Forget about Syria becoming an Islamist province. The country’s de facto ruler and former al-Qaeda agent Ahmad Sharaa on Wednesday proclaimed himself” intermediate leader”, with his , X account , just dropping the word” intermediate” and referring to him as “president of the Syrian Arab Republic”. But who was killed and made Sharaa prince? No one is the truth. In a place where “might is right”, the person with the weapon becomes “president”, and, before we know it, Sharaa may be leader, long.
But not all Syria are on table. Taha Bali, a Syrian-American Sunni from Damascus who has supported the Arab rebellion since its beginning in 2011, has spoken out frequently about Syria’s new ruler and his impulses.
Two months after moving into the People’s Palace, once Bashar Assad’s seat of power, Sharaa had “received foreign ministers, intelligence chiefs, celebrities ,]International Criminal Court ] prosecutor, foreign media and Syrian diaspora”, Bali , wrote , on X.
But, Sharaa had yet to get people of Syria whom Assad had killed or imprisoned, those injured and maimed in 14 years of civil war, native non-governmental companies, organizations or local advertising. Bali concluded that Sharaa’s intentions were clear. He was only interested in making connections with” the strong,” whether domestic or foreign, so he didn’t speak directly to Syria or travel to areas other than the presidential palace, like the famous Saydnaya prison.
To be honest, Sharaa did left the political house just to meet Qatari Emir Tamim Bin Hamad, whose plane touched down at Syrian airport on Thursday for the first time by a head of state.
In another article, Bali welcomed the formation of all armed groups into a central troops, but added that the incident was used to support for Sharaa taking control of the country.
Another Arab revolution, Mazen Ezzi, a French-Syrian Druze from Sweida in the north, also objected to what looked like Sharaa’s conquest of energy. The fact that Sharaa relied “on military groups, more than political and civil causes”, made it look like a revolt rather than political change, Ezzi , argued.
Parties that pledged affiliation to Sharaa, when he proclaimed himself leader, were all Sunni, according to Ezzi. ” Any social process that eliminates Kurds, Alawites, Christians, Druze, Murshidis, Assyrians and others is not a really regional one”, he , concluded.
Ezzi was best. Despite” President Sharaa,” large portions of the nation still fall under its purview. In the southeast, the Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces ( SDF) maintain an autonomous government and military. The Kurds insisted on agreeing to the process initially when Sharaw demanded their hands to be surrendered.
According to SDF key Mazloum Abdi,” We told Sharaa that we are willing to join our martial skills to create a national Syrian troops – an organisation with agreed on guidelines and chain of command.” We are not willing to sacrifice to him because Shaara does not want us to be his peers. For the Kurds, it helps that their martial features, and global relationships, are excellent to Sharaa’s. However, with time, the balance of power does shift in favor of them.
Before coming to power, Sharaa asserted that his only goal was to create a different and rich Syria deserving of its citizens and that he was not seeking strength or fame. However, Sharaa’s actions have since demonstrated that he has only feigned his past in order to gain international support for his need to consolidate power and, likely, not give up.
More than 50 years after the Assads took office, Sharaa is still riding on the famous joy of ejecting the Assad monarchy.
But quickly enough, when Sharaa becomes the unquestioned master, he will have to manage. Sharaa will need to use tactics comparable to those of other Middle Eastern dictators, including harsh suppression of opponents and a displacement of responsibility toward foreigners, primarily the West and Israel.
Another technique, probably closer to the emotions of Sharaa’s center, would be to succumb to Islamism. The reeling Iraqi dictator launched the “belief plan” in 1991, adding the Islamic word” God is Excellent” to the flag, after a global partnership ejected Saddam and destroyed Iraq and its market. When Syria encounters unemployment and poverty, it is likely that Sharaa will resurrect his Islamist past and engage in Islamization, which in combination with brutal repression, will lead to the establishment of an Islamic state in Syria, similar to the ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
There’s no guarantee that what comes after will be any different from what came before, but toppling bloody tyrants is great.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain works for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies ( FDD ) as a researcher.