Syria’s new leader is politically astute

When I left London almost two weeks ago after the rebel coalition captured Aleppo – a stunning victory that paled in comparison to what followed – I thought I would be reporting on the shooting.

The group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, was sweeping everything in front of it, but I assumed the regime would fight back as it had been losing ground for years before the Russians intervened in 2015 to bomb Syrian cities and villages in ruins.

Almost ten years later, it became clear that Bashar al-Assad’s Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies should think about other wars.

But while the regime struggled with reluctant conscripts, it could always find Syrians willing to fight and die for it, even at the height of the post-2011 war, when rebels controlled most of Damascus outside the city center and the road to Beirut.

I have visited those men on the front lines more than once.

Many of the most effective units were led by officers from Assad’s own Alawite community.

In Aleppo circa 2015, an Alawite general was handing out glasses of perfectly distilled arak poured from bottles that once held Jack Daniels.

He proudly said that arak, an aniseed spirit popular in the Middle East, comes from the Assad family’s hometown in the hills behind the port of Latakia. From the outside, his squad struck the eastern part of the city, which was held by the rebels.

Not all were Alawites. In Jobar, a neighborhood on the edge of central Damascus, a Christian officer from the Syrian Arab Army loyal to Assad took me to the tunnels they had dug under the rubble to attack the rebels.

He said that the rebels also had tunnels and how sometimes they burst into each other, killing in the dark.

The young man had a crucifix tattooed on his wrist and another hanging around his neck, and spoke of how he had to fight to protect his community from jihadist extremists on the other side.

My instincts about the fighting spirit of a depleted group of Assad loyalists could not have been more wrong.

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

By the time I woke up, Bashar al-Assad was on his way to Russia and the militants were celebrating in the streets of Damascus.

They fired more bullets into the air in celebration than they fired in anger at Assad supporters who ran for their lives.

I saw hundreds of cars lined up at the Lebanese border full of disgruntled, defeated men and frightened families.

Private soldiers threw off their uniforms and weapons without firing a shot and went home.

Assad’s regime is crumpled, scarred by corruption, brutality and a cruel contempt for the lives of Syrians. Even Assad’s own Alawite community did not fight for him.

That’s why on Thursday evening this week, instead of hiding from shells and bullets in some freezing street in Homs or Hama, as I expected, I walked the marble halls of the presidential palace in Damascus with Ahmed al-Sharaa, the president of Syria . the actual leader.

He ditched his uniform and changed his military alias, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, to his real name.

Many Syrians question his claims that he has also changed his old jihadist beliefs to a more tolerant form of Syrian religious nationalism.

True, 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, softly spoken man in his forties, is reluctant to be too specific about the Syria he wants.

He appears very intelligent and politically astute. Like many shrewd politicians, he often does not give a direct answer to a direct question.

He denied that he wanted Syria to become the Afghanistan of the Middle East.

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

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

But he tried not to answer the question about the obligatory hijab – the Islamic dress – for women.

In Damascus, bearded HTS men are rumored to be ordering women to cover their hair.

I pointed out that there was a big scandal on social media after a woman asked to take a selfie with him and then lifted her hood as she took the photo.

Conservatives criticized al-Sharaa for agreeing to pose with a woman who was not a member of his family. Liberals saw in her hood 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 this is my personal freedom. I want to be photographed the way I feel comfortable. I didn’t force her. It’s not the same as having a nationwide law about it. But there is a culture in this country that the law must recognize.”

Ash-Sharaa was referring to the fact that many Syrians, not just the Sunni Muslim majority, are pious.

Many women wear hijab. 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 involved hiding their own feelings and doing what was expected of them.

Shocked, nervous, secular Syrians showed me videos on their phones of mass prayers outside universities when students returned last Sunday.

Was this, they asked, true piety or did the youth do as they were told because that was the way it had been here all their lives?

All this, al-Sharaa said, will be a matter for the new constitution, which will be decided by a group of legal experts.

Al-Sharaa’s critics point out that he is currently choosing who sits on a committee that he says will write new laws as well as a new constitution.

Ahmed al-Sharaa wanted to talk more about the oppression of the people by the old regime.

“Syrian problems are too serious than the problems you are asking about. Half of the population has been driven out of Syria or forcibly evicted from their homes.

“They were targeted by barrel bombs and unguided blunt bombs and more than 250 chemical attacks. Many Syrians have drowned in the sea trying to escape to Europe.”

He admitted that there is no chance of stabilization and reconstruction in Syria unless sanctions are lifted.

Sanctions were initially directed against the Assad regime. To contain them, he said, was to treat the victim in the same way as the oppressor.

He has dismissed the group he leads as terrorist, which is currently the position of the UN and most of the world’s most powerful countries.

Visits of foreign diplomats indicate the possibility of changing sanctions and lists of terrorists.

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

“It is important for me that the Syrian people believe in me. We promised the Syrian people to free them from this criminal regime, and we did. This is what is important to me first.

“I don’t really care what they say about us abroad. It is not my duty to prove to the world that we are seriously working to achieve the interests of our people in Syria.”

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

It sounds like a pipe dream.

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

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

The US is in the northeast to hunt down the remnants of the Islamic State and protect its Kurdish allies.

Turkey controls most of the northwest and has its own Arab-led militia.

There are indications that the Turks, who have close ties to HTS, are preparing a new attack on the Syrian Kurds, who have close ties to Kurdish separatists inside Turkey.

Israel, now as aggressive as it has been in years, has made the most overt use of the power vacuum it has seen in Syria.

It continues to bomb the remnants of the state’s military infrastructure and seize more Syrian territory to add to the Golan Heights, which they have occupied since 1967.

The Israelis, as always, justify their actions with self-defense.

The UN’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told me that Israel’s actions were “irresponsible.” According to him, Israel should not act in such a way as to “destabilize this very, very delicate transitional process.”

Ahmed al-Sharaa knows he cannot stand up to the US-backed Israeli government.

“Syria is war-weary whether Israel is strong or not. Syria must strengthen and develop. We have no plans of aggression against Israel. Syria will not be a threat to Israel or anyone else.”

Ahmed al-Sharaa’s agenda is packed.

Syria is a broken country that he says he wants to rebuild and revive, full of problems that could make his task impossible.

HTS is not the only armed group in Syria, and there are some who want to destroy its fledgling administration. HTS enemies within the Islamic State network may attempt destabilizing attacks.

Syrians’ desire for revenge against Assad’s killers – and the ex-president himself – could explode into devastating public anger if HTS can’t show it is holding accountable the people who have kept the boots on Syria’s throats for so long.

Ahmed al-Sharaa correctly considers Syria to be a fulcrum in the center of the Middle East.

“Syria is an important country with a strategic location, very influential in the world, look at the presence of America on the one hand, Russia on the other hand, as well as countries in the region such as Turkey, Iran and Israel.”

He says that’s why the outside world needs to help Syria rebuild.

This is also why powerful states can prevent it from happening.