The fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad has led to the takeover of the state by HTS, headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre of Abu Mohammad al-Julani. And he is now appointed President of Syria. So a lot has changed in the past few months, and this has important ramifications not only for Syria and the Syrian people, but also for the region as a whole.
KRISTIN CAULFIELD: I now turn the event over to Professor Melani Cammett, Director of the Weatherhead Center.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much, Kristin. I'm, as Kristin just said, I'm Melani Cammett. I'm Director of the Weatherhead Center. I'm also a professor in the government department at Harvard University. And I'm really delighted to welcome all of you to our forum, which is a platform to address pressing topics facing the world today. And we are definitely doing that today with our focus on Syria and shifting power dynamics in the Middle East.
As I'm sure many of you have followed, the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad has led to the takeover of the state by HTS, headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre of Abu Mohammad al-Julani. And he is now appointed President of Syria. So a lot has changed in the past few months, and this has obviously important ramifications for Syria and the Syrian people, but also for the region as a whole.
And we are really honored to have a star studded group of guests here with deep expertise to share their insights with us today. The format is that each speaker will have around 10 minutes to present, make some comments, and then I'm going to pose some questions to the group. And we'll take questions after that from the audience. Please pose your questions in the Q&A portion of the Zoom webinar, and I will try to get as many questions as possible addressed to the panel.
So let me just briefly introduce our esteemed guests. And we're going to go in alphabetical order, starting with Ibrahim Al-Assil, who is a political scientist and scholar of the Middle East. He's a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, and a professorial lecturer at George Washington University. He focuses on geopolitics and power dynamics in the Middle East and great power competition. He also brings expertise in conflict resolution, grassroots movements, track two dialogues. Holds a master's in public administration from Harvard and a doctorate in international relations from Johns Hopkins University.
Our next speaker is Marwa Daoudy, who is associate professor of international relations at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, where she holds the Saif Ghobash Chair in Arab studies at the Center for Contemporary Arab studies. She previously was a lecturer at Oxford University and a visiting professor at Princeton. Her book on the origins of the Syrian conflict won the 2020 Harold and Margret Sprout Prize by the International Studies Association, and her latest book is titled Climate Justice, Rethinking Climate Security and Vulnerability in the Middle East and North Africa, and will be out soon with Cambridge University Press.
Our third panelist is Qutaiba Idlbi, who is senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Middle East programs, and he heads there the council's work on Syria. His experience includes researching the framework of political imprisonment in Syria at the International Center for Transitional Justice, analyzing economic sanctions and forced displacement, and he's been a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and worked in a number of other think tanks and organizations on a variety of topics related to refugee entrepreneurship, security policy, and governance and so forth for a variety of organizations.
And last but not least is Leila Molana-Allen, who is a roving special correspondent for PBS NewsHour. Those of you that watch PBS are probably seeing her quite a bit these days and in the recent months. She's been reporting, though for a very long time across the wider Middle East and in Africa. She's been based in the region in Beirut and Baghdad for a decade.
Leila has spent months reporting from the front lines of the Israel Gaza war, covering the aftermath of the October 7 attacks and investigating human rights abuses. She has also had a number of other assignments, including gaining rare access to enter Northwest Syria's besieged enclave to report on recovery efforts after the devastating earthquake, which I believe was a couple years ago, and also ongoing Russian and Syrian assaults on civilians in Idlib and Aleppo. And she's been producing a lot of reporting on growing radicalism and violence in ISIS camps and prisons in Northeast Syria.
So we have deep expertise here. We're going to cover regional dynamics, challenges facing the new government in Syria, US foreign policy, US priorities in Syria following Assad's fall, and the situation on the ground facing civilians in Syria. So we're going to cover a lot of important ground. And without further ado, I'm going to pass it over to Ibrahim.
IBRAHIM AL-ASSIL: Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be with you all here today. Thanks for hosting and amazing lineup. It's an honor to be among them.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the regional and the global dynamics of what happened in Syria and the ongoing situation there. Because when we talk about Syria, it's very important to remember that the Syrian conflict wasn't or hasn't been only a local conflict. It's also a regional conflict and a global conflict. When different regional players started to intervene in Syria directly or through proxies. It became a regional conflict.
And then in 2014 and 2015, with the American intervention against ISIS and the Russian intervention in 2015, directly to prop up the Assad regime, with the US and Russia being players in Syria, it became a global conflict. That means whatever happened over the last few months also has an effect on the region, and also on global dynamics and great power competition.
I'm going to draw a picture of the region today and how they're reacting to Syria using broad brush strokes, just to give an idea of where each actor, each regional actor stands today and what concerns they have.
We could start with Turkey. Turkey is the largest neighbor Syria has, with over or around 600 miles of borders between Syria and Turkey. Turkey, of course, played a major role in supporting different opposition armed groups. Initially, in the first few weeks of the uprising in 2011, Turkey offered Assad some advice, hoping that the crisis would be averted, but Assad didn't listen. Supported opposition, political and armed groups on the ground.
But later on, after a few years throughout the conflict, the Turkish priority changed and Turkey started to look at Syria more through the security lens of the Kurdish issue. In particular when the United States started to support the predominant Kurdish Syrian Democratic forces in the Northeast fighting ISIS, Turkey saw a national security threat in that, and always wanted to limit and surround the Kurdish forces and support other actors inside Syria to balance it, namely the Syrian National Army, which is a direct Turkish proxy in the North that fought the Kurds.
And of course, a question here emerges about the relationship between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the major forces behind the [INAUDIBLE] battle against al-Assad that brought that ultimately brought the Assad regime down. And Turkey supported HTS, but HTS was not a proxy of Turkey. And this nuance is very important to understand the dynamics today and how it's evolving. Turkey today sees an opportunity in Syria to expand its influence in any potential and future reconstruction in Syria.
However, the Kurdish issue remains a priority. And today there are negotiations between Damascus and the Kurds. I know my colleagues will cover that, but I just want to add the regional lens that these negotiations are a two level game. They are not only between Damascus and the Kurds. They are also between Damascus and the Turks as well. Because if the outcome does not satisfy Turkey, we might reach a point where there is a Turkish intervention inside Syria to change the balance of power there.
Moving to other neighbors, we can talk about Jordan. Jordan hosted millions of Syrian refugees. Their main security concerns over the last few years were the drug trade, the captagon trade run by the Assad regime and its allies, the flow of refugees, and of course, the issue of terrorism. What happened on December 8 also was positive for Jordan. The issue of captagon and drug smuggling was eliminated. There is now a potential for refugees to go back.
However, there are still security concerns. There were meetings between the Jordanians and the new Syrian authority, and we've seen the signals from Amman becoming more and more positive towards that. But there are still concerns about some elements. And if this direction or trajectory from Ahmed al-Sharaa the new authority will continue to limit their role or not. With highlighting that some of non-Syrian fighters were appointed in senior positions in the new institution of the Syrian army that's still being formed. So this issue is still a concern for Jordan and other regional actors as well.
