The rebels who seized control of Syria confronted the challenge on Wednesday of striking a balance between obtaining justice for the victims of atrocities committed under the ousted Assad regime and preventing the newly liberated country from descending into unchecked vengeance.
While Syria’s new leaders have promised amnesty for conscripted soldiers who served under the former president, Bashar al-Assad, the leader of the rebel force that toppled him made clear on Wednesday that those who helped Mr. al-Assad brutalize or slaughter would be held accountable.
“We won’t pardon those complicit in the torture and murder of detainees, and we will go after them in our country,” the leader of the rebel offensive, Ahmed al-Shara, said on the Telegram messaging app. “We call on nations to hand over to us whoever of those criminals has escaped to them to subject them to justice.”
Mr. al-Shara did not name any countries in particular, but Mr. al-Assad arrived in Russia over the weekend as the rebels swept into Damascus, the Syrian capital.
Mr. al-Shara’s comments came as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, warned that armed groups had carried out retaliatory attacks on civilians in areas that were once considered loyal to the Assad government. But it was not clear who was carrying out the violence, or directing it.
Video circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times shows fighters inside the mausoleum of Hafez al-Assad, the former Syrian president and the father of Bashar al-Assad, in the northwestern town of al-Qardaha.
As one of the fighters steps on the tomb, another can be heard thanking God. “This is avenging my cousins and their sons, who were killed by this criminal, Hafez al-Assad, in the 1980s,” he says. “This is our revenge.” In another clip, the rebels can be seen setting fire to parts of the tomb.
The Observatory reported that groups of gunmen were preparing to hunt down former commanders of Mr. al-Assad’s military and that armed groups dressed in military uniforms were looting property and intimidating residents of Latakia Province, the heartland of the Alawite minority to which the Assad family belongs, prompting fears of sectarian strife.
While Syria is a majority Sunni Muslim country, it has significant communities of Christians and Druse, as well as others who adhere to different sects of Islam. Many of the ousted regime’s top figures came from the Alawite sect.
Fears of a breakdown in security and of retaliation against supporters of the Assad regime — and Alawites and Shia Muslims more broadly — have led some to flee to neighboring Lebanon.
The rebel group headed by Mr. al-Shara, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is Sunni, but has promised to work with all groups.
On Wednesday afternoon, one former Syrian army soldier, Abdallah Fahed, 44, lugged his small suitcase over the Masnaa border crossing as tears streamed down his cheeks. He said he did not believe the new leadership’s promises of amnesty and reconciliation.
“They will take revenge,” Mr. Fahed said. “What they are doing behind the camera is taking army soldiers and killing them. I don’t feel safe going back.”
The struggle to unify the country came as Syria’s new leaders sought to establish a functioning government from the ruins of the Assad regime.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera published on Wednesday, Mohammed al-Bashir, Syria’s newly appointed caretaker prime minister, said that restoring “security and stability in all Syrian cities,” was his government’s first priority.
“People are exhausted by injustice and tyranny,” Mr. al-Bashir said. “The authority of the state must be re-established to allow people to return to work and resume their normal lives.”
But law and order require financing, he noted — something he said the new government does not have. “Our coffers are empty,” he said. “We are inheriting a bloated administration plagued by corruption.”
He also said that the country had only Syrian pounds, “which are worth next to nothing,” and no foreign reserves. “So yes, financially, we are in a very bad state,” he said.
The swift collapse of the Assad government and the resulting power vacuum have set off fresh fighting among armed factions in the country. Clashes in recent days have centered on Manbij, in northern Syria, pitting forces backed by the United States against those backed by Turkey, a NATO ally.
On Wednesday, the Kurdish-led group supported by the United States said it had agreed to a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in Manbij, which American officials have not confirmed. The Syrian Observatory reported that the Turkish-backed forces had captured Manbij on Monday, a claim that the American-backed group, the Syrian Democratic Forces, denied.
The U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd J. Austin III, said on Wednesday that protecting American troops in the area was his “No. 1 priority.” About 900 U.S. troops are stationed in northeast Syria, working with the Kurdish force to fight the Islamic State.
Since the fall of Mr. al-Assad, U.S. officials have begun a diplomatic push to promote stability in Syria. The effort has been complicated because Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the rebellion, is designated as a terrorist group by the United States and the United Nations. The group, once linked to Al Qaeda, has been accused of human rights violations in the years it has governed a part of northwestern Syria.
President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, plans to hold meetings about Syria this week in Israel, while Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken plans to visit Turkey and Jordan. Mr. Blinken plans to press his hosts for help in ensuring a transition to an “accountable and representative” Syrian government that respects the rights of minorities, the State Department said.
The department also said that the new government should “prevent Syria from being used as a base of terrorism or posing a threat to its neighbors, and ensure that chemical weapons stockpiles are secured and safely destroyed.”
The American diplomatic effort comes as Israel, the closest U.S. ally in the region, has launched hundreds of strikes on military assets in Syria, saying it wants to keep weapons out of the hands of extremists.
The State Department’s top counterterrorism official, Elizabeth Richard, acknowledged on Wednesday that the Biden administration had been surprised by the sudden collapse of the Assad regime. She said that the U.S. would need to find ways to engage with Syria’s new government, however troubling aspects of its past may be.
“We can’t wait till everyone is Mother Teresa and then talk to them,” said Ms. Richard, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. “This situation illustrates how much these days we need to work in the gray. This is not black and white. This is not good guys and bad guys.”
She continued: “That does not mean we recognize a terrorist group as the owner of Syria today. There’s a lot that needs to happen before that happens. However, I think we have gotten more comfortable as a government in working in the gray.”
The post Syria’s New Leaders Balance Huge Struggles Amid Disorder appeared first on New York Times.
