When I left London almost two weeks ago after the rebel coalition captured Aleppo – a stunning victory dwarfed by what followed – I thought I would be reporting on an armed war.
The group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) swept everything before it, but I assumed the regime would fight since it didn’t stop there, having bombed in the years before Russia intervened in 2015 lost ground Syrian towns and villages reduced to rubble and ashes.
Nearly a decade later, it was clear that Bashar al-Assad’s Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies had other wars to consider.
But while the regime has struggled with unwilling conscripts, it has always been able to find Syrians willing to fight and die for it, even at the height of the war after 2011, when rebels took over much of Damascus outside the city center and the streets to Beirut.
I have visited these men at the front many times.
Many of the most effective units were led by officers from Assad’s own Alawite community.
In Aleppo around 2015, an Alawite general handed out jars of perfectly distilled arak, poured from bottles that once held Jack Daniels.
He proudly said that arak, an anise-based spirit popular in the Middle East, came from the Assad family’s hometown in the hills behind the port of Latakia. Outside, his unit attacked the rebel-held east side of the city.
Not all were Alawites. In Jobar, a district on the edge of central Damascus, a Christian officer in the Syrian Arab Army loyal to Assad took me into the tunnels they had dug beneath the ruins to attack rebels.
He said the rebels also had tunnels and sometimes broke into each other’s tunnels and killed in the dark.
The young man had a crucifix tattooed on his wrist and another hanging around his neck, and he talked about how he had to fight to protect his community from jihadist extremists on the other side.
My instincts about the fighting spirit of Assad’s exhausted band of loyalists could not have been more wrong.
On Saturday, December 7, I went to sleep after hearing the news that Homs had fallen.
When I woke up, Bashar al-Assad was on his way to Russia and rebel fighters began celebrating on the streets of Damascus.
EPAThey fired more bullets into the air in celebration as they fired in anger at Assad’s supporters, who were running for their lives.
I saw hundreds of cars lining up at the Lebanon border to leave, full of angry, defeated men and frightened families.
Ordinary soldiers dropped their uniforms and weapons without firing a shot and went home.
The Assad regime has collapsed, hollowed out by corruption, cruelty and brutal disregard for the lives of Syrians. Even Assad’s own Alawite community did not fight for him.
That’s why on Thursday evening this week, instead of seeking shelter from shells and bullets on a freezing street in Homs or Hama, as expected, I walked through the marble halls of the presidential palace in Damascus with Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s de facto leader.
He gave up his uniform and exchanged his military pseudonym Abu Mohammed al-Jolani for his real name.
Many Syrians question his claim that he has also traded his old jihadist beliefs for a more tolerant form of Syrian religious nationalism.
It is true that he broke with al-Qaeda in 2016 after a long career as a jihadist fighter in Iraq and Syria. But as I discovered in Assad’s palace, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a tall, soft-spoken man in his early forties, is reluctant to talk too specifically about the Syria he wants.
He seems highly intelligent and politically astute. Like many smart politicians, he often doesn’t give a clear answer to a clear question.
He denied that he wanted Syria to become a Middle East Afghanistan.
The Taliban, he said, “ruled a tribal society. Syria is completely different.” Syria’s new rulers would respect its culture and history.
When I asked whether women had the freedoms they expect here, he replied that 60 percent of students at universities in Idlib, his power base, were female.
But he tried not to answer a question about the requirement for women to wear hijab – Islamic clothing.
Rumors are circulating in Damascus about bearded HTS men ordering women to cover their hair.
I pointed out that there had been a big row on social media after a woman asked for a selfie with him and then pulled up her hood while taking the photo.
Conservatives criticized al-Sharaa for agreeing to pose with a woman who was not a member of his family. Liberals viewed her election as a dark omen for Syria’s future.
XIf the question annoyed him, he didn’t show it.
“I didn’t force her. But it is my personal freedom. I would like photos to be taken for me, as I see fit. I didn’t force her. This is not the same as a statewide law. But there is a culture in this country that the law must recognize.”
Al-Sharaa was referring to the fact that many Syrians, not just in the majority Sunni Muslim community, are pious.