And from Jordan, I would like to talk a little bit about the gulf states and the Arab depth that the relationship with Jordan and Syria has. Saudi Arabia is positioning itself to be a global gateway for Syria today. They offered early relief packages for Syria. They extended diplomatic effort to meet with the new authority and to the first official visit by Ahmed al-Sharaa was to Riyadh. It wasn't to Turkey. And it's important to also highlight that.
The second stop was Turkey right away. But I think Ahmed al-Sharaa wanted to highlight that they are prioritizing the Arab relationships, and they are also understanding the important role Saudi Arabia could play in reassuring regional players and reassuring the West and the United States, because the issue of sanctions remains the priority also for the authority in Syria. Because without lifting sanctions, any economic or any efforts in reconstruction or security also measures would be hindered there.
I move to another neighbor, Israel, with a very complicated relationship between Damascus and Tel Aviv. On December 8, when the Assad regime fell, Israel conducted huge air strikes targeting different military depots across Syria for arms weapons that used by the Syrian army, the Syrian Arab army before led by Assad. Of course, it's damaged any capability for any regional actions in the future. There wasn't a real potential for that. But clearly, we can see that Israel is looking at what's happening in Syria pretty much through only a security lens.
There was the disengagement agreement after the War of 1973, brokered by Kissinger, then the Secretary of State of the United States. That agreement was violated. Israel took beyond the occupied Golan Heights a buffer zone and then beyond the buffer zone yesterday, there was a report by Haaretz that they've established seven new posts inside Syria that look to be more for a prolonged presence inside Syria. It won't be temporary, as we can read from that. And that might complicate the relationship.
But also from Damascus and what we've heard from the New authority that they are sending messages. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs said in one of the statements in the meetings, if your neighbor is well, you are well. They are sending signals that they are not interested in having any conflict or confrontation with any regional players and that they understand the security concerns from Israel, but they also called on other regional actors to also intervene to limit any further escalation or intervention by Israel, because that would complicate not only the regional scene, but also the domestic work of the current authority.
Finally, in the last minute, I will conclude by talking about the global dimension of Russia and the United States. Russia suffered a major setback in Syria, like Iran as well, which Iran lost all its influence almost virtually in Syria. But Russia is in a different position, because the current authority wants to maintain some relationship with Russia, understanding the historical role Russia has played in Syria. And also because they want to use that to leverage it with any negotiations with the US to lift sanctions.
So there have been meetings with the Russians. What would happen to the two bases Russia has in Syria, the air base in Khmeimim and the Naval base on the Mediterranean haven't been decided yet, the fate of those. It's still in negotiations. And I expect that the relationship will be some cordial relationship. It will be complicated, but it won't be cut. And for the United States, it's been very limited, the interaction between both of them. There have been American delegations going to Damascus. But the issue of sanctions remains the priority.
And from the American side, the issue of terrorism, of working with the Kurds in the Northeast. My colleague, Professor Daoudy, will talk about that. And also the future of fighting terrorism. These are major points raised by the American side. And with that, my section is over. And looking forward to hearing the thoughts of my colleagues and Q&A later on.
MELANI CAMMETT: Wonderful. Thanks so much for that comprehensive overview of regional and geopolitical dynamics. So next let's turn to Marwa Daoudy.
MARWA DAOUDY: Thank you very much, Melani, for your invitation, and Sarah for organizing. I'll address actually the regional power shifts by emphasizing the interplay between the domestic and the regional international factors, and to build on Ibrahim's also very detailed analysis.
The context is clearly about the dismantling of the old regime and the proclamation of a victory of the Syrian revolution, which came, of course, with a climax of feeling of liberation, joy in Syria. But now we're in the transition period. And the hard reality is how to strengthen, legitimize the new rule and make it stable and secure. And this is where the interplay between the security aspect domestically and also the economic reconstruction, the relation with the armed groups, the economic reconstruction and the relation with regional and international actors intertwine. And I will try to briefly go through that picture within the next 10 minutes.
So clearly there's been an institutional overhaul. And I will not go through all of the details here within the transitional leadership. And the main issue here is the consolidation of the security landscape to face domestic and external threats. And I'll start with the external threat. Ibrahim mentioned Israel. Israel has clearly seized the moment to expand its occupation of Syria.
And it's worth reminding here that the Syrian Golan, or Golan, has been occupied by Israel since 1967, illegally occupied. It's not recognized internationally, except by the Trump administration a few years ago. And following the victory of the new regime, there was an expansion of that territorial occupation to actually beyond the buffer zone, beyond the truce that was established in 1974 under the brokerage of the United States government. And today, Israel is occupying 14 villages, additional villages inside Syria. And 35,000 Syrians, in addition to the Golanies that were already under Israeli rule since 1967, are today under Israeli rule.
So this is really posing a challenge to the new rule. Ahmed al-Sharaa had been very cautious in the beginning not to address the Israeli threat. But more recently, we feel that there's been a direct statement about Syria's sovereignty, the need to regain sovereignty over the Golan, and the need for Israel to stop the occupation.
So although I agree with Ibrahim, there will be no direct confrontation because the new regime is not in a position to confront Israel militarily, especially that 70% to 80% of its military capabilities were destroyed last month by Israel. We're talking naval, aerial, and other types of capabilities. And so it's not in a position to have direct military confrontation. But it also needs to cater to its constituencies, which view that occupation as a violent, territorial expansion and a continuity of the illegal occupation and seizure of Syrian land since 1967.
In that context, the institutional overhaul, which is of importance here, is the creation of a new national army within Syria, the dissolution of the old army, and the necessity to integrate all of the armed groups within that new national army. And it's interesting here to see the most contentious point is the relation to the Syrian Defense forces, Kurdish led, US sponsored Kurdish forces in the Northeast of Syria.
That was a point of contention until actually a couple of days ago, where there's been an agreement between the new government and the Kurdish leader. And Mazloum Abdi has made a declaration to say to welcome Ahmed al-Sharaa as a new president of Syria, inviting him to Northeast Syria and agreeing to integrate the new army. So this is a major development, and clearly with the approval of external powers. But that also gives hope in terms of demilitarization of separate military groups.
The still pending issue is about territorial integrity. Will the Rojava, self-proclaimed Rojava, Western Kurdistan area, remain autonomous? And the statement from Ahmed al-Sharaa was that there would be a need for territorial integration. So there are still more negotiations to come along.
The issue of reprisals and sectarian tensions is also a point of contention here. Has the regime been able to contain sectarian reprisals? We know that there were more than 130 incidents of executions of members of the Alawite communities along the coastal and Homs and Hama areas as reprisals, and they were involved with the Assad regime. However, the regime has quickly, the new regime government, has quickly made arrests, about 35 arrests and arrests of those who perpetrated those reprisals and prevented further escalation on that level.
So that is an important component. Which it will also feed into the issue of national dialogue and transitional justice that I will not have time now to address, but which will determine the type of governance. Will it be occlusive and will there be reconciliation? And again, what will be the Kurdish autonomy? How will it feature in that new transition period?
On the economic front, I think this is where also the involvement of regional and international actors will be very interesting to watch and also will be crucial for the recovery of Syria. There is a caveat here is the feeling on the part of many Syrians and many Syrian revolutionaries that the new regime is taking more of a neoliberal privatization drive in its plans, like talking about privatization of ports, factories, infrastructure projects, calling for private investment and foreign capital, and possibly disregarding a lot of the marginalized, poor parts of the population.
