Syria’s new ruler is politically astute | Global News Avenue

When I left London about two weeks ago after the rebel coalition captured Aleppo – a stunning victory that was dwarfed by what followed – I thought I would cover a gun battle.

The group known as “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” (HTS) swept through everything before it, but I think the regime will fight because it hasn’t stopped fighting as it did in the years before the 2015 Russian intervention bombing Defeated steadily. Syrian towns and villages were reduced to rubble.

Nearly a decade later, it’s clear that Bashar Assad’s Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies have other wars to consider.

Yet while the Syrian regime struggled with reluctant conscripts, it always found Syrians willing to fight and die for it, even during the height of the war after 2011, when rebels took control of central Damascus Most areas outside and on the road to Beirut.

I visited those on the front lines many times.

Many of the most effective forces are led by officials from Assad’s own Alawite community.

In Aleppo around 2015, an Alawite general handed out glasses of perfectly distilled arrack poured from bottles that once held Jack Daniels.

He proudly said that arak, an anise-based spirit popular in the Middle East, comes from the Assad family’s hometown in the hills behind the port of Latakia. Outside, his troops were attacking the rebel-held east side of the city.

Not everyone is Alawite. In the Chobar district on the edge of central Damascus, a Christian officer in the Syrian Arab Army loyal to Assad took me into tunnels they had dug under the rubble to attack rebels.

He told how the rebels also had tunnels and sometimes they would break into each other’s tunnels and kill people in the dark.

The young man, who has a cross tattooed on his wrist and another on his neck, spoke of how he fights to protect his community from jihadist extremists on the other side.

My intuition about the fighting spirit of Assad’s loyalist ranks was dead wrong.

On Saturday, December 7, I went to bed after hearing the news about the fall of Homs.

When I woke up, Bashar al-Assad was on his way to Russia and rebel fighters were celebrating in the streets of Damascus.

They fired more bullets into the air in celebration than they fired in anger at Assad loyalists fleeing for their lives.

I saw hundreds of cars lined up at the Lebanese border, packed with disaffected, defeated people and frightened families, waiting to leave.

Ordinary soldiers threw away their uniforms and weapons and went home without firing a shot.

Assad’s regime is broken and hollowed out by corruption, cruelty and a brutal disregard for Syrian life. Even Assad’s own Alawite community isn’t fighting for him.

That’s why on Thursday night this week, instead of dodging shells and bullets in the icy streets of Homs or Hama, as I expected, I walked through the presidential palace in Damascus with Syrian President Ahmed Sala. Marble hall. De facto leader.

He gave up his uniform and changed his wartime alias, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, to his real name.

Many Syrians are skeptical of his assertion that he has also abandoned his old jihadi beliefs for a more tolerant Syrian religious nationalism.

Indeed, he broke with Al Qaeda in 2016 after a long career as a jihadist fighter in Iraq and Syria. But as I discovered in Assad’s palace, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a tall, quiet-spoken man in his early forties, was unwilling to give in to what he wanted. Syria was too specific.

He comes across as very intelligent and politically astute. Like many savvy politicians, he often doesn’t answer straightforward questions directly.

He denies that he wants Syria to become the Afghanistan of the Middle East.

The Taliban, he said, rule “a tribal society. Syria is completely different.” Syria’s new rulers will respect its culture and history.

When I asked whether women would get the freedoms they expected here, he said that in Idlib, his base of power, 60 percent of students at universities are women.

But he tried not to answer questions about forcing women to wear hijab (Islamic clothing).

Rumors have been circulating in Damascus about bearded HTS men ordering women to cover their hair.

I pointed out that a woman started a huge debate on social media by asking to take a photo with him and then pulling up her hood while taking the photo.

Conservatives criticized Sala for agreeing to be photographed with a woman who was not a member of his family. Liberals saw her hat as a dark omen for Syria’s future.

If he was irritated by the question, he didn’t show it.

“I didn’t force her. But that’s my personal freedom. I wanted the photos taken in a way that suited me. I didn’t force her. It’s not the same as making laws that apply across the country. But there’s a culture in this country where the law requires Admit it.”

