The collapse of the repressive Assad regime has come as a relief to many Syrians and global observers, and all the more so because this appears to have taken place with much less violence than we might have imagined. Pickthall House commends the UK government for establishing early diplomatic contact with the new Damascene authority, as announced by the Foreign Secretary on Sunday.
Despite already facing provocative military infringements by Israel, the leader of the group ‘Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’ (HTS) which has taken power, has stressed that the priority given the circumstances is reconstruction of a country which has been ravaged and destroyed by civil war since 2011. Commonly known as ‘al-Jolani’ or simply ‘Jolani’, the HTS leader is now using his birth name of Ahmed al-Sharaa, putting aside the name associated with his past as a rebel leader. Many will understandably be apprehensive due to al-Sharaa’s past connections with groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, and this apprehension is unlikely to abate very soon, even with al-Sharaa’s efforts to distance himself from his history.
With that said, after the brutality of the Assad regime and the turmoil of the civil war, the prospect of a fresh start in Syria, under a leadership that understands the need to rebuild, is perhaps cause for a cautious optimism at least.
