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Syria’s Jihadist-Turned-President Seeks New Allies

In an interview, President Ahmed al-Shara urged the U.S. to lift sanctions and alluded to the possibility of future military support from Russia and Turkey.

Syria’s new president, the former rebel leader Ahmed al-Shara.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

Syria’s new president, the former rebel leader Ahmed al-Shara.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

When Syrian President Ahmed al-Shara sat at the helm of a small, rebel-held enclave in the country’s northwest, his alliances were simpler. Turkey was a supporter, while the Assad regime and Iran were his main enemies. Political support from other countries was welcome, but their financial aid was not essential to survive.

Since his rebel coalition toppled President Bashar al-Assad in December, Mr. al-Shara, who spoke to The New York Times this month, has been navigating more complex geopolitical waters. And that foreign support is not just welcome, it is critical to his government’s survival.

To bring Syria’s economy back from the brink, he must persuade U.S. and other Western officials wary of his jihadist past to lift sanctions. To keep the country from plunging back into civil war, he needs military assistance to build a new army. And to keep the government functioning and the country from spinning into total disarray, he needs foreign financing to pay public workers.

 

A joyous crowd lines a road, some standing on cars and waving Syrian flags.
Celebrating the fall of the Assad regime on a road leading to the border with Syria, in Bar Elias, Lebanon, in December.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times


The case he is presenting to the West, Europe and the wealthy Gulf monarchies is straightforward — Syria’s stability affects the entire Middle East.

“Any chaos in Syria will damage not just neighboring countries but the whole world,” Mr. al-Shara said in a wide-ranging interview in the capital, Damascus.

A former Al Qaeda affiliate who now presents himself as a statesman, Mr. al-Shara said his government is negotiating deals with both Turkey, a longtime political backer, and Russia, a stalwart supporter of Mr. al-Assad when he was in power. He alluded to the possibility of future military support from both.

“Turkey has a military presence in Syria and Russia also has a military presence. We’ve nullified past agreements between Syria and other countries, and are in the process of developing new ones,” he said. Mr. al-Shara appeared open to procuring additional weapons from Russia and other countries.

The fear of renewed turmoil in Syria is shared by global powers as the country emerges from a nearly 14-year civil war that sent millions of refugees abroad and enters a new chapter under Mr. al-Shara’s Islamist government.

For the past decade, Syria was cut off from much of the world as Western and Gulf nations shunned the dictatorship for its harsh crackdown on its own citizens. When rebels overthrew Mr. al-Assad, it ended more than 50 years of iron-fisted rule by his family and ushered in a once-unimaginable period of transition.

The former president’s face is blacked out on a billboard that is partly obscured by palm fronds.
A defaced portrait of ousted President Bashar al-Assad of Syria near a former government checkpoint on the outskirts of the city of Homs.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

The country is now re-entering the global fray at a precarious moment in the Middle East, where power maps are being redrawn by Israel’s war in Gaza, its crippling of the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Trump administration’s new agenda for the region.

As part of President Trump’s vision, the U.S. this month began reducing its military presence in northeastern Syria.

Mr. al-Shara, sitting at the ornate, white marble presidential palace in Damascus that was once synonymous with the brutal Assad dynasty, described his efforts to win foreign support. “The fall of the regime and the new state in which Syria found itself paved the way for an entirely new set of security relations in the region,” he said. “That’s why many nations, whether regional or European, have a great interest in the stability of Syria.”

Under his rule, serious violence has already erupted.


Bodies in white shrouds lying in rows on the floor of a bare white-walled room.
In the center of Baniyas, Syria, emergency workers in early March turned a looted furniture store into a makeshift morgue, full of the bodies of those killed in sectarian-driven violence in the area.

Now, Mr. al-Shara must navigate the differing interests of Israel to the south and Turkey to the north.

Neither the former government nor the current one has had formal ties with Israel, which has struck several hundred targets in Syria since Mr. al-Assad fell. Israel has said it is aiming to prevent military assets from the former regime from falling into the hands of any hostile person or group.

Mr. al-Shara must also persuade the West he is a reliable partner despite his previous affiliations with Al Qaeda. And he appears to be forging a new relationship with Russia, which has a strategic interest in keeping military bases in Syria.

“We told all the parties that this military presence has to be in line with Syria’s legal framework,” he said. And any new agreements have to ensure “Syria’s independence, the stability of its security, and that no country’s presence creates a threat or danger to other nations via Syrian territory,” Mr. al-Shara added.

During the civil war, Russia sent aircrafts, warships, troops and military advisers to Syria to prop up Mr. al-Assad and killed thousands of civilians.

It remains unclear what role, if any, Russia will play in postwar Syria. But Mr. al-Shara said Moscow had supplied the Syrian military for decades, implying that his country may need Russia or other nations’ support again in the future.

“Until now, we have not had offers from other nations to replace Syrian arms” which are primarily Russian produced, he said.

Mr. al-Assad fled to Russia in early December as his regime collapsed and in January, Syrian officials asked the Kremlin to hand him over as a condition for maintaining a military presence in Syria. But Russian officials denied that request, Mr. al-Shara said in his first public acknowledgment of the Russian response.

Still, Syrian authorities seem open to negotiating with the Kremlin.

“Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council. Syria’s weapons are entirely Russian. And there are many food and energy agreements that Syria has relied on for many years,” Mr. al-Shara said. “We must take these Syrian interests into consideration.”

Several soldiers sit or stand atop an armored vehicle on a road.
A Russian military vehicle heading toward the Mediterranean Sea, near Homs, in mid-December.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Over the 45-minute interview, Mr. al-Shara made a plea to Washington to lift sanctions, saying it would be logical now that the old government is out.

“The sanctions were implemented as a response to crimes committed by the previous regime against the people,” he said.

During the Syrian civil war, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe imposed tough sanctions on the Assad regime, which collapsed the economy. Mr. al-Shara is also still under U.N. sanctions as is the rebel group he led, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.

In recent weeks, Europe has eased sanctions and the United States has issued a temporary carve out to allow humanitarian aid into Syria. But that relief has had little effect on the economy so far.

Before his rebels seized power, “the economy was systematically being destroyed,” Mr. al-Shara said. “Entire sectors were nearly destroyed: Agricultural, economical, the financial sector, the service industries, tourism.”

This month, Mr. al-Shara visited Saudi Arabia and Qatar looking for financial support. Qatar has offered to pay public sector salaries through Syria’s central bank, but is concerned that doing so would violate U.S. sanctions.

Last month, American officials listed eight demands for lifting sanctions, according to two officials with knowledge of the issue. They include destroying any remaining chemical weapons stores and cooperating on counterterrorism efforts.

American and European officials have also pushed for the removal of foreign fighters who served in Mr. al-Shara’s rebel coalition and, in some cases, have been appointed to roles in his government, making this another condition of sanctions relief.

A gutted block of multistory buildings, and a damaged minaret has fallen against one building.
The destroyed Jobar neighborhood of Damascus, Syria.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

That demand in particular puts Mr. al-Shara in a bind: On the one hand, he must cooperate with Western countries if he wants to win their support. On the other hand, he needs to appease the more extremist factions within his former rebel coalition that helped him topple Mr. al-Assad and bring them under the government’s fold. Otherwise, they could threaten the country’s fragile peace.

Mr. al-Shara said that some American conditions “need to be discussed or modified” and declined to elaborate further.

He also suggested his government would consider giving Syrian citizenship to foreign fighters who have lived in the country for years, are in some cases married to Syrian citizens and “who have stuck beside the revolution.” That could complicate his bid for sanctions relief and stoke fears among Western countries about Syria becoming a haven for extremists, experts say.

Mr. al-Shara has sought to assuage those concerns, pledging to prevent Syrian land from being used to threaten any foreign country.“Syria has been committed from the beginning, before we reached Damascus, to preventing its land from being used in any way that can threaten any foreign country,” he said.

So far, his government has struggled to maintain security and exert its authority over the more extremist former rebel factions.

In March, Assad loyalists launched a coordinated attack on the new government’s troops in a coastal region that was once the heartland of Mr. al-Assad’s base. In response, thousands of armed fighters — including many among the more extremist factions — flooded into the region and killed an estimated 1,600 civilians within days, according to a war monitoring group.

The sectarian-driven killings targeted the Alawite religious minority, which the Assad family belongs to. They exposed how little control Mr. al-Shara has over former rebel forces that served in his coalition and the weakness of the new national army he is trying to build, which struggled to quell the violence for days.

Mr. al-Shara said his government is committed to maintaining peace on the coast and will hold those responsible for the violence.

The building up of a unified military is one of the chief challenges Mr. al-Shara faces as he tries to secure government control across the country. He said a few months is not enough time to establish a capable military for a country as large as Syria.

“This in itself poses a huge challenge,” Mr. al-Shara said. “It will take some time.”

Reham Mourshed Yara Bayoumy and Adrienne Carter contributed reporting.

Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times, leading the coverage of the region.

 

Author: Christina Goldbaum Christina Goldbaum spoke to the new Syrian leader at the presidential palace in Damascus.

Source: N.Y Times

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