CHRONICLE WRITTEN IN COLLABORATION WITH FRENCH COLLECTIVE/MEDIA “CONTRE ATTAQUE“

An open-ended transition

The transitional government has formed a preparatory committee to organize the National Dialogue Conference, made up of 7 people, including 2 women. We still don’t know the date of this conference, which everyone is hoping and praying for. Everyone hopes to see a perfect representation of Syrian society, although no information has been given on its composition, except that the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria will not be invited.

A first meeting of the preparatory committee was held in Homs, bringing together 400 participants to discuss six major issues: transitional justice, the drafting of the new constitution, institutional reforms, public and political freedoms, the role of civil society and economic organization. It should be noted that the committee’s powers are purely consultative, and its recommendations will be forwarded to the government.

Transitional justice with blurred outlines

February saw the resurfacing of the Tadamon massacre of April 2013. Tadamon is a district of Damascus where almost 500 civilians, including a number of Palestinians, had been coldly pushed blindfolded into a pit before being executed by gunshot, all filmed by the perpetrators of the crime. On February 8, a controversial visit to the crime scene by three of the massacre’s masterminds – amnestied in exchange for their collaboration – accompanied by two General Security officials, provoked a demonstration by several hundred local residents revolted by the presence of their executioners. Then, 10 days later, three executors were arrested. The fate of the main perpetrator of the executions, who had admitted the facts to a journalist, remains unknown.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Embassy in Damascus, long criticized for its complicity with the Assad regime, has just made public a list of 1,794 names of Palestinians from Syria, Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon who disappeared under the dictatorship. The aim of this publication is to help the new authorities gather information on their fate, although it is not known how the embassy obtained these names.

The issue of foreign prisoners and fighters, revealing the challenges of the proxy war

Algeria has entered the dance of diplomatic negotiations with Al Sharaa, after having been reluctant to congratulate the new strongman in Damascus on his appointment. Long a supporter of the Assad regime, it is now demanding the release of 500 Polisario Front militiamen captured in Aleppo during the liberation of Syria in early December. The Polisario Front is the armed faction supported by Algeria in its conflict with Morocco over Western Sahara. The presence of its fighters in Syria is explained by the fact that they were trained there by Iranian forces…

In Lebanon, several hundred Syrian prisoners are the subject of negotiations between the two countries. More than 2,000 Syrians are imprisoned in Lebanon, most of them arrested under the “anti-terrorist law” because of their real or supposed affiliation with the Free Syrian Army. A hundred of them have gone on strike to demand their extradition to Syria.

Finally, and this is a major issue for the security situation in Syria and neighboring Iraq, thousands of Islamic State fighters and their families detained in the Al-Hol and Al-Roj camps are being gradually repatriated to their native Iraq. This is in addition to the thousands of Shiite fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan belonging to the pro-Iranian Fatemiyoun and Zaynabiyoun militias who have taken refuge in Iraq since the fall of the regime, and whose presence there could become the justification for further violence or foreign air strikes on Iraqi territory.

Kurds under pressure from all sides

While the control and resorption of prison camps in eastern Syria remains the sole responsibility of Kurdish militias, this issue has been at the heart of intense negotiations with the new regime in Damascus for the past two months. The risk of deflagration in the form of revolts or mass escapes by Islamic State prisoners is imminent, especially after Trump foolishly suspended all US humanitarian aid ($460 million in 2024).

This week the two sides moved closer to an agreement for the integration into the New Syrian Army of fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as well as for the exit of their foreign fighters. Nothing is clear, however, about the fate of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) and Rojava’s democratic and feminist project at the end of these agreements, which seem to imply a forced renunciation of federalism, autonomy and popular self-defense in the face of Turkish imperialism, nationalism and conservative Islamism.

Iraqi Kurdish leader Barzani, along with France and Germany, have pleaded with al-Sharaa for the protection of Kurdish populations, but we know how much more important diplomatic and economic compromises are to them than the popular emancipation project carried by the Kurdish left. Many of the latter are awaiting the advice and directives of the Kurdish leader Öcalan, who now seems to be authorized to transmit messages to his supporters and followers from his prison in Imrali.

