Syria’s new leaders dissolve rebel factions, merge them under Defense Ministry
Syrian interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and the heads of rebel factions agreed Tuesday to merge the groups under the Ministry of Defense, according to a statement from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel group that led the charge to topple dictator Bashar al-Assad.
The statement did not specify which groups were included in the agreement. A spokesman for HTS said only that there was “no faction that did not agree.”
The consolidation, if confirmed, could spare Syria the kind of chaos suffered by other states in the region from feuding armed factions, including Libya. It would also fulfill a pledge made last week by Sharaa, who is also the leader of HTS.
“The factions will be dissolved and the fighters will be prepared to join the Ministry of Defense, and everyone will be subject to the law,” he said during a meeting with members of the minority Druze community, according to an HTS statement.
But at least two major armed groupings in Syria — a Kurdish-led group, and the Turkish-backed rebel Syrian National Army — are still fighting each other, and seem unlikely to cede fighters or weapons to the state, at least in the short term.
Tuesday’s announcement was part of an accelerating effort by Sharaa to restore state authority and project inclusive governance, a little more than two weeks after Assad fled Syria in the face of a stunning and swift rebel offensive.
His group remains on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations and has past ties to the Islamic State extremist group and al-Qaeda. Before the offensive that toppled Assad, HTS had sought to rebrand itself as an Islamist movement with a focus on local issues, rather than transnational jihad.
Sharaa has hosted senior delegations from regional and Western countries in recent weeks, as he seeks to bolster is government’s international legitimacy, lift international sanctions that were imposed on Assad and attract aid and investment to rebuild Syria, after a nearly 14-year civil war.
Source » washingtonpost.com
