Syria’s new chief is politically savvy

After I left London nearly two weeks in the past after the insurgent coalition captured Aleppo – a convincing victory overshadowed by what adopted – I believed I’d discuss a capturing battle.

The group referred to as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, was sweeping all earlier than it, however I believed the regime would combat, and it didn’t cease doing in order it misplaced floor within the years that adopted. preceded the Russian intervention in 2015 to bomb. Syrian cities and villages in ruins.

Practically a decade later, it was clear that Bashar al-Assad’s Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies had different wars to combat.

However whereas the regime struggled with reluctant conscripts, it might at all times discover Syrians keen to combat and die for it, even on the top of the battle after 2011, when rebels managed a lot of Damascus exterior the middle -city and the street resulting in Beirut.

I visited these males on the entrance traces a number of occasions.

Lots of the best models have been led by officers from Assad’s Alawite group.

In Aleppo, circa 2015, an Alawite basic handed out glasses of completely distilled arak, poured from bottles that when contained Jack Daniels.

He mentioned with pleasure that arak, an anise-based spirit standard all through the Center East, got here from the Assad household’s hometown within the hills behind the port of Latakia. Outdoors, his unit shelled the rebel-held jap a part of the town.

Not all of them have been Alawites. In Jobar, a neighborhood on the outskirts of central Damascus, a Christian officer loyal to Assad from the Syrian Arab Military took me into the tunnels they’d dug beneath the ruins to assault the rebels.

He mentioned the rebels additionally had tunnels and typically they broke into one another, killing within the darkness.

The younger man had a crucifix tattooed on his wrist and one other round his neck, and he recounted how he needed to combat to guard his group from jihadist extremists on the opposite aspect.

My intuition in regards to the preventing spirit of the exhausted band of Assad loyalists couldn’t have been extra fallacious.

On Saturday, December 7, I fell asleep after listening to the information of the autumn of Homs.

By the point I awakened, Bashar al-Assad was on his approach to Russia and insurgent fighters have been beginning to get together within the streets of Damascus.

They fired extra bullets into the air in celebration than in anger at Assad loyalists, who have been operating for his or her lives.

I noticed a whole bunch of vehicles lining as much as go away for the border with Lebanon, stuffed with disgruntled, defeated males and frightened households.

The rank and file troopers deserted their uniforms and weapons with out firing a single shot and returned dwelling.

Assad’s regime collapsed, hollowed out by corruption, cruelty and brutal disregard for the lives of Syrians. Even Assad’s Alawite group didn’t combat for him.

That is why on Thursday night this week, as a substitute of sheltering from shells and bullets on a freezing avenue in Homs or Hama, as I anticipated, I walked by the marble halls of the presidential palace in Damascus with Ahmed al-Sharaa, the Syrian president. de facto chief.

He deserted his uniform and swapped his wartime alias, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, for his actual identify.

Many Syrians doubt his declare that he has additionally swapped his previous jihadist beliefs for a extra tolerant type of Syrian spiritual nationalism.

It’s true that he broke with Al-Qaeda in 2016, after an extended profession as a jihadist fighter in Iraq and Syria. However as I found in Assad’s palace, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a tall, discreet man in his forties, is reluctant to be too particular in regards to the Syria he desires.

He comes throughout as very clever and politically astute. Like many clever politicians, he typically would not give a transparent reply to a direct query.

He denied wanting Syria to change into an Afghanistan of the Center East.

The Taliban, he mentioned, ran “a tribal society. Syria is totally totally different.” Syria’s new leaders would respect its tradition and historical past.

After I requested whether or not girls would benefit from the freedoms they count on right here, he replied that 60 p.c of scholars at universities in Idlib, his energy base, have been girls.

However he tried to not reply a query in regards to the requirement for hijab – Islamic costume – for ladies.

Damascus is rife with rumors that bearded HTS males ordered girls to cowl their hair.

I identified that there was a giant argument on social media after a lady requested for a selfie with him, then pulled up her hood when she took the photograph.

Conservatives criticized al-Sharaa for agreeing to pose with a lady who was not a part of his household. Liberals considered his standing as a darkish omen for Syria’s future.

If he was exasperated by the query, he did not present it.

“I did not pressure it. Nevertheless it’s my private freedom. I need photographs taken for me in the best way that fits me. I did not pressure it. It isn’t the identical as to have a regulation on this topic that applies all through the nation. However there’s a tradition on this nation that the regulation should acknowledge.

Al-Sharaa was referring to the truth that many Syrians, not simply within the predominantly Sunni Muslim group, are pious.

