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

On the first day of the year 2025, the Syrian transitional government made its first diplomatic outing abroad, visiting the Saudi government and then its neighbors Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. HTS thus sent a clear and strong message to the whole world, making Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in addition to Turkey, its priority partners in the reconstruction of the country. The resources needed to rebuild Syria are estimated at almost 400 billion dollars. In the days that followed, Saudi Arabia sent several truckloads of humanitarian aid by air to Damascus, then a convoy of 60 aid trucks entered via the Jordanian border on January the 5th, while Qatar and Turkey sent two “powerships” to the Syrian coast (floating power plants) to supply Syria with 800 MW of electricity (+50%). Jordan is also ready to supply energy to its neighbor. The lack of electricity and its rationing by the Assad regime was one of the major problems facing Syrian society.

After announcing Syria’s reconnection to the market economy, we can expect the transitional government to apply ultra-liberal measures aimed at reducing the new state’s spending as much as possible and favoring private investment. This may explain the unannounced dismissal of hundreds of public-sector hospital workers in Tartous and Aleppo, as well as a state-owned shoe factory in Suwayda in recent days, leading to spontaneous angry demonstrations in all three provinces.

Suffice it to say that the period ahead promises to be a tense one, especially as the security operations launched in Tartous, Homs and Rural Damascus over the past week have not been as consensual and peaceful as might have been expected. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has gathered extensive evidence and testimonies of violence committed by HTS forces during their sweep operations to arrest officers and agents of the deposed regime: aggressive raids, bullying and physical violence against hundreds of residents, as well as those arrested. For the operation in Homs, which lasted five days, HTS arrested 1,450 people, without knowing the reality of the charges brought against them. Above all, these operations gave self-proclaimed rebel groups or groups affiliated to HTS carte blanche to persecute and murder civilians. SOHR has counted 214 murders since December 8, including that of three farmers in Jableh (Latakia), which led to a demonstration of several thousand people demanding the expulsion of foreign fighters (in this case, Chechens and Pakistanis).

Syrian society urgently needs the implementation of transitional justice, accompanied by solid reconciliation processes. Fourteen mass graves have been discovered, with 1,582 bodies identified to date, and measures have finally been taken to guard Assad’s prisons and preserve their archives, at the insistence of the families of the disappeared. But these families are now joined by hundreds of others, who demonstrated in large numbers in Damascus on January 6 to demand information on the fate of almost 9,000 soldiers of the former regime arrested since its fall, including 2,000 sent back to Syria by the Iraqi authorities after fleeing. While several thousand Assad soldiers have passed through “reconciliation centers” over the past three weeks to hand in their weapons and be registered for possible prosecution, before being reincorporated into civilian society (under Assad, soldiers had their civilian identity cards confiscated and replaced by military identity cards), many are still being held without the transitional government being willing to give their names and places of detention. Finally, and this is perhaps the greatest irony of all, families in the Idleb region are also demonstrating to demand the release of their loved ones, imprisoned by HTS before the fall of the regime for their membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Salafist group criticizing Joulani for abandoning the Islamic caliphate project (sic).

Other events are shaking up Syria’s new political life, particularly in the two southern regions of Syria. In Deraa the leader of the 8th Brigade, created by Russia from the region’s rebel groups under surrender agreements signed in 2018, refuses to disarm his men and join the new Syrian army. In Suwayda two of the main local factions have allied and also refused, through the province’s spiritual sheikh, to give up their weapons and join the new Syrian army without guarantees of a real democratic and secular transition at the end of the transition period. While this decision may come as a surprise to the Sunni-majority factions in Deraa, it is far less of a surprise to the Druze minority in Suwayda, whose survival has always depended on its means of self-defense and its ties of solidarity with the Druze of Mount Hermon (occupied by Israel since December 8) and Mount Lebanon (the Lebanese have been banned from entering Syria since January 3). The Druze cannot jeopardize their security in the face of a military apparatus entirely in the hands of former (not so former) jihadists[1]. Their defiance is therefore totally legitimate.

