Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader, said on Tuesday that the one-day “national dialogue summit” he presided over was a “historic” chance for Syria to rebuild after more than a decade of brutal civil war and terrorist insurgency.
“I urge all Syrians to stand united and hand in hand to heal the wounds and wash away the pains after decades of dictatorship,” Sharaa said in his opening address to the conference, which was held at the presidential palace in Damascus.
“Syria liberated itself on its own, and it suits it to build itself on its own. What we are living today is an exceptional, historic, and rare opportunity. We must take advantage of every moment of it to serve the interests of our people and our country,” Sharaa said.
The former occupant of the presidential palace, dictator Bashar Assad, was evicted by a lightning-fast rebel offensive in December. Thanks to Assad’s patrons in Russia and Syria being weakened and distracted by other wars, the former al-Qaeda franchise now known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was able to blaze across the country, seize control of Damascus, and pack Assad off to exile in Russia.
Sharaa, who rose to command al-Qaeda’s operations in Syria under the alias “Abu Mohammad al-Jolani” before breaking with his old masters, has been working to reinvent himself as a statesman and position HTS as a kinder, gentler Islamic supremacist movement.
To that end, Sharaa insists he is merely the temporary or transitional leader of post-Assad Syria. The latest word from HTS is that Syria’s “transitional period” should last about four years.
The “national dialogue summit” on Tuesday was a red-carpet affair with several hundred attendees, who created working groups to devise a justice system and constitution for the transitional government, restructure government institutions and civil society, codify personal freedoms, and work out an economic plan for postwar Syria.
The results of these discussions were not made public, but the “transitional government” is supposed to formally take power – and presumably reveal its plans for Syria’s economic and legal systems – on March 1.
The membership roster of the national dialogue was also somewhat opaque. HTS representatives made a great show of working hard to include representatives from across Syria’s many regions and factions, but when the dust settled, three very significant minorities were frozen out of planning for the supposedly inclusive transitional government: the Alawites, the Kurds, and the Druze.
The Alawites are the offbeat Shiite Muslim sect from which the Assad dynasty hailed. Alawites have been very nervous about suffering retribution under the new government because they generally supported Assad.
The Kurds were vital U.S. allies in the war against the Islamic State in Syria, and they have long administered their own autonomous region. Unfortunately, they are seen as a major security threat by neighboring Turkey, and Sharaa wishes to cultivate an “eternal friendship” with the Turks.
Some other factions in Syria regard the autonomous Kurdish region as a threat to their security, and resent the undue influence the Kurds have with America and Europe thanks to their partnership in the war against ISIS.
A coalition of 35 parties in the Kurdish autonomous region condemned Sharaa’s national dialogue conference on Tuesday as “meaningless” and “worthless” because groups like the Kurds were excluded.
The Kurdish groups said a “real national dialogue conference must be inclusive” in order to “reflect the reality of the makeup of Syrian society.”
The Druze are an esoteric religious sect that has lately been thinking it might be safer to move to Israel and bring their land with them, rather than taking their chances with HTS.
The Israelis have long been protective of the Druze and the Druze strongly supported Israel during its war against the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah. Many Israeli Druze serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and some of them gave their lives during the Gaza war.
The Jerusalem Post said on Monday that the fall of Assad emboldened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend protection to the Jabal Druze, the community living closest to Israel’s border. Netanyahu has explicitly stated that his government will not “tolerate any threat to the Druze community in southern Syria.”
The Druze represent a political challenge to both Israel and the new government in Damascus because a fair number of them live in the Golan Heights, the Syria territory annexed by Israel in 1981. The Golan Druze initially resisted Israel’s offer of citizenship because they feared for the safety of relatives living in Syria, but those ties frayed over the years, and now many are looking toward Israel instead of rolling the dice on Sharaa’s promises of inclusion.
“Soon after Assad’s fall, videos went viral on social media of Syrian Druze speaking in favor of joining Israel. This was less about affinity for Israel and more about fear – fear of what Islamist factions might do to them if they took control,” the Jerusalem Post noted.
The HTS junta was not pleased with Netanyahu’s declaration. A statement released after the national dialogue conference on Tuesday condemned “the Israeli incursion into Syrian territories as a blatant violation of Syria’s sovereignty,” and vowed to “firmly confront anyone who wants to tamper with our security and unity.”
Some Druze also felt Netanyahu had gone too far, and said they would prefer to remain “part of Syria” rather than living under “Israeli occupation.”
Critics of Tuesday’s event in Damascus saw it as little more than a theatrical performance, intended to convince foreign governments that heavy sanctions leveled against the brutal Assad regime can now be lifted. The HTS junta’s foreign minister, Assad al-Shibani, denounced those sanctions on Tuesday as a “means of pressure on the will of the Syrian people.”
Assad might be gone, but no Western leader relishes the thought of being the first to lift sanctions against an al-Qaeda offshoot that might not deliver on its promises of safety and justice for Syria. On the other hand, rebuilding war-torn Syria will be extremely difficult if heavy sanctions remain in place.