After Assad’s fall: Rebel leader al-Sharaa wants to lead Syria to elections

Syria’s rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa says he wants to gradually lead the country towards a new constitution and elections. It could take around three years for a constitution to be drafted and another year for elections to take place, al-Sharaa said in an interview with the Al-Arabija news channel.

After more than ten years of civil war, the Arab country is fragmented and deeply divided along sectarian lines. Even after the fall of ruler Bashar al-Assad, rival militias are fighting for power.

Doubts about rebel intentions

A UN resolution from 2015, which the UN Security Council passed after the start of the civil war in 2011, called for fair and free elections. After al-Sharaa’s Islamist group HTS ruled in an authoritarian manner in northwestern Syria for years, there are still doubts as to whether such an election could take place in Syria. Human rights activists have documented torture and killings of political opponents under HTS rule. At the same time, al-Sharaa has called for the protection of minorities.

“Syria will not be a source of unrest for anyone,” he told Al-Arabija. The HTS militia he led, which overthrew Syria’s government after a lightning offensive, should be disbanded. He will officially announce the move at a conference for national dialogue.

HTS emerged from the Al-Nusra Front, an offshoot of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Al-Sharaa, previously known under the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, broke away from al-Qaeda and the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS). To this day, however, there are reports that the HTS leadership maintains contact with Al-Qaeda. This is also why there is a suspicion that dissolving HTS could just be a facade to gain more support abroad.

The investigation into the crimes continues

The attempted investigation of crimes from Assad’s reign is now continuing. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces from the interim government arrested more than 300 suspects across the country. These include ex-officers, security guards and informants who are said to have been involved in arrests, abuse and torture under Assad. Lebanon also handed over around 70 suspected Syrians to security forces at the shared border.

Security authorities should be restructured

The Assad government’s feared security agencies are also to be dissolved and restructured. This was said by the newly appointed intelligence chief Anas Chattab, according to a statement from the Sana news agency. The step should “serve the people, their victims and their long history,” said Chattab. He accused the deposed ruler Assad of having treated the Syrians unfairly and oppressed them with the help of the security authorities.

With the help of the security authorities, the population was oppressed with often the most brutal methods for more than 50 years during the reign of Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad. These included arbitrary killings and disappearances, the most severe forms of torture and inhumane punishments in the country’s prisons. Tens of thousands were unlawfully imprisoned.

According to human rights activists, Israel’s air force allegedly attacked targets in Syria again, killing at least eleven people. Most of them were civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. There was a serious explosion at a weapons depot near Damascus that belonged to troops of the deposed Syrian government. These are probably Israeli air strikes again. The Israeli army did not initially comment.