A Syrian youth holds signs during a rally next to Damascus Opera House in Umayyad Square, after Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was ousted, in Damascus, Syria, December 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Diplomats from the United States have arrived in Syria to speak directly to the new Islamist-led rulers, hoping to encourage a moderate, inclusive path and to find clues on missing Americans, the State Department said Friday (December 20, 2024).

Also read: What lies ahead for Syria after Assad’s exit? | Explained 

This is the first formal US diplomatic mission to Damascus since the early days of the brutal civil war that broke out in 2011 and culminated in a surprise lightning offensive that toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad this month.

The diplomats will meet representatives of victorious group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — which is designated a terrorist group by Washington — as well as activists, civil society and members of minority groups, the State Department said.

The U.S. officials will speak with Syrians about “their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them,” a State Department spokesperson said.

The delegation includes Barbara Leaf, who is the top State Department official for the Middle East, and Daniel Rubinstein, a veteran US diplomat in the Arab world who is being put in charge of engagement on Syria, the spokesperson said.

Also present is Roger Carstens, the US point man on hostages, who has been seeking clues on missing Americans including Austin Tice, a journalist who was kidnapped in August 2012.

The trip comes a week after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States had been in direct contact with HTS as he toured Syria’s neighbors.

At talks in the Jordanian resort of Aqaba, Western and Arab powers as well as Turkey jointly called Saturday for an “inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government” that respects the rights of all of Syria’s diverse communities.

‘No guarantees’

HTS has roots in Al-Qaeda, causing the United States to keep a distance throughout the civil war even while Washington also sought to isolate the more secular Assad, whose family’s dictatorship ruthlessly suppressed dissent for a half-century.

Since the fall of Mr. Assad, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has struck a conciliatory tone, calling for Syrian unity, the protection of minorities and the disbanding of rebel factions.

Mr. Blinken has said it is too early to assess Jolani’s sincerity and that any sanctions relief would depend on actions.

“There are no guarantees at all. We’ve seen too many times one dictator can be replaced by another,” Blinken told The Foreign Affairs Interview podcast on Wednesday (December 18, 2024).

“So this is fraught, but we know almost certainly that absent our engagement, absent our leadership, that’s the way it will go,” he said.

“We have a chance, and the Syrian people have a chance, if concerned countries, including the United States, work to move this in a good direction.”

U.S. yet to decide on removing HTS’ terror tag

No decision on removing the HTS terrorism designation is likely in the month until the return of president-elect Donald Trump, who has made clear that he does not want a heavy U.S. involvement in Syria.

Mr. Trump has described Assad’s fall as an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkey, which has supported HTS and bitterly opposes Washington’s alliance with Syrian Kurdish fighters, who have cooperated in Washington’s paramount goal of keeping down the ultra-violent Islamic State group.

World powers have moved quickly since Mr. Assad’s fall to revive diplomacy in Syria, whose war set off an exodus of migrants that rocked Western politics.

Mr. Jolani met UN envoy for Syria, Geir Pederson on Monday (December 16, 2024) with the, and a day later with a German delegation.

French diplomats returned to their embassy in Damascus, raising the tricolor flag for the first time since 2012.

The United States closed its own embassy in Damascus in February 2012 and has made no immediate move to reopen it, with the Czech Republic representing US interests in the country.

Geir Pederson, the United Nations’ special envoy to Syria, center, listens to a woman who was looking for her missing relative in the Saydnaya prison, during his visit to the infamous Saydnaya military prison, in Saydnaya north of Damascus, Syria, on December 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The United Nations told the leader of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group which toppled Bashar al-Assad that Syria must have a “credible and inclusive” transition.

The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen who arrived in Damascus on Sunday, has met Abu Mohammed al-Jolani — who now goes under his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa — Mr. Pedersen’s office said Monday in a statement on Telegram.

He also met interim Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir, it said.

Mr. Pedersen met them after Saturday’s international meeting on Syria in Jordan, and stressed “the need for a credible and inclusive Syrian-owned and led political transition based on the principles of United Nations Security Council resolution 2254 (2015)”.