Sala was referring to the fact that many Syrians, not just the majority Sunni Muslim community, are devout.

Many women wear headscarves. The point, secular Syrians would say, is to be able to choose.

During the half-century of Assad’s rule, Syrians developed survival strategies that often included hiding their feelings and doing what was expected of them.

Shocked, nervous, secular Syrians showed me videos on their phones of students holding mass prayers outside universities as they returned to school last Sunday.

Is this true piety, they ask, or are young people doing what they are told because they have been that way their entire lives?

Sala said it would all be up to a panel of legal experts to decide the issue of the new constitution.

Sala’s critics will point to, as it stands, who he has chosen to serve on the committee that he says will draft new laws and a new constitution.

What Ahmed Salad most wanted to talk about was the oppression of the people by the old regime.

“The problem in Syria is much bigger than the question you are asking. Half of the population has been driven out of Syria or forced to leave their homes.

“They were attacked with barrel bombs and unguided dumb bombs, and suffered more than 250 chemical attacks. Many Syrians drowned while trying to flee to Europe.”

He recognized that if sanctions were not lifted, Syria would have no chance of beginning to stabilize and rebuild.

Sanctions were initially targeted at the Assad regime. Preserving them, he said, meant treating the victims like their oppressors.

He denies that the group he leads is a terrorist organization, which is the current position of the United Nations and most of the world’s most powerful countries.

Visits by foreign diplomats show that changing sanctions and terrorist lists is possible.

He was dismissive when I pointed out that I knew diplomats had told him that changing that status would depend on him keeping his pledge to respect minority rights and pursue an inclusive political process.

“What’s important to me is that the Syrian people believe in me. We promised the Syrian people to free them from this criminal regime, and we did that. That’s the most important thing to me.”

“I don’t care much about what foreign countries think of us. I have no obligation to prove to the world that we are serious about working to achieve the interests of the Syrian people.”

Over the past two weeks, I’ve heard many Syrians say they want to be left alone to try to rebuild their country.

This sounds like a pipe dream.

The war destroyed much of the country but also stripped Syria of its sovereignty.

Bashar Assad became a client of Iran and Russia, and when they stopped supporting him, he fled the country.

The United States is in the northeast, hunting down remnants of the Islamic State and protecting its Kurdish allies.

Türkiye controls much of the northwest and has its own Arab-led militias.

There are signs that Turks close to HTS are preparing for a new round of attacks against Syrian Kurds who are close to Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

Israel is now as aggressive as it has been in years, most openly exploiting the power vacuum it sees in Syria.

It continues to bomb the country’s remaining military infrastructure and seize more Syrian land to replenish the Golan Heights it has occupied since 1967.

The Israelis, as always, justified their actions as self-defence.

Geir Pedersen, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, told me that Israel’s behavior was “irresponsible.” He said Israel’s actions should not “destabilize this very, very fragile transition process.”

Ahmed Shala knew he could not stand up to US-backed Israeli power.

“Whether Israel is strong or not, Syria is exhausted from the war. Syria needs to become stronger and more developed. We have no plans to invade Israel. Syria does not pose a threat to Israel or anyone.”

Ahmed Sala’s agenda is full.

Syria is a broken country he says he wants to repair and revive, fraught with challenges that may make his task impossible.

HTS is not the only armed group in Syria, there are others who want to destroy his fledgling government. Enemies of HTS within the Islamic State network may attempt destabilizing attacks.

If HTS fails to show that it is bringing to justice those who have long pressured Syria, Syrians’ desire for revenge against Assad’s killers and the former president himself could explode into devastating public anger.

Ahmed Sala is right to see Syria as a pivot in the center of the Middle East.

“Syria is an important country with a strategic position and is very influential in the world. On the one hand, look at the performance of the United States in it, and on the other hand, look at the performance of Russia and regional countries such as Turkey, Iran and Israel.”

That’s why the outside world should help Syria recover, he said.

This is why powerful countries may not let this happen.