And the Zionist colony continues to spread…

Every week Israel advances into Syrian territory, visibly seeking to seize all the region’s water resources (Mount Hermon, Yarmouk Basin, Al-Mantara Reservoir). Seven new villages were occupied and the occupying army set up six additional military posts. At the same time, the air force bombed the Syrian military airport of Khalkhala and an ammunition depot south of Damascus, allegedly used by Hamas. This grotesque allegation completely ignores the Syrian situation and the complex relations between Hamas and the new Syrian authorities: the bigger the better, especially in the face of an international community now accustomed to letting the pyromaniacs Netanyahu and Trump do as they please.

The Arab League is due to hold a meeting in Cairo on February 27, with a view to developing a joint Arab strategy to counter the expansionism and ethnic cleansing of the United States and Israel…

CHRONICLE WRITTEN IN COLLABORATION WITH FRENCH COLLECTIVE/MEDIA “CONTRE ATTAQUE“

A lot has changed since our last chronicle, and it’s not easy to pick out what’s most relevant and useful for understanding the general context of post-Assad Syria two months after its collapse.

Official inauguration and promises by al-Sharaa

Ahmed al-Sharaa was officially confirmed in his role as interim president on January 29, following the first visit of a foreign head of state to the new Syria, represented by the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani. This appointment, made without outside consultation, was decided at a conference attended by dozens of military personnel, and granted Al-Sharaa the power to set up a “temporary” legislative council for the duration of the transition.

On this occasion, he delivered his first speech to the nation. The speech lasted five minutes, but was praised for its simplicity and also for his choice to pay tribute to the struggles of Syrian men and women, whom he took care to name using an inclusive vocabulary.

Two days after Sharaa paid tribute to the martyr Hamza al-Khatib, the child from Deraa whose abduction, torture and murder by the henchmen of the Assad regime had been one of the sparks of the 2011 revolt, his torturer Atef Najib, cousin of Bashar al-Assad, was arrested in Latakia. Four days later, Assad’s former Interior Minister between 2011 and 2018, Mohammad al-Shaar, surrendered to the new authorities.

On February 5, Al-Sharaa and his Prime Minister finally took the time to meet with associations of families of the disappeared, before reaffirming their willingness to create a specific department to investigate these disappearances, to protect the sites and evidences of the crimes and to prosecute all criminals of the former regime in a perspective of transitional justice. 

One of the most symbolic events of early February was the coming-out of “CAESAR”, the former agent of Assad’s military police who brought out nearly 55,000 photographs from Syria, risking his life to provide evidence of the torture and mass executions perpetrated by the former regime. His revelations led to the introduction of a “Caesar law” in 2020.

In his first open interview with Al-Jazeera yesterday Farid Al-Madhan, who spent 10 years in exile in France and lived in constant fear, presents himself as “son of free Syria, from Deraa, cradle of the Syrian revolution” and calls for the lifting of the sanctions against Syria that bear his code name.

Tracking down Assad’s henchmen and daily killings

The transitional government’s army continues to carry out military operations to track down former henchmen of the Assad regime, particularly in the Homs region, where in recent weeks armed groups of uncertain affiliations have carried out numerous extrajudicial executions.

Seven new “security campaigns” have been launched by government armed forces in various regions, while human rights organizations continue to report numerous murders and settlements of scores on a daily basis throughout the country.

An unidentified group murdered some fifteen civilians in a predominantly Alawite village north of Hama on January 31, while government forces and Hezbollah have been clashing for the past two days near the Lebanese border east of Qusayr, which has long been the main logistical and human crossing point for pro-Iranian militias.

East of the Euphrates, coalition forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces have also carried out five security campaigns, arresting dozens of former regime members and Islamic State fighters.

Al-Sharaa’s first official visits and diplomatic negotiations

Al-Sharaa made his first visits abroad, starting with Saudi Arabia, where he went to Mecca for the Umrah pilgrimage in the company of his wife, Latifa al-Droubi, whose identity the world is discovering for the first time. He then travelled to Turkey and may visit France next week, as part of the international conference on Syria scheduled for February 13.