The UN envoy also underlined “the intention of the United Nations to render all assistance to the Syrian people”, and was briefed on their “challenges and priorities”, the statement added.

It said Mr. Pedersen had several engagements planned in the days ahead, but did not elaborate.

Mr. Assad was toppled by a lightning 11-day rebel offensive that swept down from northwest Syria, with fighters entering the capital on December 8.

Abandoned by his Russian and Iranian backers, Mr. Assad fled into exile in Moscow, bring to an end five decades of abuses by his clan.

The HTS group that led his overthrow is a former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria, and the United States and other Western governments still classify it as a “terrorist” group.

While hailing Mr. Assad’s downfall, several nations have said they will wait to see how Syria’s new Sunni Muslim authorities treat minorities in the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country.

Several countries including the United States and Britain have said they have already made contact with Jolani.

Damascus:

As Syria’s new transitional Prime Minister Mohammad al-Bashir took charge and called for “stability and calm” in the country, Israel carried out over 350 airstrikes targeting weapons stockpiles and strategic infrastructure in the Middle Eastern country over the past 48 hours. The Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS) led rebels, who toppled President Bashar al-Assad three days ago, appointed Mohammad al-Bashir as the transitional head of government to run the country until March 1. 

Mr al-Bashir, a figure little known across most of Syria ran the rebel-led Salvation Government in a pocket of the northwest controlled by rebels before their 12-day lightning offensive swept into Damascus.

In his first interview since being appointed, Mr Bashir told Qatar’s Al Jazeera television, “Now it is time for this people to enjoy stability and calm.”

Israel Strikes Syria

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in a statement posted to X, said it has carried out more than 350 airstrikes targeting weapons stockpiles and strategic infrastructure in Syria over the past 48 hours.

The targets included Syrian Navy facilities at Al-Bayda port and Latakia port, Syrian Air Force airfields, dozens of weapons production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra, numerous anti-aircraft batteries, drones, aircraft, tanks, scud missiles, cruise missiles, surface-to-sea, surface-to-air, surface-to-surface missiles, UAVs, fighter jets, attack helicopters, radars, hangars, and more.

The IDF said it “conducted air strikes on 130 assets in Syria, including weapons depots, military structures, launchers, and firing positions.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said that in overnight strikes the Syrian navy fleet was wiped out and Israeli troops were “establishing themselves” at the buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Turkish Strikes

Meanwhile, the Turkish intelligence agency is also attacking targets in Syria. On Tuesday, Turkish security officials said their intelligence agency attacked a convoy of trucks allegedly carrying missiles, heavy weapons and ammunition that were abandoned by the Syrian government and reportedly seized by Syrian Kurdish militias, according to a report by The Guardian.

As per the report, 12 trucks, two tanks and two ammunition depots were “destroyed” in aerial strikes in the city of Qamishli, near the Turkish border.

US Urges ‘Inclusive’ Process For New Syrian Govt

The outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged all nations to support an “inclusive” political process in Syria, saying the United States would eventually recognize a government if it meets such standards. “The Syrian people will decide the future of Syria. All nations should pledge to support an inclusive and transparent process and refrain from external interference,” Mr Blinken said in a statement.

“The United States will recognize and fully support a future Syria government that results from this process,” he added.

The US Secretary of State said that the future government of Syria should be “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian” after Islamist rebels toppled strongman Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Alawite minority who led a secular dictatorship. 

HTS’s Message To The World

HTS commander Ahmed al-Sharaa, aka Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, has urged foreign countries to not fear Syria after Bashar al-Assad’s regime was overthrown. Speaking to American broadcaster Sky News, Jolani, said, “Their (West’s) fears are unnecessary, God willing”.

“The country will be rebuilt,” he said, adding, “The fear was from the presence of the regime. The country is moving towards development and reconstruction. It’s going towards stability.”