Still in the south of the country, Israel has seized new villages, as well as the important Mantara dam in the province of Quneitra, not hesitating to destroy houses and infrastructure, while exercising violence against residents. A French journalist, Sylvain Mercadier, and his Syrian fixer were arrested on January 8 and beaten while in custody, before being released. Israel claims it intends to hold out until the end of 2025, but there is ample evidence that it intends to occupy the territory permanently and wage a “water war” against the Syrians as well. At the time of writing, we have also learned of the detention of five Palestinian refugees by the Syrian branch of Fatah in Damascus as they took part in a demonstration in front of the Palestinian embassy to protest against the ongoing siege in Jenin. Not content with collaborating with the Assad regime, Palestinian political factions seem to enjoy impunity, aided by HTS’s silence on Israel.

The other obstacle to HTS’s hegemonic ambitions is represented by the Syrian Democratic Forces and their autonomous Kurdish allies in Rojava. The main reason for their non-allegiance is that the war continues between them and the pro-Turkish jihadist mercenaries of the SNA, supported by Turkish aircraft, artillery and drones. Since the end of December, the front line has crystallized around the Tishrin dam on the Euphrates, and the fighting has claimed the lives of 56 SDF fighters and 199 SNA members. Not to mention the many civilian casualties in jihadist-controlled areas, where persecution and arbitrary executions are commonplace, but also on the other side of the Euphrates due to daily bombardments. Beyond the fierce resistance of the SDF, the truly decisive factor is and will remain the position of the United States in the conflict. The US army has already reinforced its contingent in Kobane, and there is some talk of demilitarizing the area under agreements with France, involving the securing of the Turkish border by a Franco-American force. But it is clear that this will not be enough to put an end to the conflict as long as the regions north of Aleppo remain under the control of the SNA fanatics. On the HTS side, negotiations are still underway for a possible conciliation, as the autonomous administration of northeastern Syria has reaffirmed its desire to integrate into a unified national state.

Given these balances of power, as well as the diversity and regional specificities that characterize Syrian society, only a decentralized model of governance allowing greater local participation in decision-making can guarantee social peace. But only if HTS’s foreign sponsors accept this…

[1]  Recall that Al-Nosra jihadists had fought the Free Syrian Army’s Druse Battalion in 2014, while those of DAESH had massacred 258 residents of Suwayda in 2018.

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

Since the fall of the Assad regime, things have been moving fast.

Ahmed al-Shara’a (aka Al-Julani), leader of the rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has immediately appointed a transitional government formed from the pre-existing Syrian Salvation Government in Idleb since 2017. The ministers are not military, but professionals in the fields entrusted to them. They are clearly not progressives, but rather conservative Islamists. However, no constitutional changes or decisions involving major societal changes without the consultation and agreement of the Syrians have yet been taken. At the end of its transitional mandate, the interim government is supposed to make way for a national conference representing all Syrian factions and minorities, to form the new Syrian state.

Shara’a has also appointed several warlords as provincial governors, which does not reassure everyone, but not all appointments have been made and readjustments are underway. In Suwayda, a southern province where over 90% of the population is Druze, a minority that cannot be suspected of Islamist sympathies, a regional council representing all local factions has proposed the nomination of a woman as governor, a first in the country’s history. In addition, a major meeting of the leaders of the various armed factions was held in Damascus to agree on the disarmament of all armed groups and the integration of their personnel into the future national army, on a voluntary basis. Shara’a announced the end of compulsory conscription.

Over the past two weeks, social networks have been pouring out conflicting reports of violence against minorities and extrajudicial executions on the Alawite-majority coast, but none of this has taken place in the areas liberated from the former regime by the HTS rebels. In Tartus and Latakia, on the contrary, Alawites welcomed the fall of the regime with the same enthusiasm as everywhere else. Nonetheless, many accounts claiming to be well-informed are spreading false information and unsourced, undated images on a daily basis to legitimize and incite inter-community tensions, despite the fact that the transitional authorities have done everything in their power to ensure that there are no reprisals or acts of violence against minorities.

