Lyse Doucet: HTS leader not only player in Syria’s fast-changing future

“They arrived here worried about the Islamists,” is how one supply described the temper of Arab overseas ministers who flew into Doha on Saturday night for pressing talks aimed toward averting a collapse into chaos and bloodshed in Damascus.

Within hours, the highly effective Islamist group driving the rebels’ rise to energy reported they had reached the centre of the Syrian capital.

The chief of Hayat Tahrir-al Shams, Abu Mohammad al-Jowlani, triumphantly introduced “the capture of Damascus”. Now he is utilizing his actual identify, Ahmed al-Sharaa, slightly than his nom de guerre as an indication of his sudden rise to a a lot better nationwide position.

He’s sure to play a decisive half in defining Syria’s new order after this sudden beautiful finish to a half century of repressive rule by the Assad household. But the chief of an organisation proscribed by the UN in addition to western governments just isn’t the one pivotal participant on Syria’s quick shifting scene.

“The story is not written yet,” cautions Marie Forestier, senior Syria advisor for the European Institute of Peace. She, and different knowledgeable observers who occurred to be attending the annual Doha Forum, level out that it was one other insurgent group, lately named because the Southern Operations room, working with individuals residing within the metropolis, who surged into the capital. The ranks of this power are dominated by fighters from the previous Free Syrian Army (FSA), who labored carefully with western powers firstly of Syria’s 2011 rebellion,

“The game starts now,” is how Ms Forestier describes the beginning of this momentous new chapter marked by an explosion of celebration within the streets, but in addition important questions on what emerges subsequent.

As the Islamist Hayat Tahrir-al Shams (HTS) pushed ahead with astonishing pace, dealing with scant resistance, it sparked a rush by insurgent forces in different areas of Syria in addition to a surge of armed native teams eager to play an element in their very own areas.

“Fighting the Assad regime was the glue that kept this de facto coalition together”, says Thomas Juneau, Middle East professional on the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, who can also be in Doha.

“Now that Assad has fled, continued unity among the groups that toppled him will be a challenge,” he says.

The teams embody an umbrella alliance of Turkish militias generally known as the Syrian National Army who, just like the HTS, dominated a nook of northwest Syria. In the northeast, the primarily Kurdish Syrian Defence Forces (SDF) teams have additionally gained floor and might be decided to carry on to their beneficial properties.

But HTS’s bold high-profile chief has seized the highlight. His rhetoric and report are actually below scrutiny by Syrians, in addition to in neighbouring capitals, and much past. The commander whose militia first emerged as an Al-Qaeda affiliate broke ranks with the jihadist group in 2016 and has been attempting to shine his picture since then. For years, he is despatched conciliatory messages overseas; now he’s reassuring Syria’s many minority communities they don’t have anything to fret about.

“There is a cautious welcome to his messages,” maintains Ms Forestier. “But we cannot forget the past eight years of his authoritarian rule and his background.” The rule of HTS, each a political and paramilitary organisation, within the conservative province of Idlib was marked by the institution of a working administration known as the Salvation Government, which included restricted freedom of faith, however was additionally marked by repressive measures.

In Syria’s second metropolis of Aleppo, the first urban area seized by HTS in its lightning advance, its fighters have been attempting to show they’re match to rule.

The group has additionally been sending reassuring messages to nations like Iraq that the battle wouldn’t spill throughout their borders. Other neighbours, together with Jordan, fear that Islamist successes subsequent door may galvanise disgruntled militant teams inside their borders. Turkey, sure to play a key position, has its personal worries. It regards the SDF as a terrorist group linked to Turkey’s proscribed PKK Kurdish group and won’t hesitate to intervene militarily and politically, as its completed for years, if its personal pursuits are threatened.

Russia’s overseas minister, Sergei Lavrov, had informed the Doha Forum on Saturday that it was “inadmissible” {that a} group he known as terrorists, a transparent reference to HTS, may take management in Syria.

By the night, the UN’s Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pederson, informed me there was a “new understanding of a new reality.”

Regional overseas ministers, together with President Assad’s former staunch allies Iran and Russia, left wrong-footed by this spectacular flip of occasions, are nonetheless calling for efforts to forge an inclusive political course of. That’s echoed by Mr Pedersen.

“This dark chapter has left deep scars, but today we look forward with cautious hope to the opening of a new one—one of peace, reconciliation, dignity, and inclusion for all Syrians”, he stated after his conferences right here in Doha, the place halls full of senior diplomats, students, and officers from the world over are buzzing with the newest information from Syria.

Many observers right here appear reluctant to attract fast conclusions about what sort of rule will emerge in a rustic identified for its variety of Christian and Muslim sects.

“I don’t want to go down that line of thinking yet,” stated one Western diplomat requested about any considerations relating to a harsh Islamist-dominated order. “We’re just getting started with HTS, who have led a bloodless coup.”

Juneau agrees. “For now, it is good to simply appreciate the truly historical collapse of one of the most brutal regimes of the past decades,” he stated.