And it's worth reminding that more than 90% of the Syrian population lives under the poverty line. So there hasn't been much planning in terms of alleviating the poverty. There were talks about subsidies on wheat and fuel. Some of them were withdrawn later on.
So there is a feeling for some of the revolutionaries that there's been a continuity with the Assad era policies, neoliberal policies, which have really catered towards more urban foreign investment and more having a neoliberal AKP type of government. And still to be seen how this will be really alleviating poverty and providing much needed help for the population, despite the fact that the government has talked about increasing wages and addressing high cost of living. But these increases have been insufficient clearly.
There's also the fear of monopolies and patronage. There's been concern that elites tied to HTS, such as the old minister, the telecom mogul, will replicate the past regime's patronage systems as well. So we will see how this will also provide trust in terms of international assistance. And also, as mentioned by Ibrahim, the issue of sanctions is crucial here. The EU and the US. The lifting of the sanctions will be crucial for the Syrian population to recover, to rebuild, to face reconciliation as well, and to prevent further insecurity and potential resistance and military resistance against the new regime.
There is also this. This is where also a lot of the regional partners are important. We know that there's been the first memorandum of understanding signed with Qatar. Also, Turkey has been involved, as mentioned by Ibrahim. There's been statements made towards Saudi Arabia. So on the regional and international level, I think we see key alliances, economic, political, strategic being formed at the moment and the emergence of an Ankara, Damascus, Riyadh, Doha axis, which is anchoring al-Sharaa's foreign policy. The emir of Qatar was the first to visit Damascus since December 24.
There's also challenges, potential challenges from other regional blocs such as Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE. Again, the Israeli occupation is posing an additional threat here to the stability and security. The relation to Russia, I will just build quickly on Ibrahim's point to say there are mixed signals here. We know that Sharaa is negotiating with Russia the fact of keeping the two Naval bases in exchange for handing back Assad and his clique to Syria but also paying for all of the infrastructures that were destroyed by Russia. And Russia is calling also for a lifting of the sanctions.
At the same time, this is also determining the relation with the US. The US, we know that there is a conditional willingness to provide sanctions relief to the new government against a few demands, which are ensuring no terrorist launch pad, addressing the captagon stockpiles, clarifying the fate of the US detainees, but also not entering into a deep seated relation with Russia and some form of rivalry here. And again, the fear would be that Syria would be again a platform for these rivalries.
But Ahmed al-Sharaa is playing the game between the different powers. He has also taken a very strong stance against Trump's plan to forcibly displace Palestinians in Gaza, and also has accused Gaza-- I mean, Israel from not only occupying Syria, but also in the context of the Gaza genocide. So he's playing a strategic, economic, political game, which is very precarious at the moment, and at the same time having to manage internal tensions and transitions. So clearly balancing security, reconciliation, and strengthening economic ties will be a very, very fragile game to be played.
And so far he has been talking to international partners. Syrians would say he hasn't been really speaking domestically. He issued finally a national statement at the end of January where he talked to the Syrian people. So managing these different constituencies will be the challenge, in my view, in the next few months. Thank you.
MELANI CAMMETT: Thank you so much. A great compliment with the focus on internal dynamics and how they interact with external dynamics, regional, and global. So third we're going to turn to Qutaiba Idlbi. Thank you so much.
QUTAIBA IDLBI: Thank you so much, Melani. And thanks to my colleagues who started before. I'm going to start from where Marwa ended and especially on US interests in Syria right now.
On December 8, of course, I think especially in Washington, we all went through a vertigo, kind of like seeing how HTS and the rebels during 11 days were able to topple off the regime of Bashar al-Assad and Iranian and Russians across Syria. But I think, especially in Washington, that vertigo is a bit stronger.
And that is because we have to remember that during that time, Washington was working closely with Abu Dhabi, with Tel Aviv, to really work out a deal where sanctions could be eased on the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and in return, the Assad regime would work closely with the United States, with Israel to push his Iranian allies out of Syria and perhaps even put more pressure on his allies in Lebanon, Hezbollah. And while this deal was coming to an end, basically HTS and the rebels came and kind of flipped the table for everyone watching and working on these issues in Syria.
Today, of course, I don't want to repeat what Ibrahim and Marwa alluded to in terms of the situation on the ground. I think overall, the way we see things on the ground, I think it has been overall cautiously optimistic. I think this is the word you would hear in Washington a lot about what's happening. I think compared to other cases of Civil War that went through this transition, Syria has managed so far to present a great example on how to manage such transition with the least amount possible of violence, of vengeance.
I think Syrians overall have been showing a lot of discipline to make sure that the country really is moving forward, is looking ahead towards the future, rather than looking back and thinking about specifically the last 14 years and what's happened throughout the civil war.
However, for Washington, I think US national security interests might be a bit far, a bit from where Syrians minds are, what Syrians are thinking. I think top priority for Washington right now is how to make sure the mission to defeat ISIS continues on the ground. Part of that is really, of course, related to the partnership with the SDF, with the Syrian Democratic Forces. But I think the most part is really related to the investment that Washington has put in this work in the last 11 years.
Let's remember that in 2014, when the D-ISIS coalition was established, Washington had to put on the ground, at the day of establishing the coalition, almost a half a billion investment in weaponry, in training, in cash to bring all of this work together in Syria and in Iraq.
And I think for a lot of policymakers in Washington, they want to make sure that, God forbid, there is another day where the United States will have to do this again in the future, that the financial investment they've put in place in the last decade has not gone to waste. And that means that there needs to be a partner force on the ground that is capable of carrying the mission, that is capable of working with the United States and its partners to effectively counter ISIS, specifically in Syria in this case.
I don't believe that is necessarily connected to the SDF as a force. I think Damascus could really present a model similar to the counterterrorism service in Iraq, where you have a body that is part of the command and control structure that reports directly to the prime minister or to the president. And that can include the acceptable elements for Damascus, for Ankara, and for Washington, from the SDF, from other groups. That could be the core counterterrorism force in Syria. If that is in place, then I think Washington can really trust and work forward in ensuring that the mission, the defeat ISIS mission, is transitioned to a local force.
I think the main issue here is that promises are not enough, and that force needs to be physically present on the ground for policymakers in Washington to trust to really transition this mission to a local force. Regardless, as I mentioned, whether that force is the SDF or another force, where the good or the acceptable elements of the SDF would be integrated.
And related to that mission, of course, or to that infrastructure, the force is not only about carrying the attacks, but also, of course, this mission or this counterterrorism service would decide the future or the mechanism to deal with ISIS prisons, the prisons that hold thousands of ISIS fighters who've been detained during the last decade, but also will have to decide the security mechanism through which the detention camps would be dismantled, that families who've been held there for so long now, there is an integration mechanism, a verification mechanism for those families to return back to their communities, but also to make sure that there is no potential risks coming out from such release and return process that could happen.
