A drone view shows people walking near a statue in Damascus, after Syrian rebels ousted President Bashar al-Assad, Syria, Dec. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassano

Syria’s new interim leader announced on Tuesday he was taking charge of the country as caretaker prime minister with the backing of the former rebels who toppled President Bashar al-Assad three days ago.

In a brief address on state television, Mohammed al-Bashir, a figure little known across most of Syria who previously ran an administration in a pocket of the northwest controlled by rebels, said he would lead the interim authority until March 1.

“Today we held a cabinet meeting that included a team from the Salvation government that was working in Idlib and its vicinity, and the government of the ousted regime,” he said.

“The meeting was under the headline of transferring the files and institutions to caretake the government.”

Behind him were two flags — the green, black, and white flag flown by opponents of Assad throughout the civil war, and a white flag with the Islamic oath of faith in black writing, typically flown in Syria by Sunni Islamist fighters.

In the Syrian capital, banks reopened for the first time since Assad’s overthrow. Shops were also opening up again, traffic returned to the roads, and cleaners were out sweeping the streets.

There was a notable decrease in the number of armed men on the streets. Two sources close to the rebels said their command had ordered fighters to withdraw from cities, and for police and internal security forces affiliated with the main rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS) to deploy there.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington fully supports Syria’s political transition process and wants it to lead to inclusive and non-sectarian governance.

The process must prevent Syria being used as a base for terrorism and ensure any chemical or biological weapons stocks are safely destroyed, he said in a statement.

Amid the steps towards normal life, Israeli airstrikes hit bases of the Syrian army, whose forces had melted away in the face of the rebel advance that ousted Assad.

Israel, which has sent forces across the border into a demilitarized zone inside Syria, acknowledged on Tuesday that troops had also taken up some positions beyond the buffer zone, though it denied they were advancing towards Damascus.

In a sign foreigners are ready to work with HTS, the former al Qaeda affiliate that led the anti-Assad revolt and has lately emphasi`ed its break with its jihadist roots, the UN envoy to Syria played down its designation as a terrorist organization.

“The reality is so far that HTS and also the other armed groups have been sending good messages to the Syrian people … of unity, of inclusiveness,” Geir Pedersen told a briefing in Geneva.

Syria’s new interim leader has little political profile beyond Idlib province, a mainly rural northwest region where rebels had maintained an administration during the long years that Syria’s civil war front lines were frozen.

A Facebook page of the rebel administration says he was trained as an electrical engineer, later received a degree in sharia and law, and had held posts in areas including education.

ISRAELI ADVANCES

Israel’s incursion in the southwest and its airstrikes create an additional security problem for the new administration, although Israel says its intervention is temporary.

After Assad’s flight on Sunday ended more than five decades of his family’s rule, Israeli troops moved into the buffer zone inside Syria established following the 1973 Middle East war.

Three security sources said on Tuesday the Israelis had advanced beyond the demilitarized zone. One Syrian source said they had reached the town of Qatana, several km (miles) to the east of the buffer zone and a short drive from Damascus airport.

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said he had ordered a “sterile defensive zone” to be created in southern Syria to protect Israel from terrorism.

Military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said troops were in the buffer zone and “a few additional points” in the vicinity, the first apparent official Israeli acknowledgement that they had moved beyond it. He said, however, that there had been no significant push into Syria.

Katz also said Israel’s navy had destroyed Syria’s fleet.

Regional security sources and officers within the defunct Syrian army said Tuesday’s Israeli airstrikes had hit military installations and air bases across Syria and destroyed dozens of helicopters and jets.

Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia condemned the Israeli incursion.

CELEBRATORY ICE CREAM

Rebuilding Syria will be a colossal task following 13 years of civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Cities have been bombed to ruin, swathes of countryside are depopulated, the economy has been gutted by international sanctions, and millions of refugees still live in camps after one of the biggest displacements of modern times.

But the mood in Damascus remained celebratory, with refugees beginning to return to a homeland they had not seen in years.

Anas Idrees, 42, a refugee since early in the war, raced from Lebanon to Syria to cheer Assad’s fall.

He ventured into the Hamidiyeh Souk in old Damascus to the renowned Bakdash ice cream parlour, where he ordered a large scoop of their signature Arabic gelato, served coated in pistachios.

“I swear to God, it tastes different now,” he said after eating a spoonful. “It was good before, but it’s changed because now we are happy inside.”

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Rebel fighters holds weapons at the Citadel of Aleppo, after Syrian rebels announced that they have ousted Bashar al-Assad, in Aleppo, Syria, Dec. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Karam al-Masri

The Biden administration is seeking ways to engage with Syrian rebel groups who ousted President Bashar al-Assad and is reaching out to partners in the region such as Turkey to help kick start informal diplomacy.