Many ladies put on the hijab. The principle factor, secular Syrians would say, is to have the ability to select.

Throughout half a century of Assad’s rule, Syrians developed survival methods that always concerned hiding their very own emotions and doing what was anticipated of them.

Shocked, nervous secular Syrians confirmed me movies on their telephones of mass prayers in entrance of universities when college students returned final Sunday.

Was this, they requested, actual piety or younger individuals doing what they have been advised as a result of that is the best way issues have been right here all their lives?

In line with al-Sharaa, all this may come beneath a brand new structure that will probably be determined by a bunch of authorized specialists.

Critics of Al-Sharaa will level out that as issues stand, it’s he who chooses the members of the committee which he claims will draft new legal guidelines in addition to a brand new structure.

Ahmed al-Sharaa particularly wished to speak in regards to the oppression of the individuals by the previous regime.

“The Syrian issues are a lot larger than the issues you’re speaking about. Half the inhabitants has been expelled from Syria or forcibly displaced from their properties.

“They have been focused with barrel bombs, unguided dumb bombs and greater than 250 chemical assaults. Many Syrians drowned at sea whereas attempting to flee to Europe.”

He acknowledged that Syria has no probability of starting to stabilize and rebuild if sanctions should not lifted.

The sanctions have been initially aimed on the Assad regime. Holding them, he mentioned, meant treating the sufferer the identical because the oppressor.

He has denied that the group he leads is a terrorist group, which is at the moment the place of the UN and many of the world’s strongest nations.

Visits by international diplomats recommend it is likely to be potential to alter each sanctions and terrorist lists.

He was dismissive after I identified that I knew diplomats had advised him that altering that standing would rely upon proving he stored his promise to respect minority rights and lead an inclusive political course of.

“What issues to me is that the Syrian individuals consider me. We promised the Syrian those who we might free them from this prison regime and we did it. That’s what issues to me first and final place.

“I do not actually care what will probably be mentioned about us overseas. I’m not obliged to show to the world that we’re severely working to defend the pursuits of our individuals in Syria.”

Over the previous two weeks, I’ve heard many Syrians say they wish to be left alone to attempt to rebuild their nation.

It looks like a pipe dream.

The battle destroyed a lot of the nation, but it surely additionally gutted Syria’s sovereignty.

Bashar al-Assad grew to become a shopper of Iran and Russia and fled the nation when the latter stopped supporting him.

America is current within the northeast of the nation to search out remnants of the Islamic State and shield its Kurdish allies.

Turkey controls a lot of the northwest of the nation and has its personal Arab-led militia.

There are indicators that the Turks, who’ve shut relations with HTS, are making ready a brand new assault in opposition to the Syrian Kurds, who’ve shut relations with Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

The occupying Zionist entity, at the moment as aggressive because it has been in a few years, has very overtly exploited the facility vacuum it has seen in Syria.

It continues to bomb the stays of the state’s navy infrastructure and acceptable extra Syrian land so as to add to the Golan Heights it has occupied since 1967.

The The occupying Zionist entityis, as at all times, justify their actions by self-defense.

The UN particular envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, advised me that The occupying Zionist entity’s actions have been “irresponsible.” The occupying Zionist entity, he mentioned, shouldn’t act in a method that would “destabilize this very, very fragile transition course of.”

Ahmed al-Sharaa is aware of he can’t stand as much as US-backed The occupying Zionist entityi energy.

“Syria is exhausted by battle, whether or not The occupying Zionist entity is powerful or not. Syria should change into stronger and extra developed. Now we have no plans for aggression in opposition to The occupying Zionist entity. Syria won’t pose a menace to The occupying Zionist entity or anybody else. no matter.”

Ahmed al-Sharaa’s schedule is saturated.

Syria is a damaged nation that he says he desires to restore and revive, stuffed with challenges that would make his job inconceivable.

HTS isn’t the one armed group in Syria and a few wish to destroy its new administration. HTS’s enemies inside the Islamic State community might try destabilizing assaults.

Syrians’ need for revenge in opposition to Assad’s killers – and in opposition to the ex-president himself – might explode into damaging public anger if HTS can’t present it’s bringing to justice the lads who stored their boots on the throats of Syrians for therefore lengthy.

Ahmed al-Sharaa rightly sees Syria as a fulcrum on the coronary heart of the Center East.

“Syria is a vital nation with a strategic location, very influential on the planet. Take a look at how America is current there on one aspect, Russia on the opposite and nations within the area like Turkey, Iran and The occupying Zionist entity too.”

For this reason, he says, the surface world ought to assist Syria get well.

That is additionally why highly effective states may not permit this to occur.