The main topics of discussion are the lifting of sanctions, the fight against the Islamic State, as well as the fate of northeastern Syria and the integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces into the National Army.

For their part, the Egyptian and Tunisian heads of state, Sisi and Saied, are among the most feverish to support or congratulate the new government. Both seem to fear that the fall of Assad will spark new revolutionary impulses in their respective countries, which have also supplied the largest contingents of foreign Islamist fighters to Syria over the past decade – 6000 for Tunisia, 3000 for Egypt. One of the Egyptian ex-members of HTS was arrested in Syria on January 15 after calling on social networks for Egyptians to overthrow Sisi.

On the side of Western imperialism…

Negotiations with Russia continue unabated, with no indication of what Syria is demanding from Russia, or what the latter is proposing in order to maintain its Hmeimim (Latakia) airbase and Tartus naval base on Syrian territory. For the first time, there has been talk of handing Assad over to Syria, but also of financial compensation for rebuilding the country, whose ruin is largely attributable to Russian intervention since 2015. To date, the talks appear to have reached a dead end.

No big news from the United States. Donald Trump, busy taking chainsaw blows all around him, seems relatively uninterested in the Syrian question. From one week to the next, his statements on the potential withdrawal of 2,000 American troops from Syria change completely. We can only wait to see what Trump’s next whim will be…

Finally, while Turkey is doing everything to salvage its war against the Kurds in the north of the country, Israel is irrevocably pursuing its expansion in the south, claiming to want to hold out indefinitely or indefinitely, depending on the translations of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s statements.

Already, residents are testifying to the considerable impact the military occupation is having on the region’s agriculture and ecosystem, including southern Syria’s main water reserves, thousands of hectares of fields, vegetable gardens and fruit crops, not to mention over 10,000 beekeepers’ hives already threatened by climate change… Israel is a calamity from every point of view.

But now, demonstrations are being organized in Damascus and in the invaded province of Quneitra. On February 1, for the first time, an armed group calling itself the “Syrian Popular Resistance” fired on the Israeli army in the village of Turnejeh.

CHRONICLE WRITTEN IN COLLABORATION WITH FRENCH COLLECTIVE/MEDIA “CONTRE ATTAQUE“

Security situation under the Military Operations Administration (HTS)

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has recorded 147 murders since the beginning of the year, as well as several kidnappings, including the writer and opponent Rasha Nasser al-Ali.

The HTS Military Operations Administration is continuing its security campaigns in the central and coastal regions of Syria, particularly in Homs, where its interventions have resulted in summary executions, violence against residents and dozens of arrests.

Demonstrations have been held in several towns to demand the release of some of the 9,000 people arrested by HTS since December 8, denouncing the lack of evidence justifying their continued detention and the fact that some of them are being held despite having signed “reconciliation” agreements.

Numerous voluntary reconciliation initiatives have been refused by HTS, on the pretext that the candidates present themselves without surrendering their weapons. The $100 fine imposed on those who present themselves without their weapon encourages candidates to buy weapons in order to be admitted to the reconciliation centers.

International relations and economic recovery

The transitional government’s main focus is diplomatic relations and economic development, its top priority being to secure the lifting of sanctions that continue to plague the country in exchange for a forced liberalization of the Syrian economy.

The Minister of the Economy continues to meet with Syrian businessmen who have grown rich under Assad’s regime, claiming that “private property is sacred” and their money will not be confiscated. At the same time, Foreign Minister Al-Shaibani went to the World Economic Forum in Davos to plead for Syria’s conversion to a market economy, affirming the 5 major axes of reform (energy, telecoms, transport, education and health) and announcing the privatization of oil, cotton and furniture production.

While Germany calls on Russia to withdraw from Syria, the 49-year contract signed in 2019 between Syria and the Russian company Stroytransgaz for the management of the port of Tartous has been broken, allowing most taxes on incoming goods to be reduced by 60%. At the same time, Syrian, Turkish, Qatari and Jordanian airlines are organizing the resumption of flights between Damascus, Turkey, the Arabian Peninsula and Europe. The latter has announced the dispatch of 235 million euros in humanitarian aid.

