Appointment of former leader of group that led operation to topple Assad comes amid other political changes
The former leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel group which led the military operation to topple the former president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, last month, has been appointed president of Syria for a “transitional period”.
The appointment of Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has been acting as the de-facto leader of the country since early December, came after a meeting of rebel faction leaders on Wednesday and was announced by a military spokesperson.
The spokesperson announced a series of other changes, including the dissolution of Syria’s parliament, the formation of an appointed legislative council, and the cancellation of the country’s 2012 constitution. Syria’s military and security agencies were also dissolved, to be replaced by new security institutions and army.
In addition, all armed factions in Syria are to be disbanded and absorbed into the new national army. On its face, the order to dissolve armed factions should include HTS, though it did not name the group, which is the de-facto authority in the country.
Sharaa said that the country’s priorities were “filling the power vacuum, preserving civil peace, building state institutions”.
The transitional government is supposed to hand over power to a new government in March, but it is unclear how the transition will be managed. In an interview with Al Arabiya last month, Sharaa said holding elections could take up to four years, and rewriting the country’s constitution could take three.
Sharaa promised to hold a national dialogue conference to ensure the post-Assad era is inclusive of all facets of Syrian society, but has delayed the event repeatedly. His meetings have been mostly with individuals, rather than political parties.
The dissolution of military factions is sensitive. The presence and role of these factions have become a pressing question, as the country’s interim government – led almost exclusively by HTS appointees – tries to consolidate power.
HTS, originally an offshoot of the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, became Syria’s most powerful rebel group by the time it launched the military campaign to topple the Assad regime last year. Under its guidance, a patchwork of opposition factions across the country participated in the military operation.
In mid-January, the Syrian ministry of defence announced that it would be holding consultations with factions to see how they would form a unified military.
Challenges abound, as more radical Islamist rebel factions – many of which make up part of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army – are not as disciplined as HTS’s rank and file and differ with the group’s ideology. The sudden fall of the Assad regime also left weapons caches, tanks and artillery free for the taking across Syria, some of which have fallen into the hands of rebels.
Sharaa and the minister of defence have held near-daily meetings with rebel factions and given their leaders key posts in the interim government, such as making them provincial governors.
The question of how to restore the Syrian state’s monopoly on violence is believed to be critical to maintaining the internal stability of the country.
Foreign powers are watching to see if Syria maintains its current trajectory towards stability, wary of seeing a repeat of a Libya scenario, where the country was divided up by warring factions and experienced mass lawlessness after the toppling of the longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
The interim government has courted regional powers for support in bolstering its fledgling state and army, seeking foreign funds and legitimacy. The new government’s first foreign trip was to Saudi Arabia, and later to Turkey, where the foreign minister was accompanied by the defence minister and director of intelligence.
While the transitional government tries to consolidate power internally, it also has been negotiating with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led military force which controls a third of the country. The SDF has asked to maintain a degree of military independence within the new Syrian army, which the government has refused.
As negotiations continue, the pace of conflict between the SDF and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army has continued to escalate in northern Syria.
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