Syria's rebels work to form government, restore order after Assad ouster

WASHINGTON: The Biden administration is seeking ways to engage with Syrian rebel groups who ousted President Bashar al-Assad and is reaching out to partners in the region such as Turkey to help kick start informal diplomacy.

Speaking at a State Department briefing, spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington had a number of ways of communicating with various groups, one of which Washington has designated a terrorist organisation.

"We have been engaging in those conversations over the past few days. Secretary himself has been engaged in conversations with countries that have influence inside Syria, and we'll continue to do that," Miller said.

US Hostage affairs envoy Roger Carstens was also in the region in Beirut as part of intensive efforts to locate Austin Tice, a US journalist captured in Syria 12 years ago.

Governments across the region as well as in the Western world are scrambling to forge new links with Syria's leading rebel faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group formerly allied with Al Qaeda and which is designated a terrorist organisation by the US, European Union, Turkey and the UN.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been working the phones and speaking with regional leaders and has twice over the past four days spoken with Hakan Fidan, the foreign minister of Turkey, Miller said.

Turkey has troops on the ground in northwest Syria and provides support to some of the rebels who intend to take part, including the Syrian National Army (SNA) – though it considers HTS to be a terror group.

When asked if the United States was looking to engage with HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani himself, Miller declined to say but he did not rule it out either.

"We believe we have the ability to communicate one way or the other, directly or indirectly, with all the relevant parties," Miller said.

The US designated Golani a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad's rule and establishing Islamic Syariah law in Syria, and that Nusra had carried out suicide attacks that killed civilians and espoused a violent sectarian vision.

In one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations, the fall of Assad's government on Sunday (Dec 8) wiped out a bastion from which Iran and Russia exercised influence across the Arab world. Assad fled to Russia, after 13 years of civil war and more than 50 years of his family's rule.

US President Joe Biden and his top aides described the moment as one with a historic opportunity for the Syrian people who have for decades lived under the oppressive rule of Assad but also warned the country faced a period of risk and uncertainty.

Syria policy under the Biden administration over the past four years had largely taken a backseat as Washington chose to view the civil war as a dormant issue and more pressing issues such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the eruption of Gaza war have consumed much of the bandwidth.

Over the past decade, HTS, previously known as the Nusra Front, has tried to moderate its image, while running a quasi-state centred on Idlib, where, experts say, it levied taxes on commercial activities and the population.

Analyst Qutaiba Idlbi said that while the group has shown progress, including the way it treats minority communities, Idlib is smaller, less diverse and easier to govern. The real test comes with the rest of Syria.

“The way HTS is going to govern on this interim basis in Damascus, Aleppo and other (major cities) will really show if HTS has really improved the way we've seen it in Idlib in the last four years,” he told CNA’s Asia First programme.

The group was "saying the right things" at this stage but that it was too early to say what was going to happen in Syria, a senior US official briefing reporters on Sunday said.

There are also underlying fears the war-torn nation could follow in the footsteps of other Arab dictatorships that descended into violent chaos after the fall of their regimes, including Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

However, Idlbi said the transition looks to be relatively well managed so far, adding there has been minimal civilian casualties in the past almost two weeks of lightning offensive that toppled Assad, despite Syria's ethnically and religiously diverse population. 

“We haven't seen any sectarian clashes despite the complete fall of the government,” said Idlbi, who is a senior fellow leading Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council’s work on Syria.

“Compared to Libya or Iraq, we haven't seen any of that immediate violence and chaos that we've seen in the aftermath of those regime changes. This is making a lot of Syrians very optimistic about the future.”