He continued: “People are exhausted from war. So the country isn’t ready for another one and it’s not going to get into another one. The source of our fears was from the Iranian militias, Hezbollah and the regime which committed the massacres we are seeing today. So their removal is the solution for Syria. The current situation won’t allow for a return to panic.”

UN To Consider Taking HTS Off Terrorist List

The United Nations said it would consider removing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham from its designated terrorist list if it passes the key test of forming a truly inclusive transitional government, according to a report by The Guardian. 

Quoting Geir Pedersen, UN special envoy for Syria, the report said the UN would consider the proposal if the group could not seek to govern Syria in the way that it had governed Idlib, the northern province where it was based and from where it led the military breakout. 

“We have to be honest and look at the facts. It has been nine years since that resolution was adopted and the reality so far is that HTS and other armed groups have been sending good messages to the Syrian people of unity and inclusiveness. In Hama and Aleppo, there have been reassuring things on the ground…My message is Syria cannot be run like Idlib.” he said.

75 Indians Evacuated From Syria 

India on Tuesday evacuated 75 Indian nationals from Syria, two days after rebel forces overthrew President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian government. The evacuation, coordinated by the embassies of India in Damascus and Beirut, was put into effect following an assessment of the security situation, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said.

“The Government of India today evacuated 75 Indian nationals from Syria, following recent developments in that country,” it said in a late-night statement.

“The evacuees included 44 ‘zaireen’ from Jammu and Kashmir who were stranded at Saida Zainab. All Indian nationals have safely crossed over to Lebanon and will return by available commercial flights to India,” it said.

Syria’s Islamist militant leader on Tuesday (December 10, 2024) vowed to pursue former senior government officials responsible for torture and war crimes, a day after he began talks on the transfer of power following President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster.

Mr. Assad fled Syria as the Islamist-led opposition alliance swept into the capital Damascus, bringing a spectacular end on Sunday to five decades of brutal rule by his clan.

Also read | After Assad’s ouster, India calls for peaceful, inclusive political process in Syria

He oversaw a crackdown on a democracy movement that erupted in 2011, sparking a war that killed 5,00,000 people and forced half the country to flee their homes, millions of them finding refuge abroad.

“We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people,” militant leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, said on Tuesday in a statement on Telegram.

“We will offer rewards to anyone who provides information about senior army and security officers involved in war crimes,” he said, adding the incoming authorities would seek the return of officials who have fled abroad.

Sharaa held talks on Monday with outgoing Prime Minister Mohammed al-Jalali “to coordinate a transfer of power that guarantees the provision of services” to Syria’s people, according to an earlier statement on Telegram.

While Syria had been at war for over 13 years, the government’s collapse came in a matter of days in a lightning offensive led by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Even as some Syrians rejoiced and others rushed to search for loved ones in Mr. Assad’s notorious jails, Israel continued to carry out air strikes aimed at destroying the former government’s military capabilities, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Early on Tuesday, AFP journalists heard more loud explosions in Damascus.

Israeli strikes

The Syrian Observatory said on Tuesday that Israel had “destroyed the most important military sites in Syria” with a flurry of air strikes since the fall of Mr. Assad.

It said Israel has carried out “about 250 air strikes on Syrian territory” over the last 48 hours.

They targeted weapons depots, boats from the Assad government’s navy, and a research centre that Western countries suspected of having links to chemical weapons production, it said.

Near the port city of Latakia, Israel targeted an air defence facility and damaged Syrian naval ships as well as military warehouses.

In and around the capital Damascus, strikes targeted military installations, research centres, and the electronic warfare administration.

Israel, which borders Syria, also sent troops into a buffer zone east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights after Assad’s fall, in what Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described as a “limited and temporary step” for “security reasons”.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which had been allied to Mr. Assad, condemned the strikes late Monday and lambasted Israel for “occupying more land in the Golan Heights”.

Prison nightmare

At the core of the system of rule that Mr. Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centres used to eliminate dissent by those suspected of stepping out of the ruling Baath party’s line.