Speaking at a State Department briefing, spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington had a number of ways of communicating with various groups, one of which Washington has designated a terrorist organization.

“We have been engaging in those conversations over the past few days. Secretary himself has been engaged in conversations with countries that have influence inside Syria, and we’ll continue to do that,” Miller said.

Governments across the region as well as in the Western world are scrambling to forge new links with Syria’s leading rebel faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group formerly allied with Al Qaeda and which is designated a terrorist organization by the US, European Union, Turkey, and the UN.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been working the phones and speaking with regional leaders and has twice over the past four days spoken with Hakan Fidan, the foreign minister of Turkey, Miller said.

Turkey has troops on the ground in northwest Syria, and provides support to some of the rebels who were intending to take part, including the Syrian National Army (SNA) — though it considers HTS to be a terror group.

When asked if the United States was looking to engage with HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani himself, Miller declined to say but he did not rule it out either.

“We believe we have the ability to communicate one way or the other, directly or indirectly, with all the relevant parties,” Miller said.

The US designated Golani a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad‘s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria, and that Nusra had carried out suicide attacks that killed civilians and espoused a violent sectarian vision.

In one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations, the fall of Assad‘s government on Sunday wiped out a bastion from which Iran and Russia exercised influence across the Arab world. Assad fled to Russia, after 13 years of civil war and more than 50 years of his family’s rule.

US President Joe Biden and his top aides described the moment as one with historic opportunity for the Syrian people who have for decades lived under the oppressive rule of Assad but also warned the country faced a period of risk and uncertainty.

Syria policy under the Biden administration over the past four years had largely taken a backseat as Washington chose to view the civil war as a dormant issue and more pressing issues such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the eruption of Gaza war have consumed much of the bandwidth.

Over the past decade, HTS, previously known as the Nusra Front, has tried to moderate its image, while running a quasi-state centered on Idlib, where, experts say, it levied taxes on commercial activities and the population.

The group was “saying the right things” at this stage but that it was too early to say what was going to happen in Syria, a senior US official briefing reporters on Sunday said.

US Hostage affairs envoy Roger Carstens was also in the region in Beirut as part of intensive efforts to locate Austin Tice, an American journalist captured in Syria 12 years ago.

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Gebran Bassil, a Christian member of parliament and former minister gestures as he speaks during an interview with Reuters in Sin-el-fil, Lebanon, Oct. 13, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Iran-backed Hezbollah needs to focus on domestic issues in Lebanon and not the wider region, senior Lebanese Maronite politician Gebran Bassil said on Tuesday, adding that he was against the head of the army running for the presidency.

A year of fighting between the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah and Israel, which culminated in a tentative ceasefire brokered by the United States and France in November, saw more than 4,000 killed, thousands displaced, and the powerful Shi’ite group considerably weakened militarily with many of its leaders dead.

“It’s a process whereby Hezbollah accepts that they are part of the Lebanese state and are not parallel to the state,” Bassil, a Maronite Christian, who is one of Lebanon‘s most influential politicians, told Reuters in an interview in Paris.

“We don’t want their end. We want them to be partners in the Lebanese nation, equal to us in abiding by the rules and preserving the sovereignty of Lebanon. We agree with them on defending Lebanon and supporting the Palestinian cause, but politically and diplomatically, not militarily.”

Bassil, who said the group should distance itself from the Iran-aligned “Axis of Resistance,” is head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a Christian party founded by former President Michel Aoun, his father-in-law, that has been aligned with Hezbollah.

He was sanctioned by the United States in 2020 for alleged corruption and material support to Hezbollah. He denies the accusations.

He was in Paris meeting French officials. He declined to say whether he met Donald Trump’s regional envoy and fellow Maronite Massad Boulos, who accompanied the US president-elect to France last weekend.

Since the truce, Paris has increased efforts to discuss with the myriad key actors in Lebanon over how to break a political impasse after two years without a president or permanent government.

The presidential post is reserved for Christians, but part of the standoff reflects rivalries among the community as well as crucial political and religious balances in the country.

Authorities finally announced that the parliament would meet on Jan. 9 to elect a new president.

Bassil, who has enough lawmakers to block a Maronite candidate, said he was against the candidacy of Joseph Aoun, the head of the army, who diplomats say both the United States and France consider as a serious candidate.

He said Aoun’s appointment would be against the constitution and that he did not have consensus among all the Lebanese factions.

“We are against him because we don’t see him as being fit for the presidency,” Bassil said. “We need candidates who can bring the Lebanese together,” he said declining to name one.

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