So again, the issue here, I think, that Damascus would really face is that it will need time as it's rebuilding the state institution that it inherited from the Assad regime that we also how destructive they were, especially in the last 14 years during the civil war, Damascus will really have to work on not only rebuilding the state institutions that it inherited, but it would also need to add to that basically additional state institutions that would be capable of carrying that mission, whether it is the force protection on the ground to carry the D-ISIS mission or the force capable of dealing with the ISIS presence and the ISIS detention camps. So that is the kind of first bucket of priorities for Washington.
The second one is very much related to regional security and the issue of foreign fighters. This issue has been raised with Damascus continuously now since December 8. I think in the region to start with, and then in Washington, there is still a worry about what would happen with foreign fighters. Would Syria become eventually, as Marwa mentioned, a launch pad for other terrorist groups or other groups that are unwanted in the region?
I think Damascus on its end is also preparing for the negotiations that are going to come on the foreign fighters issue, and it is really learning from the models we've seen before in Bosnia and in other places where foreign fighters were given the choice to remain in the country, go to jail, or go back to their home countries. So I think what we've seen, for example, in the appointments of some foreign fighters in Damascus, in some government positions, I think this is a preparation from Damascus to really increase its leverage on the table, so it doesn't have to go to the Bosnia model, for example, where foreign fighters would have to go to jail, or it would have to expel foreign fighters back to their home countries.
And in a sense, it will manage to find a middle ground where it can ensure the safety of those who Damascus now sees have fought alongside the Syrian people for over 13 years, while at the same time ensuring that those individuals do not constitute a risk for their home countries, for countries in the region or for the United States.
I think the third, issue for Washington, which will take some time to prove, is what would be the future of the political transition in Syria? Namely, how would Damascus and the new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, deal with a new, let's say, an Arab Sunni figure who might rise through the ranks, gain popularity, and might be willing to challenge through democratic means to challenge the ruling of Ahmed al-Sharaa or the popularity of Ahmed al-Sharaa now? And I think this is the real test that Washington would want to see, to really see if all of the good talk that is coming from Damascus and all the trust that Damascus is trying to build and is successful in building with many capitals, if that is verified through the actions that would be put in place.
I think looking at the Syrian experience in the last 14 years, it might not take too long for that to rise and very much politically engaging for the last 14 years. And I think whether it is through Syrian civil society, our local communities across Syria have proved that they are capable of producing leadership that could rise eventually to the national level. So I think that test might actually come to verification on the short term.
If those three, all three conditions are to somehow satisfaction of the Trump administration, I think it's easier than for the Trump administration to talk about sanction lifting or sanction easing. It's easier for Washington to talk about withdrawal of troops, and it's easier for Washington, for sure, to talk about reestablishing diplomatic relations regardless of where or how we see Ahmed al-Sharaa and his group's background and history and all of that. I think once that test is verified, we might see a different engagement from the Trump administration.
One last thing I want to add here is that I think for the next couple of months, it would be really hard to see increased engagement from Washington because of the internal dynamics we see here today. We see that a lot of the positions are still open. Nominations are still in process. Appointments have not been fulfilled yet in so many different departments, but specifically at the Department of State and many relevant departments that manage the situation in Syria. So until we see confirmed leadership on the Middle East portfolio, on the Syria portfolio, at those agencies, it would really hard to see that Washington would move the needle on any of those topics before those confirmations are in. Over to you, Melani.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much. Really fascinating insight into priorities of the US administration, the new administration, and where this might go. So let me turn it over to Leila to talk about what's going on the ground and a host of other issues that you've observed in your reporting on the ground.
LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Hi, everyone. So firstly, just an apology that if you hear barking in the background, those are my gorgeous Lebanese hounds who still think that every delivery man who arrives is the security forces outside waiting to raid the flat. So hopefully they will keep themselves to themselves.
That was a fantastic brief on all the kind of international and logistical issues facing Syrian security right now on Middle East diplomacy on the issue. My job is to go there and talk to people. So that's what I'm going to talk about, and I'm going to try and give you a bit of a sense of what this looks like on the ground inside Syria right now. I've spent over a decade on the ground in all the parts of Syria through this civil war reporting. But I'm going to speak most directly about the experiences I've had there since the fall of the Assads.
So, I mean, to begin with, I was reporting on the Israeli war in Lebanon in October or November and the impact of that on Syrian refugees themselves was absolutely dire. And people were sort of sneaking back into Syria, trying to get away from regime held areas in Idlib, which they thought suddenly was safer for them than what they were facing in Lebanon. But the sheer scale of human suffering that we were seeing was terrifying to everyone, because no one imagined that this could possibly happen.
So the speed with which this has happened, this shift has happened is really essentially a juggernaut for everyone. And so facing all of these issues that everyone has been laying out during the session needs to be placed in the context of what things look like on the ground.
So 14 million Syrians have been displaced during the course of this war. That's nearly 2/3 of the population. Many millions of those, of course, have been displaced into countries surrounding Syria, and many of them in Europe and some in North America as well. But some of them were living across the border. Now, those who were displaced within the country have not been able to go home for years. And what they are returning to is complete destruction.
As a conflict correspondent for a decade and a half, I have never seen the continuous destruction that I saw in places like the road from Homs to Aleppo. It is every town. It's every village. The suburbs of Damascus are completely decimated. This was the bread bowl of Damascus. This was all those famous areas like Duma, like [INAUDIBLE] that you heard about, where there were chemical weapons attacks, where the rebels rose up and held out against the regime. They're not destroyed. They're dust.
So the concept of trying to rebuild these places, to bring back those communities, is incredibly overwhelming, but Syrians desperately want to do that. They are driving to these places, not knowing what they'll find. Digging around in the rubble of their homes. Many of them having lost family members in those homes while under assault. People were saying things to me like, I'm going to erect a tent here and I will live on the rubble of my home until I can rebuild it.
Now, I managed to get into regime held Syria undercover in 2023. So it was particularly jarring for me to see the incredible change of what people were able to do. Checkpoints suddenly didn't exist anymore. When we drove across the border, all that was there was a 12-year-old FSA soldier holding an AK-47. Now, that means that people can suddenly move around as much as they would like to in ways they haven't been able to do for years. And many people didn't even recognize the roads in places like Damascus and Aleppo that they hadn't been to for so long anymore. But at the same time, there's no telling what the security situation is, or what that means in terms of them being allowed to go and do whatever they like.
Now, one of the key issues here, of course, is HTS. Now, having gone across that border into Idlib during the many years in which the rebels and their families and many, many internally displaced people were under assault there, they were suffering a huge amount from Russian bombardment, from, of course, the devastating earthquake, from not having everything they needed. And Turkey did try and supply everything that it could through that often closed border. But of course, that was always a political issue.
But at the same time, while HTS ran Idlib from 2017, they were able to set up a really quite structured government. And what many people have discovered, to their shock, since the fall, because they were constantly told that all that was in Idlib was 4 million terrorists, is that HTS actually ran things very well. The roads work well. The hospitals with what equipment they could get from Turkey worked well. The schooling was good. There's regular trash pickup.
And these actually are the issues that people care about when you're talking about Syrians coming back and wanting to support the rebuilding of their country. What people actually care about is day to day issues. So they want road security. They want the roads to function. They want to be able to get their trash picked up. They want their kids to be able to go to school. So these are the main issues that people are concerned about.