Thousands of Syrians gathered on Monday outside a jail synonymous with the worst atrocities of Mr. Assad’s rule to search for relatives, many of whom had spent years in the Saydnaya facility outside Damascus.

Rescuers from the Syrian White Helmets group had earlier said they were looking for potential secret doors or basements in Saydnaya.

“I ran like crazy” to get to the prison, said Aida Taha, 65, searching for her brother who was arrested in 2012.

“But I found out that some of the prisoners were still in the basements. There are three or four floors underground.”

Crowds of freed prisoners wandered the streets of Damascus distinguishable by the marks of their ordeal: maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger.

‘We are reborn’

In central Damascus on Monday, despite all the uncertainty over the future, the joy was palpable.

“It’s indescribable. We never thought this nightmare would end. We are reborn,” Rim Ramadan, 49, a civil servant at the finance ministry, told AFP.

“We were afraid for 55 years of speaking, even at home. We used to say the walls had ears,” Ramadan said, as people honked car horns and rebels fired their guns into the air.

Syria’s parliament, formerly pro-Assad like the Prime Minister, said it supports “the will of the people to build a new Syria towards a better future governed by law and justice”.

The Baath party said it will support “a transitional phase in Syria aimed at defending the unity of the country.”

Syrian state television’s logo on the Telegram messaging app now displays the rebel flag.

During the offensive launched on November 27, rebels met little resistance as they wrested city after city from Assad’s control, opening the gates of prisons along the way and freeing thousands, many of them held on political charges.

Some, like Fadwa Mahmoud, whose husband and son are missing, posted calls for help on social media.

“Where are you, Maher and Abdel Aziz? It’s time for me to hear your news. Oh God, please come back,” wrote Mahmoud, herself a former detainee.

Rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda, HTS is proscribed by Western governments as a terrorist group but has sought to soften its image in recent years.

Germany and France said in a statement they were ready to cooperate with Syria’s new leadership “on the basis of fundamental human rights and the protection of ethnic and religious minorities.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in Saudi Arabia on Monday, said HTS must reject “terrorism and violence” before Britain can engage with the group designated “terrorist” by London.

Washington’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, said the United States — with hundreds of troops in Syria as part of a coalition against Islamic State group jihadists — is determined to prevent IS from re-establishing safe havens.

“We have a clear interest in doing what we can to avoid the fragmentation of Syria, mass migrations from Syria and, of course, the export of terrorism and extremism,” Mr. Blinken said.

Assad in Moscow?

The United Nations said that whoever ends up in power in Syria must hold the Assad regime to account. But how the ousted leader might face justice remains unclear, especially after the Kremlin refused on Monday to confirm reports by Russian news agencies that he had fled to Moscow.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, said that if Russia granted asylum to Assad and his family, it would be a decision taken by President Vladimir Putin.

The Syrian embassy in Moscow raised the opposition’s flag, and the Kremlin said it would discuss the status of its bases in Syria with the new authorities.

Russia played an instrumental role in keeping Assad in power, directly intervening in the war starting in 2015 and providing air cover to the army during the rebellion.

Damascus stirred back to life on Monday (December 9, 2024) at the start of a hopeful but uncertain era after militants seized the capital and President Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, following 13 years of civil war and more than 50 years of his family’s brutal rule.

Heavy traffic returned to the streets and people ventured out after a nighttime curfew, but most shops remained shut militants milled about in the centre.

Arrangements for a transitional government

The main militant commander Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, met overnight with Mr. Assad’s Prime Minister Mohammed Jalali and Vice-President Faisal Mekdad to discuss arrangements for a transitional government, a source familiar with the discussions said.

Al Jazeera television reported that the transitional authority would be headed by Mohamed Al-Bashir, who ran the administration in a small pocket of rebel-held territory before the 12-day lightning offensive that swept into Damascus.

Syria’s banks would reopen on Tuesday and staff had been asked to return to offices, according to a Syrian central bank source and two commercial bankers. Syria’s currency would continue to be used, they said.