Incidents took place, including the burning of a Christmas tree in Suqaylabiyah, on the outskirts of Hama, an act whose perpetrators were arrested by HTS, which undertook to repair the damage and declared Christmas an official Syrian holiday. Foreign fighters, in particular Uighurs, Chechens and Kazakhs, have been singled out and demonstrations have taken place (without incident) to demand their disarmament and expulsion from the country. These demonstrations come a week after a demonstration in the heart of Damascus in favor of secularism, which met with a wave of criticism because its main organizers were defenders of the Assad regime before its fall, but also because of the conspicuous absence of Syrian revolutionary flags. The necessary struggle for a new regime that guarantees secularism and the protection of minorities, including atheists, was thus discredited by this lamentable recuperation by personalities seeking to redeem themselves with Syrians. Moreover, the polemics surrounding this demonstration overshadowed another demonstration called in Homs by women’s groups in favor of secularism and the protection of freedoms.

In terms of international politics, the daily choreography of foreign delegations coming to speak with Syria’s new strongman is breathtaking. Each one seems to be keen to set conditions, demand its due or obtain guarantees, while Turkey appears to be the big winner in this regime change. Indeed, it has been quick to invest in the Syrian economy, announcing the imminent reopening of the air route between the two countries and the restoration of the railroads abandoned since 2012. There’s no doubt that this renewed interest in Syria on the part of foreign states is motivated by the lure of profit, insofar as Shara’a has announced the country’s reconnection with the market economy. Germany, in addition to being clearly in favor of the genocide of the Palestinians, was among the first states to suspend Syrian asylum applications and to rush to Erdogan’s side to congratulate him and remind us of what a first-rate partner he has been in terms of migration management… Rapacious.

For its part, Israel continues to militarily occupy villages in the provinces of Dera’a, Quneitra and rural Damascus: at present, nearly thirty villages have been annexed, affecting almost 50,000 Syrian residents. Israeli officials are delighted to have taken possession of Mount Hermon, which accounts for 30% of Syria’s water resources and 40% of those of Jordan. While Shara’a cautiously avoids criticizing Israel, the population did not wait to express its hostility towards the Israeli army, which opened fire and wounded several people before withdrawing from the village of Al-Suwaisa (Quneitra). Residents of the Druze village of Hader also publicly declared their refusal to be annexed by Israel, thereby responding to the rumors and fake news propagated by Zionists and Islamists falsely accusing the Druze of being pro-Israel.

Finally, the Kurdish question will also be decisive, depending on US decisions and the outcome of ongoing negotiations between Shara’a, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the autonomous Rojava administration. On December 14, the truce in the Kobane and Manbij regions agreed two days earlier was immediately violated by Turkey, prompting the SDF to retaliate against the pro-Turkish militias of the Syrian National Army (SNA). Let’s not forget that if the war is not over, the fault lies largely with the colonial and imperialist aspirations of Erdogan, who is neither the liberator nor the friend of the Syrians. As for the SDF, over 60% of its members are Syrian Arabs, which does not make it a Kurdish force as some claim. The simplification of power relations and the ethnocultural characteristics of the regions east of the Euphrates are partly responsible for the indifference of many Syrians to what is currently happening there, and therefore for a form of denial regarding the crimes committed by the pro-Turkish forces.

The situation therefore remains extremely uncertain, even if we are generally confident about future developments, as a number of progressive, democratic and secular popular initiatives have already been launched, demonstrating that Syrian society will not allow itself to be imposed with a new military or religious dictatorship. Whatever may happen in the coming weeks, what has been happening in Syria over the past two weeks is an unprecedented demonstration of collective resilience.