And one of the problems that HTS, which is now becoming this new government, faces is being able to tackle all those issues. Already there were huge issues with things like power, with the internet. That's become even worse because so many of those services were locked into the old regime. So while there's been a lot of patience from people, because of course, there's been such overwhelming joy at the fall of the Assads, at the same time, people are starting to lose patience now.
So Ahmed al-Sharaa and his new government have so many different issues that they have to tackle at the same time in order to keep people on board. As I say, there's a huge amount of goodwill there, both from Syrians who've stayed inside the country and from the many hundreds of thousands who are returning, overjoyed to help rebuild their country. But that's not going to last forever, and we're already starting to see frustration about those issues.
One of the key issues, of course, is sanctions and that impact. I remember when I went in undercover, one of the main things people were saying to me in Syria was, why do people in the West hate us so much? What do they want? We tried to rise up against the Assads. They didn't help us. And essentially, now we're just trying to keep ourselves and our families safe. Do they want us to rise up again and be killed again just to prove that we don't like him? All we want to do is rebuild our homes and try and have some iota of economic functionality in this country, which they didn't have.
So now the possibility for that many people are very hopeful, but it really is important to get buildings rebuilt, the billions of dollars it's going to take to do that, the structural materials that have to be brought in. Sanctions affect all of those things. Sanctions also affect whether people can start their own businesses, their industries, the fact that it's impossible to do financial transactions. All of these issues, we're going to get all these young men back into work, which, of course, is the key factor in stability for a country, prosperity and young men not being unemployed. That really needs to be ramped up quickly. And sanctions, of course, are one of the key issues in terms of doing that.
Now, in terms of security, of course, we heard ISIS and the SDF being talked about there. It is great news if this SDF deal is going to work. But there are a lot of concerns about this whole area of Northeast Syria that I've spent a lot of time in and how that's functionally going to work.
Of course, Ahmed al-Sharaa and his government are very close to Turkey. They're very close to Erdogan. The reason for that is they gave them so much support over so many years. He has made it clear that he wants to prioritize Arab relationships. But the reality is that Turkey sees all of the SDF as the PKK, as Kurdish terrorists, as they call them. They want to fight. The reality of the SDF being able to keep any form of the level of autonomy that they've had right now, which they do want to hold on to, is very unlikely.
But the reality of the challenge they face, I have been out in the Badiya, the huge Syrian desert, where ISIS has continually been popping up over and over again. And in these areas, it is so poor. There's so little security coordination. Barzeh [?], which is constantly being argued over between different factions, which is an Arab area, not a Kurdish area that the SDF has tried to take regularly. It's very, very fractious. And those security breaches essentially make it very easy for ISIS to pop up again and try and take control.
Now, there are 10,000 prisoners there. There are at least 40,000 people still in those camps in Al Hol. There was a reference there to perhaps a structure like the Iraqi counterterrorism services. I've gone out with those counterterrorism services in Iraq as they went out, American trained, and raided towns and villages for ISIS captains. They are hated. They are considered to be Western almost. They are hated by local villagers, because they go in and they harass all the people in those towns and villages as they're looking and essentially brand everyone there ISIS.
So it's an incredibly fine line between what's needed to keep security control as the West wants it in that area, and what's actually going to be acceptable to local populations living in that area. But the reality is, the SDF has been saying for years that they need more security coordination, not less, to be able to host all these prisoners.
And at the same time, if Syrian refugees are going to start coming home, as many Western nations want them to, there's a strong argument that it's time for those nations to finally take back the people from their nations who are in those camps. So that's on that security issue.
And then finally, some more positive thoughts, because there are so many positives to look at here. One of the huge kind of wealth aspects, human wealth aspects that Syria has is obviously a highly educated and very dedicated population. But there's huge wealth of the diaspora, both the diaspora from before the Civil War, and those who left during the war and are now returning to their country, very keen to rebuild and contribute.
Now, as we've heard from some of the voices today, this incredible wealth of intellectual knowledge, of applied knowledge. So the goodwill is there to do that. Syrian women are incredibly strong and engaged in their country, very keen to keep it going. The first female head of the Central Bank has just been appointed. So that's very good news. Minorities also really weighing in, wanting to rebuild the country that works for everyone.
There are, of course great concerns. I was up in the Alawite areas and in Latakia and Tartus. A lot of people saying to me privately, things like oh, can we step around the corner and speak somewhere else? Because that local person, who's a Sunni, I don't want him to hear what I'm saying. I'm not quite sure yet whether I do feel safe, whether I do believe this amnesty that's been announced by Sharaa's new government, saying that all conscripts to the army will be relieved. And no one's allowed to take any action against them. The reality is that hasn't happened. There have been a lot of reprisals.
And that is the final issue that I'll leave this on. As well as having to rebuild this entire country, deal with all these services, deal with all the international diplomacy, and trying to get the country back on track, there's also the issue of justice. And the reality is we are talking about half a million people murdered by this government. So many more maimed and displaced, who've had their lives ruined.
We're talking about thousands of mothers, many of whom I met, desperately waiting outside these prisons, hoping to find no longer their sons, but the bodies of their sons, the bodies of their family members, something to bury, something to remember them by. All the people killed in these attacks and chemical attacks, having their homes destroyed, who were finally able to speak out about it.
The reality is there is goodwill, but we've seen these peace and reconciliation efforts over and over again in post-war countries. And trying to make people live alongside aside those who devastated their lives and murdered their family members is incredibly challenging. And often when this is brushed under the carpet, it just becomes resurgent in later years and leads to later conflicts. So that is a really big thing to tackle, some sort of practical move towards justice so that people can actually start to heal and move on and feel united as a country again, and that this country is for them and that justice has been served. And I'll leave it there and any questions, I'm happy to take.
MELANI CAMMETT: Wonderful. Thank you. This is a great compliment to all of these presentations to get a sort of ground up view of how these larger macro political and other developments are playing out on the ground.
So what I'm going to do is throw out some questions for each of you. And don't feel like you only have to address the question I point to you. And I want to weave in a few of the questions we've received in the chat as well as I do so.
So for Ibrahim, we did have some questions about sanctions. So I'm wondering, and I'll just throw out all the questions for everyone now first. So we had some questions about sanctions. And this is obviously a global set of negotiations. So touches on the geopolitics of all this. If you could just elaborate on what these sanctions are, why they're still imposed, and what are the key factors delaying the lifting of sanctions?
And also, how does this new apparent rapprochement between the United States and Russia play into all of this as well? I mean, you've touched on this, but I'm curious to see how this will play out and will affect the prospects for Russia maintaining some presence there.
So for Marwa, you've raised so many interesting issues about the challenges ahead, about the prospects for transitional justice, integration of the military, which we know is always a critical move in a post-conflict setting, but also incredibly difficult to bring about. So I wonder if you could touch on this and simultaneously maybe address some of Ambassador Galbraith's questions about what exactly is going on with the Kurds and how you anticipate the negotiation of new governing institutions playing out. Because we know this is a vitally critical question that is a critical juncture going forward.
