The newly appointed Prime Minister in charge of the transition in Syria, Mohammad al-Bashir, assured Wednesday that the coalition led by Islamists, which ousted Bashar al-Assad from power, will “guarantee” the rights of all faiths, and called on the millions of exiled Syrians to return home.
Recognizing “the erroneous behavior of certain Islamist groups”, Mr. Bachir insisted, in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, on the fact that “the meaning of Islam (…) has been distorted”.
“It is precisely because we are Islamic that we will guarantee the rights of all peoples and all faiths in Syria,” he stressed, the day after his appointment, to lead the transitional government until the 1st March.
At the head of the rebel alliance which put an end on Sunday, by seizing Damascus, to half a century of unchallenged power of the Assad clan, the radical Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, claims to have broken with jihadism. But he remains classified as a terrorist by several Western countries, including the United States.
Mr. Bashir called on Syrians abroad – some six million of whom, or a quarter of the population, have fled the country since 2011 – to return home to “rebuild” and make the country “prosper” where Sunnis, Alawites , Christians or even Kurds coexist with difficulty.
Fragmented by 13 years of civil war, which left more than half a million dead, “Syria is now a free country which has won its pride and its dignity. Come back,” he said, after several countries, including Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom, have decided to freeze asylum application procedures for Syrian nationals.
The country “is not going to find itself in another” war, Abou Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of HTS, who led the rebel offensive launched on November 27 and which turned the country upside down, had assured the day before.
“Live normally” –
In Damascus, where the flag of the revolution flies, green, white and black, life is slowly returning to normal. Coming to meet friends in a café, Rania Diab, a 64-year-old doctor, nourishes the hope “that we can live normally in our country, that our freedoms are preserved”.
But for many Syrians, the priority remains the search for missing loved ones caught up in decades of fierce repression.
Coming from Deraa, in the south, Nabil Hariri examines photos of corpses in the morgue of a hospital in the capital, looking for his brother, arrested in 2014 at barely 13 years old. “When you’re drowning, you hold on to anything,” said the 39-year-old.
Since 2011, more than 100,000 people have died in Syrian prisons, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, OSDH, estimated in 2022.
Several foreign capitals and the UN have taken note of the signals sent by the new power, while emphasizing that they must be translated into action.
Washington indicated that it would “recognize and fully support a future Syrian government resulting from an inclusive (political) process”, while the European Union noted “enormous challenges” ahead and hoped that Syria would not repeat the “terrifying scenarios” of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.
The Kremlin, hitherto a supporter of the deposed power, wanted a situation “stabilized as quickly as possible”, indicating that it was “in contact” with the new authorities, particularly concerning the future of the two Russian military bases in the country.
Qatar has announced the upcoming reopening of its embassy in Syria, with which it had severed ties under the former power.
– Truce on the Kurdish front –
On the ground, however, experts and foreign capitals warn against open rivalries and conflicts between the different rebel factions.
In the north-east of Syria, where fighting between pro-Kurdish and pro-Turkish forces left 218 dead in three days, according to the OSDH, “we reached a ceasefire agreement in Manbij via American mediation” , declared Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) dominated by the Kurds and supported by Washington.
“Our goal is to achieve a ceasefire throughout Syria to begin a political process in favor of the future of the country,” he emphasized, specifying that the fighters affiliated with the FDS, “are will remove from the area as soon as possible.
Tuesday evening, the rebels claimed to have captured the town of Deir Ezzor, in the east of the country, from which Kurdish forces had withdrawn, according to the OSDH.
Israel, for its part, displays its determination not to allow “any hostile force to establish itself on its border” in Syria, in the words of its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli army said it had carried out hundreds of strikes in several cities in the neighboring country in 48 hours, against strategic military sites “to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorist elements”.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also ordered his troops to establish “a zone free of weapons and threats” in southern Syria, where the army took up positions in the buffer zone at the edge of the part of the Syrian Golan occupied by Israel.
On Tuesday, the OSDH also reported that 55 Syrian soldiers who had fled during the rebel offensive had been executed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) in the desert of central Syria.
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