Many women wear hijab. It’s about being able to vote, secular Syrians would say.
During half a century of Assad rule, Syrians developed survival strategies that often involved hiding their own feelings and doing what was expected of them.
Shocked, nervous, secular Syrians showed me videos on their cell phones of mass prayers outside universities as students returned last Sunday.
Was it, they asked, genuine piety or were the young people doing what they were told because it had been that way here all their lives?
According to al-Sharaa, everything will be a matter of a new constitution that will have to be decided by a panel of legal experts.
Critics of Al-Sharaa will point out that as things stand, he himself decides who will be included on the committee, which he says will write both new laws and a new constitution.
Ahmed al-Sharaa particularly wanted to talk about the oppression of the people by the old regime.
“The Syrian problems are far too bigger than the problems you are asking about. Half of the population has been expelled from Syria or forcibly evicted from their homes.”
“They were attacked with barrel bombs and unguided dummy bombs as well as over 250 chemical attacks. Many Syrians drowned in the sea while trying to escape to Europe.”
He recognized that Syria has no chance to begin stabilization and reconstruction unless sanctions are lifted.
The sanctions were originally aimed at the Assad regime. Keeping them, he said, means treating the victim the same as the oppressor.
He denied that the group he leads is a terrorist organization, which is currently the position of the United Nations and most of the world’s strongest countries.
Visits by foreign diplomats suggest that a change in both sanctions and terrorist lists could be possible.
ReutersHe was dismissive when I pointed out that diplomats had told him that I knew that changing that status depended on whether he could prove that he was keeping his promise to respect minority rights and pursue an inclusive political process.
“What is important to me is that the Syrian people believe me. We promised the Syrian people that we would free them from this criminal regime, and we have done that. That’s what matters to me first and last.”
“I don’t care what people say about us abroad. I have no obligation to prove to the world that we are seriously working to advance the interests of our people in Syria.”
Over the last two weeks I have heard many Syrians say that they want to be left alone to try to rebuild their country.
That sounds like a pipe dream.
The war destroyed large parts of the country, but also stripped Syria of its sovereignty.
Bashar al-Assad became an ally of Iran and Russia and fled the country when they stopped supporting him.
The US is in the northeast to hunt down Islamic State remnants and protect its Kurdish allies.
Turkey controls much of the northwest and has its own Arab-led militia.
There are signs that the Turks, who have a close relationship with HTS, are preparing a renewed attack on Syrian Kurds, who have close ties with Kurdish separatists in Turkey.
Israel, which is currently more aggressive than it has been in many years, has clearly taken advantage of the power vacuum in Syria.
It continues to bomb what remains of the state’s military infrastructure and captures more Syrian land to add to the Golan Heights, which it has occupied since 1967.
As always, the Israelis justify their actions with self-defense.
The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told me that Israel’s actions were “irresponsible.” He said Israel must not act in a way that could “destabilize this very, very fragile transition process.”
EPAAhmed al-Sharaa knows he cannot stand up to Israel’s US-backed might.
“Syria is exhausted by war, regardless of whether Israel is strong or not. Syria must become stronger and more developed. We have no plans for aggression against Israel. Syria will not pose a threat to Israel or anyone.”
Ahmed al-Sharaa’s agenda is overcrowded.
Syria is a broken country that he says he wants to repair and revitalize, fraught with challenges that may make his task impossible.
HTS is not the only armed group in Syria and there are some who want to destroy its fledgling government. Enemies of HTS in the Islamic State network could attempt destabilizing attacks.
Syrians’ desire for revenge against Assad’s killers – and the ex-president himself – could erupt into destructive public anger if HTS cannot prove that it is bringing to justice the men who have been on the Syrians’ trail for so long.
Ahmed al-Sharaa rightly sees Syria as a pivotal point in the heart of the Middle East.
“Syria is an important country with a strategic location, very influential in the world. Look at the presence there of America on the one hand, Russia on the other, and also regional countries like Turkey, Iran and Israel.”
He says that’s why the outside world should help Syria rebuild.
This is also why powerful states may not allow this.