I'm also curious, for those of you following the nitty gritty of who HTS is and who its societal allies are, you mentioned these neoliberal privatization plans that the elements of the opposition or activists have been concerned about. So I'm curious to know where is this coming from? Is this part of the ideology of HTS? Are there local business actors on the ground that have an inside track? Is it external powers and potential investors? So curious to know what the kind of deeper political economy is of the unfolding policy here.
For Qutaiba, I'm curious to know, I mean, we're in uncharted territory here in the United States as well, and we could do a whole other panel on regime change in the United States. But we'll leave that for another day. The Trump administration, by its own account, is not concerned about democracy and human rights. I mean, they've made it very clear. They're cutting international programming around this and so forth.
So is the third priority you mentioned about the political transition and the nature of ongoing unfolding democracy in Syria a concern? At least for the upper leadership in the US administration. And I'd also be curious to hear your thoughts about the US Russian relationship and how this might play out.
And then finally, for Leila, I'm curious to know about the-- if in your travels, what is the reach of the state at this juncture? One of the things that's critical for new state builders to do is to establish a monopoly of the use of force in a given territory, which is not the case in part because of the SDF, but also because possibly, and this is my question to you, we know that a bunch of local warlords arose during the decade plus of conflict in Syria.
So what's the state of those folks on the ground? Are they cutting deals with the central administration? And who's sort of in charge of basic governance on the ground outside of maybe Damascus or even within neighborhoods of Damascus? So I'll turn it over to all of you. You can feel free to ignore any of my questions you don't feel like dealing with. And we'll start with Ibrahim. Just go in the same order.
IBRAHIM AL-ASSIL: Thanks, Melani. Great questions by you and by the audience. And probably for the sanctions, I'm going to comment a little bit on it briefly, but then I'll also let Qutaiba comment on that I'll talk about-- let me start with the issue of the rapprochement quickly between the United States and Russia and the ongoing negotiations in Ukraine.
I don't think that would affect Syria much, because Russia does not have much to offer in Syria. Because usually, and traditionally speaking, the Russian role would be something like rebuilding the Syrian army, for example. That's where they have expertise. That's not going to happen for two different reasons. First, that takes a lot of trust. And I think domestically and the new authority won't take that.
And second, Russia does not have the current capabilities to go and rebuild an army from the ground up in a new nation with all the limitations. That's one of the reasons why the Assad regime failed to start with is the incapability of Russia and the limitation of the bandwidth in Russia.
There was a question on the elections and the timeline, four to five years. I think from only that vision, if we're looking at elections, I think it makes sense for two to five years. As my colleagues mentioned, more than 50% of Syrians are not at home. They don't have addresses. They don't have places to vote, where they would vote, who would vote, to whom, who would run campaigns. Probably they would end up voting, or those who would win are just warlords. So I think I would care more about power sharing over elections at this point of time.
And then also, there was a good question about the Turkish occupation or Turkish presence inside Syria. I think that's very important. However, given everything we were talking about and how Syrians look at Syria today and they feel they got rid of the two major players, Russia and Iran, you don't see many voices talking about Turkey, the United States, and Israel.
And of course, they are important, and they are part of the talk. And as Marwa mentioned, the issue of Israel is gaining more and more attention inside Syria. But I think because they are on the sides and the margins of the map, they are not taken or they are not the ongoing focus.
However, I think if the negotiations with the Kurds don't go well and then there are confrontations, and then Turkey intervenes inside Syria, that's one scenario for Turkey to increase its presence in Syria. Or even if that succeeds, and then there is a defense pact between the new authority and Turkey that allows turkey, for example, to have a military base in Central Syria close to Hama. There were talks about the T4 base there. That's out of the natural sphere of Turkey inside Syria. And that changes the balance of power in the region.
And I think that will probably push Israel to be more aggressive inside Syria. I think the Arab states will be very hesitant and cautious to continue their support for the authority in Damascus. Jordan will be hesitant, and Saudi Arabia absolutely will also probably slow down to see if Syria will just become an arena for Turkish influence.
However, besides some of these comments, it's important to highlight the change in the Turkish vision between now and 10 years ago. 10 years ago, Erdogan was all about regional influence and neo-Islamism and all of that. Now more of the Turkish rhetoric is about economy and domestic issues. So hopefully the region is at a point where there is more of a chance to turn Syria into a balancer over a battleground.
And this is, when you talk about geopolitics, this is the major question. Is Syria going to be the next battleground and continue to be that? Or is it going to go back to being a buffer zone between major powers and the bridge between them and a balancer in the region? And that takes regional consensus, or at least willing to allow Syria to do that in addition to all the domestic factors? And finally, also for the United States to lift sanctions. Because if poverty continues, if people are hungry and cold, this experiment is not going to succeed. All the odds are still against it in that sense.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you. Marwa.
MARWA DAOUDY: Yes, I'll address your first question, Melani, about the legitimacy and capacity of this new government to manage civil military relations, if I understood you correctly. I will just go back to-- I mean, of course, we're all speculating here.
But one way to look at it would be to see how effective they were in managing the Idlib province. And we're talking about Islamists. We're talking about ideologues and who implemented actually Islamic law in Idlib. And we know that was very conservative in its ruling.
However, what is very interesting, and you hear that from-- I have a former student of mine who used to go and visit regularly and interview HTS. And his book is coming out soon, Jerome Drevon. And he was briefing me every time he went to let me know how technocratic the rule was, surprisingly. He was surprised to see people were appointed because of their technocratic capacity versus their Islamic allegiance or if they're really practicing Muslims, et cetera. So there was a form of pragmatism there that made that rule quite lasting and effective. And we've seen after the earthquake also how they were channeling also local and regional international aid in alleviating the suffering of the population.
So possibly here I think there's also a recognition in the persona of Ahmed al-Sharaa that he managed what no one else managed, and he led a totally Syrian led revolution for the collapse of the Assad regime. And this is wonderful for Syrians. The Iraqi example was a disastrous example in the region and in the world and for any liberation movement. And in that sense, there was the feeling that the statues that were destroyed were destroyed by Syrians, not occupying powers. So that gave him a lot of legitimacy in the eyes of the population and the military powers as well, the military groups.
So in my view, he's managed so far. And I think my fellow panelists also mentioned that it was surprisingly peaceful, the transition. We've heard about retribution, but we all expected to have a lot of blood spilled in the streets after December or during the collapse, considering the last 12, 13, 14 years of Syria's history. So there is some hope there that possibly some groups have given up their arms. Others still not. We know Suwayda [?] and Hama have separate military groups which are resisting.
And now turning to the Kurdish, the Kurdish groups as well and the autonomous region. I think this is a very, very important file for the future of Syria. And I think about it at different levels. There's the issue of lack of recognition of Kurds, Syrian Kurds, as full citizens. And we know that they were denied citizenship for years. And Bashar al-Assad granted them the citizenship after the revolution as a way to co-opt them, clearly. They were denied also the land reform. There's a whole history of marginalization of the Kurdish population in the Northeast.
The self-proclaimed proclaimed Western Kurdistan was done also with the de facto agreement of the Bashar al-Assad regime, to put pressure on Turkey, PKK affiliated movement, US sponsored, and also that also created a lot of pressure on Turkey, which has been considering its own Kurdish movement as a terrorist movement, the PKK, and not wanting this autonomy to inspire its own Kurdish population. So I think here there's been a very, very dangerous game being played.
Now, with the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime, the Kurds in the Northeast find themselves in a very difficult position, because they have Turkey, which is occupying North Syria, on the ground of having this Kurdish separatist region, autonomous region. It's implementing its rule in Northern Syria. And to go back to the question asked in the Q&A, that is part of the problem that HTS, the new regime, will need to tackle. Even though they've always had very good relations with Turkey, they were seen as being sponsored by Turkey. But at some point, this occupation will not be tolerable in the future.
Now, I think there's also been mixed signals in the negotiations between SDF and the new regime. And I will go back to the point I made. Yes, it is the leader of the Syrian Democratic forces, [INAUDIBLE] who made that statement yesterday, announcing that there was a meeting held between SDF and also between the different parties in the Kurdish autonomous area. And there was an agreement to integrate the new army. There was no declaration endorsement of that.
But it's interesting to mention that Mazloum Abdi's statement to local press on Monday, and I will quote a bit what he was saying, which for me is part of that mixed signaling game, which is showing accommodation readiness to negotiate. At the same time, gradual tit for tat, cautionary negotiations. He expressed the readiness of his forces to remove foreign fighters within the SDF as part of these ongoing negotiations aimed at reaching a formula for understanding to end the existing division, affirming openness to a national solution and asking, I mean, promising a visit to Damascus to further this.
So I think SDF is having Idlbi [?] having that strong statement. Mazloum Abdi talking about still continuing the negotiations. In my view, that integration will happen. What is contentious, in my view, is the state of the autonomy. And I don't know if the Kurds will renounce that autonomy easily, considering their past grievances, considering their fear of Turkey's occupation, considering they're not sure about how viable their future will be. There are also oil fields that the central government wants to have control over, considering them like Syrian national economic resources, and also the idea that there's not a viable future for Syria in the context of fragmentation, but there might be possible local autonomy.
I want to just end with another mixed signal sent by Ahmed al-Sharaa when he made a statement a few weeks ago that the Kurds will not be involved in the drafting of the constitution. That's a very, very important part of the transition period, because there are talks about returning to the 1950 constitution, which proclaimed at the time a Syrian Arab Republic, clearly marginalizing non-Arab populations and components of the society.
If we go back to that, maybe that's a signal to say, are we really moving to a multicultural? He said he would recognize the cultural rights. However, how are we going to frame the values, the norms, and the identity of the new Syria? That will be also a very interesting process. And very important, in my view, for the full integration of Kurds, Syrian Kurds.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much. So I probably won't be able to get to all the questions, but if Qutaiba or Leila, you see a question that you'd like to address in your responses, feel free to jump in and others as well. So Qutaiba, I'll turn it over to you.
QUTAIBA IDLBI: Thank you so much, Melani. And I'm also aware of time, so I'll try to go quickly through these. First, on the concern about democracy in Syria. I mean, Washington has always been clear about that. I think Washington is concerned about democracy when the dominating power is somewhat is a power that we completely disagree with ideologically.
So if it's Islamist in power, of course democracy is important, because we want other powers who we like, we might ideologically agree with. We want them to have an opportunity. If Islamists are not in power, democracy is not an issue then, because maybe we do not want an equal opportunity for the people we disagree with. I mean, I think realistically, yes, it is framed about democracy, but I think everyone in Washington would agree that this is more about, again, allowing equal opportunity in the future for other folks.
Here I have to say, I think overall, I don't know if we would disagree that with HTS and Ahmed al-Sharaa, I don't think he's going to pursue a non-democratic in the sense of election based government anytime in the future. I think looking at what Ahmed al-Sharaa has been doing, not only in the last two months, but in the last six or seven years, he has been building his electoral machine and his electoral base among Syrian society.
If Ahmed al-Sharaa forget, of course, about the liberation of Syria and, of course, how much Syrians feel that they owe [INAUDIBLE] and Ahmed al-Sharaa for their liberation, if he is to go into election, I think there is a very strong base among Syrian electorates of marginalized rural Arab Sunnis who've been kind of pushed out of power since the establishment of the Syrian state, almost. And that is a very good 40% to 45% of the electoral base.
And in that sense, I think the model that Ahmed al-Sharaa is likely to follow is the model of Turkey, of the AK Party. Basically, you have your very strong electoral base that no other party has, and then you just depend on making small coalitions with smaller parties to maintain the majority. It's an easy recipe to maintain in power without having to fall back on less non-democratic or less Democratic means.
On sanctions, unfortunately, I think so far our approach to sanctions have been completely unethical. Most of the sanction programs that have been imposed on Syria have been imposed-- actually, almost all of them have been imposed not because of the Syrian state. It has been because of how the Assad regime has been utilizing the Syrian state to destabilize the region, to cause issues for our own national security.
Now that the Assad regime is gone, I think all of the sanction regimes that we have on Syria should be gone as well. There is no argument to keep those in place. If we are worried about Ahmed al-Sharaa, about HTS, about the new government going out of line, then it's very easy to reimpose sanctions. But I think it's very unethical for us to face the Syrian people and tell them, hey, we want to keep those sanction regimes that are really preventing you right now from moving forward, because this is good for our national security interest.
But unfortunately, I think this argument will be around for at least a couple of months. There are a couple of moving pieces. I think the engagements we've seen from Congress members and Senators during the Munich Security Forum with the Syrian foreign minister are quite positive.
I was surprised to see Senator Risch sitting with the foreign minister, even though Senator Risch was one of the main blocks, I would say, for engagement with Damascus. So that is a bit encouraging. I was encouraged to see McCaul, Congressman McCaul, and Congressman Wilson. So I think if that continues to be the case, maybe we can see Congress, especially Republicans, pushing the Trump administration to engage more on this topic.
Of course, I think where we might see a bit more movement is on the EU sanctions, for sure. I think the EU realizes there is a very big opportunity in Syria for the region, for Europe to move forward with Iran out of Syria, with Russia almost on the way out of Syria, with an opportunity for the whole region to stabilize, but also, of course, an opportunity to allow immigrants or refugees from the region to move back to Syria and other areas of the region. So I think they will build on this opportunity, and they might be 10 steps ahead of Washington in many places, while Washington will drag back.
I think we need to look back at the experience we've seen between 2005 and 2010 before, where the EU similarly kind of took the lead in removing sanctions on engaging with Damascus. And then the US came later in 2010 and started its own engagement.
The one missing piece I think is less discussed is what's going to happen with the de-listing on the UN level. The de-listing of HTS and Julani requires-- I mean, there are different mechanisms, but the most common one requires something called reverse consensus at the UN Security Council, where every single member of the UN Security Council must vote yes to remove a designated organization and individual at the UN level. And I think that's why we see Damascus right now, as Ibrahim mentioned, trying to balance its acts with all of the actors, including Russia and China, because their support would be very necessary to de-list HTS on an international level.
Last but not least, on ideology and your question about the economy, I think we have a sometimes a misassessment of where Julani started and where HTS is. And maybe a good reminder to all of us that despite, I think, false reporting usually on that, Julani started in Iraq with Jaish al-Mujahideen. It was a salafist movement that was fighting the US military in Iraq, but it wasn't al-Qaeda. He actually went to jail in Iraq for six to seven years. During that time, Jaish al-Mujahideen joined al-Qaeda, joined [INAUDIBLE], and then later, that same group, became part of the Islamic State in Iraq. And then Julani was released from prison.
So in a sense, the base he started from is very similar to where we see him right now. It's not that he moved along from being extremely part of al-Qaeda. I think the other constant, though, is how pragmatist he is. And I think the same pragmatism we have seen from Ahmed al-Sharaa today I think is this, is the same pragmatism he showed when he was released from prison in Iraq and wanted to go back to Syria. And in a sense, al-Qaeda was the main platform for him to move back to Syria, utilize that platform, get the resources, the support he needs until he established himself in Syria and was able to move forward.
I think based on that, the sense of where he's starting, how much the group has been moderating specifically following Syrian law, I think, in the last four years of its ruling in Idlib, how pragmatist the group is right now, and Ahmed al-Sharaa, I think there is a lot of space for Syrians, for the international community to engage with Damascus right now. And again, we have to use trust and verify. We can't just trust statements. We look at the actions, we verify. If things make sense, we can always move forward.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much. Sometimes I wonder whether Ahmed al-Sharaa took a lot of political science classes, because he seems to be following some very wise playbooks. OK, last I am turning over to Leila. So you have the last word.
LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: I will keep this quick, because I know that we've run over already. A couple of things that Marwa said I think are the real key here in terms of who's running the place and security. The persona of Ahmed al-Sharaa. I mean, the way that this one man is holding the whole game together. The reality is currently, this is a populist government. It hangs on him very impressively.
The way he is able, the way he is able to engage local regional partners, the way he's able to speak to Western powers in a kind of one on one I am at your level way while being able to corral that kind of grassroots of the movement is incredibly important. And the second issue, of course, is those various groups that Marwa was talking about.
Now, look on the ground, the reality is that this is all hanging by a thread security wise. The security situation is not good. And the government is starting to try and essentially stop that from being the narrative. We have been warned off reporting on certain things. We've been told by the government media agency that we are not allowed as journalists to speak to any former elements of the regime or anyone that supports the fallen regime. Their argument is that everyone must be supportive of the new government to allow Syria the opportunity to get on track.
Now, the reality, of course, is that that's a fallacy. Pretending that there aren't all the issues that are currently going on will only allow potentially another oppressive government to come into power. On the ground, things are very tense, particularly after dark. There are some groups, this is a country that's been fragmented for 14 years. People have become used to being able to control their building, their street, their neighborhood, their village, their area, their highway.
It's incredibly difficult to say to people, right, now we're going to have one government. You're all going to be under it. We can't quite tell you yet how that's going to work, but you've got to cede all your authority to that government and just believe. People have the goodwill. They really want this to be a country that comes together. But the reality is that fragments very quickly.
There are also so many disputes. There are political disputes, there are religious disputes. There are disputes over someone who looted their neighbor's house during the war when those people went away and moved to a different town. These are all incredibly difficult things to control.
The ones that we hear about are the ones particularly against former supporters of the regime or the Alawite community or Christians, because those are kind of the big trigger points that people like to make a fuss about. But there are many of these things going on. There are faux checkpoints being set up on the roads at night. There's looting going on.
While Qutaiba was speaking, I just got another message on one of our Syrian security groups saying, ladies, do not take taxis at night. There have been multiple attacks on women traveling alone at night in the last few weeks. The security situation is bad.
And the reality is that whether we're calling it HTS or we're calling it the new government, they do not have the manpower right now. The reality is that everything fell very fast after Aleppo. So it was this impression of there being a huge force of people. That's not the case.
Al-Sharaa and his forces have had to make very difficult decisions regularly about where you put people. That's why so often when something happens, like the attacks in Latakia, like in Suqaylabiyah, the Christian village where the Christmas tree was burnt down. I was there just a couple of days before. You'll generally see HTS people turning up afterwards, because they're so widely and thinly deployed.
What are these people in charge of? What's the priority? Is it road security? Is it checkpoints? People don't want to see checkpoints again. That makes them uncomfortable. Is it going into Damascus and being at the center of government while government is set up? How much faith do you put in partner forces like the FSA that are joining up but haven't quite agreed to this new collapse of all the fighting groups and just one Syrian fighting force?
So there's a huge number of challenges there. And it does need faith from people to accept that you can't everything out at once. But the reality is, if there's mob violence, if the warlords we're talking about manage to get power again, I mean, we know, it seems likely that al-Assad has made it to Moscow, as Reuters reported. Looks like he went through Iraq. His family got out, too.
But a lot of his guys are still roaming around the country. We're pretty sure [INAUDIBLE], who ran a lot of the captagon output, is still floating around. All those guys who've been making captagon for years, it's not just a factor of how that bleeds into a community of young, unemployed men and how it affects that. But also the instability that creates on borders and clashes there when you're smuggling drugs out.
People aren't just going to turn around and close down this incredibly wealth creating black market that they've created mostly over the last five or six years. They're not just going to switch that tap off. They're going to be encouraging people in neighboring countries, in Lebanon, still incredibly poor. We know that lots of people in the Beqaa Valley started making captagon because it was a good way to make this money.
So all these issues are still festering. So there's a lot of issues going on. There really isn't the kind of control on the ground that al-Sharaa would like you to believe there is. So that you can see why he's pushing so hard, so fast to incorporate all these fighting groups, to try and have one, firstly, so that he doesn't have to deal with them having their own interests and potentially standing against government, but also literally so the country has the manpower. You've also got to figure out where they get the money from to pay soldiers in this new Syrian army.
And then finally, I just want to close on-- Raif had a question where he said, what is the main priority-- oh, the dogs want to go as well. What is the main priority if you're setting up this new country in order for Syria to succeed? And I would say the people. Focus on the people. What everyone said to me on the ground, everybody was, look, we've got a lot of faith in these people. Fine. They might have been al-Qaeda. They might have been ISIS, whatever else. The reality is, these are the guys who managed to get rid of Assad.
The most important thing Marwa said there, Syrians took down the Assads, not international support, not the international fighters that used to be involved with [INAUDIBLE] at the beginning. These are majority Syrians that have been [INAUDIBLE] HTS since the liberalization, since 2017. I spoke to many of those guys who said, in the years before, from Azaz, from Idlib, would never have joined HTS. But during this moderate period said these are the guys who can get this done. And they did get it done.
So there's a lot of goodwill to support them as long as they genuinely incorporate minorities, genuinely put women in positions of power, because what every single one of those people on the ground said to me is, we're here for it. We want this to work, but we will not have another oppressor. So they better get this right, because we will not let them become an oppressive authoritarian government again. We've seen that once, and we'll never allow Syria to be that again. And Syrians have faith in each other. So to end on a positive note, let's hope this works for them, because God, they deserve it.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. That is a really positive note. And I'm very inspired by Syrians in this moment. So thank you all for your amazing remarks and contributions. The expertise on this panel is astounding, and we're really privileged to have had all of you join us here today. So thank you so much.
LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Thank you.