DAMASCUS, Syria: The UN envoy to Syria called on Wednesday for “free and fair” elections after the ouster of president Bashar al-Assad, as he voiced hope for a political solution for Kurdish-held areas.
Assad fled Syria following a lightning offensive spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Years of civil war have left Syria heavily dependent on aid, deeply fragmented, and desperate for justice and peace.
Addressing reporters in Damascus, UN special envoy Geir Pedersen said “there is a lot of hope that we can now see the beginning of a new Syria”.
“A new Syria that… will adopt a new constitution… and that we will have free and fair elections when that time comes, after a transitional period,” the UN envoy said.
Calling for immediate humanitarian assistance, Pedersen also said he hoped to see an end to international sanctions levied against Syria.
Pedersen said a key challenge was the situation in Kurdish-held areas in Syria’s northeast, amid fears of a major escalation between the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Turkey accuses the main component of the SDF, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), of being affiliated with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters at home, whom both Washington and Ankara consider a “terrorist” group.
The United States said Tuesday it had brokered an extension to a fragile ceasefire in the flashpoint town of Manbij and was seeking a broader understanding with Turkey.
“I’m very pleased that the truce has been renewed and that it seems to be holding, but hopefully we will see a political solution to that issue,” Pedersen said.
HTS Assures Protection
Proscribed as a terrorist organisation by several Western governments, HTS has assured protection for the country’s many religious and ethnic minorities.
It has appointed a transitional leadership that will run the country until March 1.
HTS military chief Murhaf Abu Qasra said Kurdish-held areas would be integrated under the country’s new leadership, adding that the group rejects federalism.
“Syria will not be divided,” he told AFP, adding that “the Kurdish people are one of the components of the Syrian people.”
He said HTS would be “among the first” factions to dissolve its armed wing and integrate into the armed forces, after the leader of the group ordered the disbanding of armed organisations.
Credit: Syrian Interim Government
“All military units must be integrated into this institution,” Abu Qasra said.
HTS has also vowed justice for the crimes committed under Assad’s rule, including the disappearance of tens of thousands of people into the complex web of detention centres and prisons that was used for decades to silence dissent.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, more than 100,000 people died or were killed in custody from 2011.
Direct Engagement
The country’s new leaders have sought to keep its institutions going and, on Wednesday, a commercial flight took off from Damascus airport to Aleppo, the first since Assad was toppled and fled to Russia.
EU chief Ursula Von der Leyen said the bloc would intensify its “direct engagement” with the new administration.
Britain, France and Germany have sent delegations to Damascus, while Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Rome was “ready to engage with the new Syrian leadership”, but urged “maximum caution”.
Members of the UN Security Council, which includes Russia as well as the United States, called on Tuesday for an “inclusive and Syrian-led” political process.
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“This political process should meet the legitimate aspirations of all Syrians, protect all of them and enable them to peacefully, independently and democratically determine their own futures,” a statement said.
It also “underlined the need for Syria and its neighbours to mutually refrain from any action… that could undermine each other’s security”.
Israeli Aggression Against Syria
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian military assets since Assad’s fall.
Israeli troops also occupied strategic positions in a UN-patrolled buffer zone in a move UN chief Antonio Guterres described as a breach of a 1974 armistice.
In flagrant violation of international law and in a show of relentless provocation, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led an atrocious genocide in Gaza claiming over 45,000 Palestinians’ lives, held a security briefing atop a key Syrian mountain inside the United Nations (UN)-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights that the country has occupied recently with the assistance of interestingly a non-state actor, the Syrian rebels.
According to AFP, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security briefing the other day atop a strategic Syrian mountain inside the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights that Israel seized this month, the defence minister said.
Netanyahu’s office said the meeting took place on the “Hermon ridge” and said the premier “reviewed the (army’s) deployment in the area and set guidelines for the future”.
Violation of 1974 Armistice
UN chief Antonio Guterres said the Israeli move was a violation of the 1974 armistice which set up the zone to separate Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights following the previous year’s Arab-Israeli war.
Israel has framed the move as temporary and defensive, with Netanyahu saying it was in response to a “vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone”.
Israeli forces have also been operating in areas beyond the buffer zone in Syrian-controlled territory, the military has confirmed.