Fighters from the remote countryside milled about in the capital, clustering in the central Umayyad Square before Damascus’s great eight-century mosque.

“We had a purpose and a goal and now we are done with it. We want the state and security forces to be in charge,” said Firdous Omar, who said he had been battling the Assad government since 2011 and was now looking forward to laying down his weapon and returning to his job as a farmer in provincial Idlib.

The advance of a militia alliance spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate, was a generational turning point for West Asia.

It ends a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble, swathes of countryside depopulated and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions. Millions of refugees could finally go home from camps across Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Assad’s government collapse

Mr. Assad’s fall wipes out one of the main bastions from which Iran and Russia wielded power across the region. Turkiye, long aligned with Mr. Assad’s foes, emerges strengthened, while Israel hailed it as an outcome of its blows to Mr. Assad’s Iran-backed allies.

The Arab world faces the challenge of reintegrating one of West Asia’s central states, while containing the militant Sunni Islam that underpinned the anti-Assad revolt but has also metastasized into the horrific sectarian violence of Islamic State.

HTS is still designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations, but has spent years trying to soften its image to reassure foreign states and minority groups within Syria.

A New History

The group’s leader Jolani, who spent years in U.S. custody as an insurgent in Iraq but broke with al-Qaeda and Islamic State to align his movement with more mainstream anti-Assad groups, has vowed to rebuild Syria.

“A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory,” he told a huge crowd at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on Sunday. With hard work Syria would be “a beacon for the Islamic nation”.

Mr. Assad’s Prime Minister Mr. Jalali told Sky New Arabia he was ready to provide documents and assistance for the transfer of power.

The fate of Syria’s Army would be “left to the brothers who will take over the management of the country’s affairs”, Jalali said. “What concerns us today is the continuation of services for Syrians.”

Political prisoners freed

Mr. Assad’s police state was known for generations as one of the harshest in West Asia, holding hundreds of thousands of political prisoners. On Sunday, elated inmates poured out of jails. Reunited families wept in joy. Newly freed prisoners were filmed running through the Damascus streets holding up their hands to show how many years they had been in prison.

The White Helmets rescue organisation said it had dispatched emergency teams to search for hidden underground cells still believed to hold detainees. One of the final areas to fall to the rebels was the Mediterranean coast, heartland of Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect and site of Russia’s naval base.

Looting took place in the coastal city of Latakia on Sunday but had subsided on Monday, residents said, with few people in the streets and shortages of fuel and bread.

Two Alawite residents said that so far the situation had panned out better than they had expected, seemingly without sectarian retribution against Alawites. One said a friend had been visited at home by rebel fighters who told him to hand over any weapons he had, which he did.

Near Latakia, rebels had yet to enter the Assad family’s ancestral village of Qardaha, site of a huge mausoleum for Assad’s father who took power in the 1960s. A resident said all senior figures tied to Assad and his rule had left.

“Only the poor are left here. The rich guys and thieves are gone,” he said.

The Kremlin said it was too early to know the future of Russia’s military bases in Syria, but it would discuss the issue with the new authorities.

Israel, U.S. launch strikes

Israel said Assad’s fall was a direct consequence of Israel’s punishing assault on Iran’s Lebanese allies Hezbollah, who had propped up Assad for years but were decimated since September by an Israeli air and ground campaign.

Since rebels entered Damascus, Israel has struck sites in Syria. Israeli officials said those air strikes would carry on for days, to keep Assad’s former arsenal out of hostile hands.

The Israeli military would “destroy heavy strategic weapons throughout Syria, including surface-to-air missiles, air defence systems, surface-to-surface missiles, cruise missiles, long-range rockets and coastal missiles,” Defence Minister Israel Katz said.

Israel has also pushed tanks over the border into a demilitarised buffer zone. On Monday the Israeli military published photos of its forces in the Mount Hermon border area.

The United States, which has 900 soldiers on the ground in Syria operating alongside Kurdish-led forces in the east, said its forces hit around 75 targets in air strikes against Islamic State camps and operatives on Sunday.