With 195,200 refugees already back in Syria, the pressure on the economy is mounting. While overall food prices have fallen slightly, the price of a pack of bread has risen from 400 to 4,000 Syrian pounds, and the country’s need for additional bakeries is estimated at 160 on top of the existing 250. Currently, 5,000 tons of bread are produced every day.

Political and social transition, Investigating Assad’s crimes

While Al-Sharaa met with International Court of Justice prosecutor Karim Khan and the family of American journalist Austin Tice, missing since 2012, the families of the other 130,000 missing from the Assad regime continue to be ignored by the transitional government. The Hague-based International Commission for Missing Persons has counted 66 mass graves across the country, the main one at Al-Qutayfah (a former Russian military base) believed to contain nearly 100,000 bodies belonging to detainees executed at Saydnaya prison.

Regarding its efforts to expose Assad’s crimes, HTS preferred to communicate widely on the discovery and destruction of 100 million captagon pills and 15 tons of hashish seized from several sites previously under the control of the 4th Division of Bashar al-Assad’s brother, Maher.

Bashar al-Assad was also the target of a second international arrest warrant issued by the French justice system for the bombing of Deraa in 2017, following the one issued in 2023 for the chemical attacks in Adra, Douma and Eastern Ghouta in 2013. Will France ask Russia to hand over Bashar?

Conflict with the North-East Autonomous Administration

Tension between HTS and the North-Eastern Autonomous Administration (AANES) has escalated despite ongoing talks. After rejecting SDF commander Mazloum Abdi’s demand to be allowed to form a fully-fledged “bloc” within the new Syrian army and to return access to part of the region’s oil resources, Defense Minister Abu Qasra declared “we don’t want oil, we want [control over] institutions and borders” before declaring himself “ready to use force”. HTS has begun sending troops to Deir Ezzor, Raqqa and near the Tishrin dam, where fighting between the SDF and pro-Turkish militias continues. A total of 474 people have been killed in this confrontation since December 12, including 51 civilians, 348 pro-Turkish militiamen and 75 members of the SDF and affiliated groups.

In the ongoing discussions, the main challenges and points of dispute concern maintaining the fight against pouches of the Islamic State, which has regained strength, but also the management and evacuation of the Al-Hol and Al-Roj camps where 35,000 members and families of the Islamic State are still being held, including nearly 15,000 fighters. Following negotiations with the US command, France and the Iraqi government, AANES has released 150 Islamic State families held in Al-Hol and announced the voluntary return of a further 66 families to their homes in Syria, although it is not known whether HTS is part of this agreement. Iraq plans to repatriate 10,000 of its citizens under the same agreements.

Israeli colonization in the south-west

In the south of the country, Israel continues to advance into Syrian territory unhindered by anyone or anything, stealing an area of 235 square kilometers from Syria. After entering two new localities, the Israeli army set up 7 new checkpoints and military barracks, thus persisting with its “buffer zone” project, enabling it to exercise military control over 15 to 60 kilometers downstream from its previous border.

CHRONICLE WRITTEN IN COLLABORATION WITH FRENCH COLLECTIVE/MEDIA “CONTRE ATTAQUE“

We can’t talk about Syria without mentioning Palestine. At a time when Israel is reluctantly accepting a ceasefire in Gaza, having repeatedly violated the one in effect in Lebanon, it seems that its colonial ambitions have simply shifted the front line towards Jenin in the West Bank and Quneitra in Syria.

In our last chronicles, we mentioned the complicit silence of Syria’s interim president al-Sharaa, but rather than complicity, it would seem more accurate to speak of a “non-hostile stance”: the transitional government and Syrian society simply cannot assume a new war with Israel and its allies. Especially after Israel destroyed 80% of Syria’s military arsenal in its massive bombardment campaign (over 600 rockets) of the country’s military sites in the hours following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

But Israel shows no signs of stopping there. Since last week, Israeli tanks have invaded seven new Syrian villages and, after boasting of stealing military armaments in Syria, Israel bombed a convoy of the new Syrian authorities for the first time, killing two HTS security personnel and the mukhtar (mayor) of the village of Deir al-Bustan, where they had come to collect weapons in circulation as part of the country’s demilitarization operations. For the first time, the HTS foreign minister condemned Israeli aggression and called on the international community to put an end to Israel’s violations. But who can and will stop Israel?

