Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
Freed from the Assad family and its apparatus of cruel repression, Syrians remain euphoric about the sudden collapse of a regime that ruled by leveraging fear, surveillance and intimidation, resorting to bestial torture and wanton slaughter when all else failed.
“You can walk around Damascus now without encountering checkpoints, without having to see pictures of Bashar al-Assad everywhere,” said Bassam al-Kuwatli, president of the Syrian liberal party Ahrar. “The statues of him are gone, and so, too, the fear of being harassed at every turn by his henchmen.”
Kuwatli is experiencing the shock of return — last week, he came back to his home city after 28 years in exile. “I was worried I wouldn’t recognize anything, but the core of the city hasn’t changed a bit.” he told POLITICO. And he had no trouble crossing the border from Lebanon despite his expired Syrian passport. “They just stamped an extra piece of paper,” he said.
Once in Damascus, Kuwatli found “people were allowing themselves a bit of optimism.” But the hopefulness, he noticed, was laced with caution. “Will there be trouble or not? Are they going to restore democracy or not? People aren’t absolutely sure. Part of this is because the new administration isn’t talking to them — just to the West and especially the Western media,” he said.
And it’s true. Syria’s new leader Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a, the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — the main insurgent Islamist faction that marched into Damascus last month — has gone out of his way to reassure Western nations of an inclusive transition that’s respectful of the country’s religious sects and ethnic minorities. Though he hasn’t actually defined what the transition will yield — and some are beginning to wonder if he even knows.
There’s also the worry that the HTS definition of inclusion may not bear much resemblance to that of Western powers — nor to that of many Syrians, especially pro-democracy activists and the urban middle class of the country’s big cities.
But Shar’a has been lobbying intensely, hoping to have the decades-old economic sanctions on Syria lifted in order to rebuild the war-devastated country. And with the support of Turkey and the Arab rulers of the Gulf, all of them keen to secure reconstruction deals with Syria’s new rulers, he’s been making headway.
Last week, the U.S. administration announced a six-month sanctions exemption for transactions and business conducted with the transitional governing institutions, aiming to ease the flow of humanitarian assistance. And after a high-level weekend meeting in Riyadh, European foreign ministers have now agreed to meet at the end of this month to discuss lifting sanctions. Germany, Italy and France in particular have been pushing for EU sanctions on Syria to be relaxed.
“Germany proposes to take a smart approach to sanctions, providing relief for the Syrian population. Syrians now need a quick dividend from the transition of power,” German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock told reporters.
But Shar’a remains an enigmatic figure. He’s undergone a makeover, quickened over recent months, and has sought to distance himself from his jihadist past and ties to al Qaeda, framing it almost as a youthful indiscretion.
Certainly, while governing the rebel enclave of Idlib over the past eight years, HTS’ rule wasn’t as harsh as that of the Islamic State or the Taliban, focusing on governance and the effective delivery of local services. According to a study by Munqeth Othman Agha of the Middle East Institute, HTS “pursued a legitimacy-building strategy, adopting revolutionary nationalist rhetoric and engaging tribal leaders and community notables.” Accordingly, some civil society groups were able to operate and girls were able to attend classes — although some restrictions were still imposed on the latter.
However, HTS didn’t recognize independent political parties in Idlib, and stifled dissent, curtailing and hindering the activities of journalists and critics. The group also maintained tight control over the daily lives of civilians. “People were detained following comments made in private conversations pertaining to the cost of living or religious matters,” noted the U.N.’s 2022 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.
Furthermore, “so-called morality codes disproportionately affected women and girls, amounting to gender-based discrimination in the enjoyment of their rights,” the report said. The morality police are known to have enforced dress codes on women.
HTS also denied detainees access to lawyers, and committed war crimes by “carrying out executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court.” There were corroborated reports of arbitrary arrests, torture and sexual violence, while a “spoils of war committee” seized houses not merely from suspected supporters of Assad, but also from those critical of HTS. The report noted that “the property of minority groups, such as Christians, were specifically targeted.”
The good news is that Syria’s transitional education minister, Nazi al-Qadri, has now promised there will be no restrictions on the rights of girls to learn. And after overrunning Aleppo in late November, HTS went out of its way to reassure the city’s Alawi, Christian and Kurdish communities, allowing houses of worship to function and quickly boosting basic services. Much as in Damascus now, they were keen at the time to maintain stability, and encouraged government institutions and civil servants to get on with their jobs.
But despite all of that, the group’s jihadist roots and previous governance are still cause for concern. Shar’a, for his part, has said Idlib may not be the model that a future Syria follows, and announced the beginning of a national dialogue. However, he also said elections could be as much as four years away, allowing plenty of time to reshape the country along Islamist lines.
Some fear that HTS is only keen on stability for now, with an eye toward consolidating its hold on power while ensuring that other armed factions and minority groups decommission and disarm. “They are allowing civil society groups to register, but they don’t have a registration process for political parties,” Kuwatli said. “They say they will do it when they have some structure in place.”
But perhaps HTS just doesn’t have a full plan.
“I do get the impression they were surprised by the fall of Damascus — and hadn’t expected it for another 14 months,” he added.
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