“There’s a potential that elements in the area, such as ISIS, could try to take advantage of this opportunity and regain capability… Those strikes were focused on those cells,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said during a visit to Japan.

The U.S.-backed Kurdish forces have clashed with Turkey-backed rebels in the north. A video, verified by Reuters, showed rebels entering the town of Manbij, captured from the Kurdish forces on Monday.

New Delhi:

Concerned about the deteriorating situation in Syria, the Government of India put out a late-night advisory to all Indian nationals to completely “avoid all travel to Syria until further notice”.

In the statement, which shared an emergency helpline number and an email ID, the Ministry of External Affairs appealed to all Indians currently in Syria to “remain in touch with the Indian Embassy in Damascus”.

New Delhi’s urgent notification also stated that “Those who can, are advised to leave (Syria) by the earliest available commercial flights.” For those who cannot, the advisory asked them to “observe utmost precaution about their safety and restrict their movements to the minimum.”

The emergency helpline number shared is for the Indian Embassy in Damascus. It is +963 993385973. This number can also be used on WhatsApp the statement read, adding an emergency email ID as well – which is hoc.damascus@mea.gov.in. Updates shall be shared once the staff is contacted, the advisory stated.

Travel advisory for Syria:https://t.co/bOnSP3tS03 pic.twitter.com/zg1AH7n6RB

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) December 6, 2024

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN SYRIA – AND HOW BAD IS THE SITUATION

Syria is in the midst of a political turmoil, with the Russia and Iran-backed Bashar Al-Assad regime finding itself surrounded by rebel groups and militias which are backed by Turkey. Rebel forces have, over the last week, pressed a lightning offensive across Syria aiming to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

The Islamist-led rebels were at the gates of Syria’s Homs, a war monitor told news agency AFP. Several other Syrian cities have fallen out of government control – some without even a bullet having to be fired.

The offensive by the Islamist rebels have been so swift, that Syria’s second city Aleppo and strategically located Hama have already fallen from President Bashar al-Assad’s control. This has happened for the first time since the civil war began in 2011.

Bashar al-Assad’s clan has ruled Syria for the past five decades, but for the first time ever, it has looked truly vulnerable to a total collapse. Should the rebels capture Homs, it would cut the seat of power in the capital Damascus from the Mediterranean coast, a key bastion of Bashar Assad.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, by Friday morning (local time), the Islamist rebels were less than five kilometres from the edge of Homs.

WHO IS BEHIND THIS – AND WHAT IS HIS PAST

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS rebel alliance, has categorically said that the goal of this offensive is to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and end his rule in Syria.

“When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” Jolani told CNN in an interview.

The Islamist rebel alliance conducting the offensive that began on November 27 is led by HTS, which stems from the Syrian branch of the Al Qaeda, but has sought to moderate its image in recent times.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is also known as the ‘blue-eyed boy’ of ISIS terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Several years ago, he was kept at the infamous US detention facility in Iraq. But al-Jolani, once written-off as a lost cause by the US, has emerged from the shadows. He now finds himself as a power figure in Syria.

Interestingly, the Islamist rebels launched their offensive in Syria the same day a ceasefire took effect in the war between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah, which along with Russia and Iran have been firm backers of the Bashar al-Assad government.

SYRIA’S FATE HANGS IN THE BALANCE

Turkey, which has extended its full support to the rebels, said on Friday that its Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan shall be meeting his Russian and Iranian counterparts this weekend in Qatar for an emergency discussion on the situation in Syria.

Meanwhile, the political wing of the HTS-led rebel coalition has reportedly reached out to Russia and China to support them in their “struggle for liberation” from the decades-old Syrian regime headed by Bashar al-Assad. They have reportedly informed Moscow and Beijing that they would like to officially establish diplomatic ties with both countries.

The foreign ministers of Iran, Iraq, and Syria also met on Friday in Baghdad to discuss the goings-on in Syria.

Russia, which is heavily invested in the war in Ukraine, has not yet revealed how it is reading this situation and what its next step will be, but Moscow has hinted for providing limited support to the Bashar Assad regime to defend itself against the rebels.
 

New Delhi:

Concerned about the deteriorating situation in Syria, the Government of India put out a late-night advisory to all Indian nationals to completely “avoid all travel to Syria until further notice”.

In the statement, which shared an emergency helpline number and an email ID, the Ministry of External Affairs appealed to all Indians currently in Syria to “remain in touch with the Indian Embassy in Damascus”.

New Delhi’s urgent notification also stated that “Those who can, are advised to leave (Syria) by the earliest available commercial flights.” For those who cannot, the advisory asked them to “observe utmost precaution about their safety and restrict their movements to the minimum.”

The emergency helpline number shared is for the Indian Embassy in Damascus. It is +963 993385973. This number can also be used on WhatsApp the statement read, adding an emergency email ID as well – which is hoc.damascus@mea.gov.in. Updates shall be shared once the staff is contacted, the advisory stated.

Travel advisory for Syria:https://t.co/bOnSP3tS03 pic.twitter.com/zg1AH7n6RB

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) December 6, 2024

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN SYRIA – AND HOW BAD IS THE SITUATION

Syria is in the midst of a political turmoil, with the Russia and Iran-backed Bashar Al-Assad regime finding itself surrounded by rebel groups and militias which are backed by Turkey. Rebel forces have, over the last week, pressed a lightning offensive across Syria aiming to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

The Islamist-led rebels were at the gates of Syria’s Homs, a war monitor told news agency AFP. Several other Syrian cities have fallen out of government control – some without even a bullet having to be fired.

The offensive by the Islamist rebels have been so swift, that Syria’s second city Aleppo and strategically located Hama have already fallen from President Bashar al-Assad’s control. This has happened for the first time since the civil war began in 2011.

Bashar al-Assad’s clan has ruled Syria for the past five decades, but for the first time ever, it has looked truly vulnerable to a total collapse. Should the rebels capture Homs, it would cut the seat of power in the capital Damascus from the Mediterranean coast, a key bastion of Bashar Assad.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, by Friday morning (local time), the Islamist rebels were less than five kilometres from the edge of Homs.

WHO IS BEHIND THIS – AND WHAT IS HIS PAST

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS rebel alliance, has categorically said that the goal of this offensive is to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and end his rule in Syria.

“When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” Jolani told CNN in an interview.

The Islamist rebel alliance conducting the offensive that began on November 27 is led by HTS, which stems from the Syrian branch of the Al Qaeda, but has sought to moderate its image in recent times.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is also known as the ‘blue-eyed boy’ of ISIS terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Several years ago, he was kept at the infamous US detention facility in Iraq. But al-Jolani, once written-off as a lost cause by the US, has emerged from the shadows. He now finds himself as a power figure in Syria.

Interestingly, the Islamist rebels launched their offensive in Syria the same day a ceasefire took effect in the war between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah, which along with Russia and Iran have been firm backers of the Bashar al-Assad government.

SYRIA’S FATE HANGS IN THE BALANCE

Turkey, which has extended its full support to the rebels, said on Friday that its Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan shall be meeting his Russian and Iranian counterparts this weekend in Qatar for an emergency discussion on the situation in Syria.

Meanwhile, the political wing of the HTS-led rebel coalition has reportedly reached out to Russia and China to support them in their “struggle for liberation” from the decades-old Syrian regime headed by Bashar al-Assad. They have reportedly informed Moscow and Beijing that they would like to officially establish diplomatic ties with both countries.

The foreign ministers of Iran, Iraq, and Syria also met on Friday in Baghdad to discuss the goings-on in Syria.

Russia, which is heavily invested in the war in Ukraine, has not yet revealed how it is reading this situation and what its next step will be, but Moscow has hinted for providing limited support to the Bashar Assad regime to defend itself against the rebels.