Meanwhile, HTS brought together the Palestinian factions in Syria (PFLP-GC, Fatah-Intifada, Al-Sa’iqa, Jerusalem Brigade, Free Palestine Movement and Palestine Democratic Movement), in the presence of Hamas, to negotiate the terms of their surrender. HTS arrested several of their members on charges of committing crimes alongside the Assad regime, while their main leaders fled to Lebanon. At the same time, the Palestinian embassy in Damascus and most Palestinian civil and charitable organizations in Syria have been able to continue or resume their activities. As this chronicle is being finalized, a spontaneous popular demonstration against the Israeli invasion and in solidarity with Gaza is underway in Damascus, something that has never happened in fifty years under the Assad regime. For news on the Palestinians in Syria, visit  https://www.actionpal.org.uk/

With regard to the security situation in Syria under HTS control, it has to be said that numerous crimes against civilians are being committed, making it impossible to distinguish between individual acts of vengeance, the cleansing of former Assad regime elements and ordinary crime, which continues to develop against a harsh economic backdrop. In particular, drug trafficking to Jordan has resumed, with Jordan bombing several houses south of Suwayda on January 15 under the pretext of targeting drug traffickers.

The military command of the transitional government launched a new campaign of arrests in the Homs region, where six Alawite civilians were executed and their homes burnt down on January 14 by unidentified individuals. Violence and demonstrations also continued in the coastal region of Latakia, where the population accused HTS of committing crimes against civilians and demanded the expulsion of foreign fighters, notably those from the Islamic Party of Turkistan. In Jableh on January 14, a pro-Assad armed group kidnapped seven HTS members and published a video threatening to execute them, before being intercepted and their hostages released. HTS also arrested a local figure, leading to further demonstrations in Jableh on Friday. Finally, HTS is accused of violently searching the premises of the Kurdish “People’s House” in Zour Ava, Damascus, but no arrests were reported.

While the conflict between the pro-Turkish forces of the SNA and the Kurdish-Arab alliance of the SDF-YPG continues unabated at the Tishrin dam between Manbij and Kobane, horrifying news of crimes committed by SNA-affiliated militias, notably the Suleiman Shah (“Al-Amshat”) and Hamza Division (“Al-Hamzat”) groups, continues to be transmitted daily to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Among other crimes and petty theft, these groups are accused of robbery and looting, as well as kidnapping for ransom in the Afrin, Aleppo and Manbij regions, for sums ranging from $850 to $2,000 per hostage. The Suleiman Shah group is also responsible for recruiting hundreds of fighters sent to Niger, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh to defend Turkey’s interests in exchange for a pitiful monthly pay of 1500 Turkish Liras.

On the political front, the transition process continues slowly, with signs as contradictory as ever. While freedom of expression and assembly is a reality, with many public demonstrations able to take place without hindrance, all Syrians’ senses remain on alert. Posters advocating male/female segregation and condemning blasphemy, for example, have been seen plastered on transport in Homs and Damascus, while a famous actor, Abdel Men’am Amayri, was accused of blasphemy and violently beaten in the street by HTS men. While these elements are not sufficient to draw hasty conclusions on the future evolution of Syrian society, they are nevertheless indications that all Syrians should consider serious enough to keep a close eye on Al-Sharaa and HTS during the crucial three-month period leading up to the opening of the National Transition Conference.

In an interview, al-Sharaa notably uttered words that don’t bode well, claiming that for HTS the revolution was accomplished and that “a revolutionary state of mind can overthrow a regime but cannot build a state”, betraying his desire to retain full control over the country’s political transformation, without necessarily letting pluralism get in the way of his ambitions. The Syrian revolution of 2011 seems to him to be part of a frivolous past that now needs to be left behind, as he never took part in the Syrian demonstrations at the time, too busy fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq…