Talks between remnants of Assad regime and rebels will be crucial, expert says

Diario As

8/12/2024

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00:00It's very dynamic. It's extremely dynamic. It has been very dynamic in the last few days. And,

00:05you know, the kind of flight of Assad and the declaration of the breakdown of the old regime,

00:13you know, has happened really within hours. I think what is decisive is to look at two things.

00:23First is, will it be possible between HTS and other rebels on the one hand and

00:33old regime forces, mostly the prime minister of Assad, to find some kind of way for a smooth,

00:43violent, free, relatively peaceful transition of power? I was honestly, I was a bit surprised by

00:50how quick this happened. I didn't expect that it would only take 10 days from, you know,

00:57them leaving Idlib and then arriving in Damascus. But that there was a strong regime weakness,

01:06and that there was a strong weakness of Assad supporters, we could clearly see this. And,

01:12you know, I think Syria experts knew that something was coming, even though I guess

01:18most are also surprised by how dynamic and how fast and how quick this all unfolded.

01:23The Jabhat al-Nusra in the past, and especially Hayat al-Khidir al-Sham, which operates under

01:29this name since 2017, 16, 17, is more Syria oriented. It is less transnational. It is less

01:41concerned about establishing an Islamic caliphate. It wants to establish an Islamic order, but

01:48under the leadership of Abu Muhammad al-Jalani, since 2017, it has tried in the northwest region

01:55of Idlib, which ruled mostly three and a half to four million people, it has tried to

02:05assure minorities living there, Christians, other religious minorities, for them to have a role and

02:12to not be persecuted. It doesn't mean that there hasn't been violence against opposition.

02:17It was an authoritarian rule. It was not a democratic, liberal, secular kind of rule,

02:25certainly not. But it was not the same kind of dictatorship, or the same kind of brutal repression

02:32that we know Syria from regime areas that we have known from ISIS rule, or that we have known from

02:39the Turkish occupation of parts of northern Syria. So it is an ambivalent organization. So it has

02:46these implications. For sure, on the short term, Iran and Russia have been weakened because Assad

02:53has been their main ally in Syria for decades. That is certain. But they might also have different

03:03interests. So I think for Russia, the interest is, of course, to keep a footing in the heart

03:10of the Middle East. And that's why these two bases are so important. And I could envision that

03:16Russia is open for some kind of negotiations with Jolani, with Turkey, to maintain a certain role

03:26inside Syria. For Iran, it is a much harder challenge, because in Iran's project of the

03:35kind of axis of resistance in the Middle East, that is, allies from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus

03:42to Beirut with Hezbollah, losing Damascus, so to say, is a massive blow. And I think for Russia,

03:52it is of utmost importance, now that they have lost the decades-long ally, Assad, to maintain

04:01some functioning of these two bases. Because for them, it's the only military base for Russia on

04:09the Mediterranean, on the Eastern Mediterranean, to be more precise. And it is an air force base,

04:16you know, in the heart of the Middle East, you know, where you have American troops, where Israel

04:22is close by, where you have Turkey, and so on as other important players in that region. So I think

04:30for Russia, there is an interest in keeping this. So I assume there might be negotiations

04:37between the new HDS-led, you know, transition government, or parts of the moderates of the old

04:43regime, and the Russians here to keep some of this. But it's too early to tell right now

04:48what precisely will happen to these two bases.

04:52So it is really crucial for the question of how peaceful or how violent

05:01the situation will be in the next few days. There are two things. One is, can this political

05:08transition process, which has now been announced, i.e. that the rebels under the leadership of HDS

05:16work together with forces from the old regime of Assad in Damascus,

05:22which is mainly about the prime minister, can succeed? Can it succeed that the Syrian

05:31state institutions are not attacked or violently taken over by the rebels,

05:36but that there is a kind of cooperation here and a reform of these institutions?

05:42That will be a key issue in the short term and especially in the medium term. And the other thing

05:49that will determine the course of things in Syria in the short term is how to deal with the

05:54minorities. So can it be successful that HTS, a rebel organization that really comes from Sunni

06:00Islamism, is open enough and remains open enough? Other groups that are ideologically

06:08different, for example many secular ones, or that belong to other religious or ethnic

06:16minorities, remain integrative here.

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