Suit, tie and a new name: Syria’s rebel chief turns statesman

Jerusalem: Syria’s new leadership has taken steps to try to unite disparate rebel factions under a single government in the latest move to try to assert authority over the country following the ousting of Bashar al-Assad.

A number of rebel factions have agreed to dissolve themselves and be integrated under the Defence Ministry, according to SANA, the Syrian state-run news service.

Beyond dissolving rebel factions, the man born Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa but formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the offensive that overthrew the Assad dictatorship, has taken other actions recently aimed at building a new state.

His administration has appointed a caretaker prime minister to lead a transitional government until March and has promised that a legal committee would draft a new constitution.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, left, shakes hands with Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani during their meeting in Damascus, Syria, on Sunday.Credit: AP

Disbanding the country’s armed factions was a logical step for a leadership trying to establish a single national military.

“They are trying to build a state,” said Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, which researches global crises. “You can’t build a state while you have a million and one militias running around doing their own things.”

Khalifa, who met Sharaa this week, said she was under the impression that dissolving the rebel factions was a top priority for the new leaders because “wayward factions” were acting outside their command in parts of rural Syria.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani in his rebel days.Credit: Al Jazeera

Pictures posted on social media on the day the rebel unification was announced showed Sharaa meeting with dozens of rebel faction leaders, many of them in military uniforms.

Sharaa has participated in official meetings recently wearing a business suit rather than a military uniform. Since his faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, routed Assad, he has presented himself as more of a statesman and less of a rebel leader, and has espoused relatively moderate political positions despite past links to Islamist extremists.

On Sunday, he said at a news conference that the “logic of a state is different from the logic of a revolution”. He spoke alongside Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

A banner with an image depicting the ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is placed on the fire as a Syrian member of the rebel forces destroys drugs and alcoholic beverages, found at a building, in Damascus.Credit: AP

“We absolutely will not allow for weapons outside the framework of the state,” Sharaa said, adding that he was referring both to rebel groups and to a Kurdish-led militia, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, who are separate from the rebels.

The Syrian Democratic Forces control an autonomous region dominated by Kurds in north-eastern Syria, while the rebel groups hold sway in other parts of the country. A rebel alliance with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the lead helped topple the Assad dictatorship.

The SANA report said all rebel factions signed on to Tuesday’s unity agreement, but The New York Times was not able to independently verify that. The Syrian Democratic Forces did not appear to have signed on.

Farhad Shami, a new media official with the Syrian Democratic Forces, said his group wasn’t opposed in principle to being integrated into a new Syrian military, but the matter required discussions with the new leaders in Damascus, the Syrian capital, without the intervention of regional powers.

Syrians attend a Christmas Eve mass at Our Lady of Damascus Church in the Syrian capital.Credit: Getty Images

He said the Syrian Democratic Forces would like to speak with their counterparts in Damascus about fighting the Islamic State group, writing a new constitution that guarantees the rights of all Syrians, holding elections and forming an inclusive government.

The Kurdish-led force has been battling the Islamic State in Syria for years with US military backing. Neighbouring Turkey is hostile to the Kurdish force, viewing it as an extension of a Kurdish group in Turkey that has been fighting the Turkish state for decades.

On Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Kurdish forces in Syria must either put down their weapons or “be buried”.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.