The “Military Operations Command” of the de facto government of Syria, led by the jihadist terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), announced on Wednesday that its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was officially the president of the country.
The Command, in an extended statement, also announced that it had fully dissolved the official Syrian armed forces and the Arab Socialist Baath Party, the party of former dictator Bashar Assad.
Assad and his family fled Syria, receiving political asylum in Russia, in the hours between December 7 and 8 following over a decade of civil war between his forces and a variety of different factions. The civil war, beginning in 2011 after Assad brutally suppressed protests against his longstanding family regime, created power vacuums that allowed jihadist organizations such as the Islamic State to thrive, complicating the battlefield and making humanitarian efforts for those caught in the crossfire extremely difficult. The war appeared to stall in 2017, after joint operations by American and Kurdish forces dismantled the Islamic State “caliphate,” but the war roared back to life in November following a surprise attack on Assad’s forces by HTS in Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city.
HTS is an offshoot of al-Qaeda that has opposed Assad for almost the entirety of the civil war, previously known as the Nusra Front. Sharaa, its leader, was known for most of his terrorist career as “Abu Mohammad al-Jolani;” the U.S. government was offering a $10 million bounty for information leading to his arrest until former President Joe Biden rescinded the reward in December.
In a statement published by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) – formerly an Assad state propaganda outlet – the leadership of HTS declared Sharaa the president of Syria.
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“Leader Ahmad al-Sharaa shall assume the presidency of the country during the transitional period, carrying out the duties of the President of the Syrian Arab Republic and representing it in international forums,” the statement read. “The President shall be authorized to form a provisional legislative council for the transitional period, which shall carry out its duties until the adoption of a permanent constitution for the country and its entry into force.”
The announcement was part of a greater message congratulating the Syrian people on the end of the war, recognizing “the tremendous sacrifices made by heroes of the Great Syrian Revolution over 14 years.” The statement also declared December 8, the date on which Assad’s flight from Syria was confirmed, a national holiday.
In addition to formally recognizing Sharaa as “president” and giving him the power to establish a temporary legislature, the statement dissolved the Assad-era Syrian constitution, established in 2012. The statement did not clarify what HTS would use as a governing document in its stead.
The statement appeared to fulfill the promise Sharaa made publicly to dissolve HTS as well, stating, “To complete their struggle and enhance their role in building the new Syrian state, all military factions, political and civil revolutionary bodies shall be dissolved and integrated into state institutions.”
Sharaa delivered a speech to his leaders on Wednesday recognizing his official ascent to head of state of Syria.
“We broke the chains by the grace of God [Allah], the oppressed were freed, and we shook off the dust of humiliation and disgrace,” Sharaa declared, according to a translation by SANA. “The sun of Syria shone once again, and it was a clear conquest and a great victory.”
SANA added that Sharaa described winning the war as a “duty” and listed Syria’s current priorities as including “filling the power vacuum, maintaining civil peace, building state institutions, developing an economic and developmental infrastructure, and restoring Syria’s international and regional standing.”
The formalities on Wednesday follow comments by Sharaa following the demise of the Assad regime indicating that he would be in charge of the country for several years. In an interview with the Saudi network al-Arabiya in December, Sharaa predicted that organizing a free and fair election would take at least four years given the ruinous state of the country and the sheer size of the Syrian diaspora.
“Any sound elections will need to carry out a comprehensive population census,” he asserted at the time, adding that HTS would like to give Syrians time to return home from exile following the demise of the regime.
The United Nations estimates that over 6 million Syrians have fled the civil war and live abroad, while another 7 million are displaced within Syria, the largest refugee crisis in the world.
HTS leadership, including Sharaa, has insisted that the new government would be Islamist in nature, a fact that has alarmed Syria’s Christian and other minority religious communities. Sharaa himself has defended Islamist rule in recent interviews and insisted that it is representative of the Syrian people.
Sharaa added in that interview that he believed his new regime would need at least a year to substantially change living conditions for Syrians.
To do this, Sharaa has attempted to court international support. The jihadi leader has abandoned military garb and taken to wearing Western-style suits and gone as far as to tolerate meetings with female foreign officials not wearing Islamic head coverings (though he has refused to shake hands with women). In December, Sharaa welcomed a Biden administration delegation led by then-Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf. That meeting led to Washington lifting the $10 million bounty on him and Leaf praised the meeting as “quite good, very productive, detailed.”
Sharaa has yet to have a public meeting with representatives of the new administration of President Donald Trump. Trump has repeatedly indicated that he does not have an interest in keeping American troops in Syria long-term or playing a long-term role in the country’s future, however, and has referred to Assad as a “butcher,” placing the Trump White House in a favorable position to get along with the new Damascus.
Sharaa congratulated Trump on his second inauguration on January 20.
“The past decade has brought immense suffering to Syria, with the conflict devastating our nation and destabilizing the region,” Sharaa wrote in a message to the president. “We are confident that he is the leader to bring peace to the Middle East and restore stability to the region.”
