the sanctions have had quite a significant effect, especially on vulnerable populations. So to rebuild the situation, there will be a need to re-evaluate those sanctions,” she told a press conference in Geneva.

“People do not have access to credit. They are very much reliant on cash.

“The salaries that people are getting for work are extremely low.”

The ousting of Mr. Assad ended decades of abuses and years of civil war, but it has raised concerns about the rights of minorities, as well as women, and the future of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

On Thursday, hundreds of demonstrators in Damascus demanded democracy and women’s rights, in the first such protest since Assad’s departure.

“We… are strongly urging the caretaker government to continue to empower and enable women, because they are going to be absolutely critical to the rebuilding of the country,” Pope said.

People wave flags in celebration while standing on an old city wall after thousands of people participated in the first Friday prayer after performing the first Friday prayer since the fall of the Assad regime at the Umayyad Mosque on December 13, 2024 in Damascus, Syria.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday told Turkey it was “imperative” to work against a resurgence of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

The top U.S. diplomat also said he saw “encouraging signs” on reaching a ceasefire in the war-torn Gaza Strip.

His remarks came on the second leg of a whirlwind regional tour following Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in a lightning offensive spearheaded by Islamist-led HTS rebels, ending five decades of repressive rule by his clan.

He flew to Turkey on Thursday evening where he met for more than an hour with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at Ankara airport, a US official said.

“Our country worked very hard and gave a lot over many years to ensure the elimination of the territorial caliphate of ISIS (IS), to ensure that threat doesn’t rear its head again,” Blinken said.

“And it’s imperative we keep at those efforts.”

In response, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Blinken Turkey was committed to ensuring stability in Syria “as soon as possible” and “preventing ISIS” jihadists from gaining a foothold there.

On Thursday, Erdogan assured Blinken Turkey would never ease up in the fight against IS in Syria, despite its operations against Kurdish fighters seen as key to containing the extremists.

“Turkey will never allow any weakness to arise in the fight against ISIS,” Erdogan said while vowing not to let up in its pursuit of groups Ankara sees as a threat to its national security.

Divisions over Kurdish-led SDF

As the Islamist-led rebels marched on Damascus, Turkey and its proxies began their own offensive against the Kurdish-led SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces).

Turkey sees the SDF as an extension of the banned PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) that has fought a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil.

But Washington sees the force as a key ally for spearheading an offensive that defeated IS’s self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019, with Blinken saying Thursday the SDF was “critical” to preventing a jihadist resurgence there.

The fighting between the two proxy forces has raised concern about the NATO allies’ competing interests in Syria.

Faik Bulut, an expert on the Kurdish question, told AFP Turkey was likely seeking “to take advantage of the vacuum to cleanse the region” of Kurdish fighters.

That way Erdogan could “be in a position of strength” during talks with incoming US president Donald Trump, he assessed.

With Turkey’s own powerful military, control over its Syrian proxy forces and influence over the HTS rebels that ousted Assad, Erdogan could likely tell Trump: “‘Hand this region to me and I will destroy ISIS. Give me responsibility and you’ll see’,” Balut said.

‘Encouraging signs’ of Gaza truce

Blinken also said he saw “encouraging signs” of progress toward a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, urging Turkey to use its influence to encourage Hamas to accept.

“We discussed Gaza, and we discussed I think the opportunity… to get a ceasefire in place. And what we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks are more encouraging signs that that is possible,” Blinken said.

Blinken, who leaves office next month following Trump’s election victory, began his tour in Jordan on Thursday on his 12th visit to the Middle East since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

“We talked about the imperative of Hamas saying ‘yes’ to the agreement that’s possible, to finally help bring this to an end,” he said.

“We appreciate very much the role Turkey can play in using its voice with Hamas to try to bring this to conclusion.”

Turkey has long had close ties with Hamas, viewing it as a national liberation movement rather than a proscribed terror organisation like most Western nations.

A blistering critic of Israel, Erdogan has frequently hosted Hamas’ political leaders who have used Istanbul as one of their foreign bases during his two-decade rule.

A worker tears down the pictures of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Lebanon’s late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a gas station in Nubl, a Shi’ite village seized by rebels, in rural Aleppo, Syria, December 11, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the country has to live with the new “realities” of Syria after the ouster of Tehran-backed president Bashar al-Assad, state media reported on Thursday (December 12, 2024).

Regarding Syria, Iran “was really trying day and night to help in whatever way it could; we have to live with the realities of Syria; we look at them and act based on them,” Hossein Salami said, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.

“Strategies must change according to the circumstances; we cannot solve numerous global and regional issues with stagnation and employing the same tactics,” he added.

Iran has been a strong ally of the Assad family, whose decades-long rule of Syria ended on the weekend when a whirlwind rebel offensive took the capital Damascus.

Assad had long played a strategic role in Iran’s anti-Israel “axis of resistance”, particularly in facilitating the supply of weapons to Tehran’s ally Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.

The axis of resistance includes Hezbollah as well as Hamas in Gaza, Huthi rebels in Yemen and some smaller Shia militia groups in Iraq.

Also on Thursday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps strongly condemned “the abuse of the current instability in Syria by the US and the Zionist regime,” which is Iran’s term for Israel.

“The Resistance Front will not be passive in confronting any plan or scheme that seeks to disrupt the resistance and weaken the power and authority of the countries in the region,” the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement.

Turkey has forces in northern Syria, while in the south the Israeli army has sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone on the countries’ shared border, east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

The United States also has troops based in Syria, where they have worked with Kurdish-led fighters battling the Islamic State group.

Ties between Tehran and Damascus peaked during the Syrian civil war that started in 2011, with the Revolutionary Guards sending what it called “military advisers” to help Assad.