Syrians queuing at Turkish border in Hatay Province, returning home after the fall of the Assad regime (Reuters)

EA on International Media: Is There Hope for the “New Syria”?

Who Is Syria’s New Prime Minister — and What Will He Do?

UPDATES: Syrians Celebrate Liberation From Assad Regime

UPDATE 1636 GMT:

Syria’s new Education Minister says there will be no gender restrictions.

Nazir Mohammad al-Qadri said in an interview:

Education is a red line for the Syrian people, more important than food and water.

The right to education is not limited to one specific gender…. There may be more girls in our schools than boys.

Primary schools will remain mixed between boys and girls, while secondary education will stay largely segregated.

Al-Qadri said that all references to the former ruling Baath party will be removed from its educational system as of next week but that otherwise there will be no changes to school curricula.

Religion – both Islam and Christianity – will continue to be taught as a subject.

UPDATE 1614 GMT:

Speaking on State TV, Vladimir Putin has maintained that Russia “did not suffer any defeat in Syria” with the fall of the Assad regime.

Moscow propped up the regime almost 14 years, including a massive military intervention from September 2015.

Putin indicated that the Kremlin wants to establish links with the new Syrian authorities, despite trying to crush them with bombing, ground assaults, and sieges for more than nine years.

UPDATE 1520 GMT:

In its first order, the Syrian Council of Ministers has terminated the appointment of Khaled Hboubati as head of the Syrian Red Crescent.

UPDATE 1500 GMT:

Thousands of people have demonstrated in northeast Syria in support of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Demonstrators in Qamishli raised the three-star flag of the “new Syria” as they chanted, “Long live the SDF resistance”, “The Syrian people are one”, and “No to war in our region, no to Turkey’s attack”.

Others raised the flags of the autonomous Kurdish administration, and of the SDF.

The SDF and Kurdish authority face pressure from Turkish-backed fighters. Ankara consider Syrian Kurdish groups to be part of the Turkish Kurdish insurgency PKK.

A Turkish Defence Ministry source said on Thursday that Ankara will push ahead with military preparations until Kurdish fighters “disarm”.

The US said it brokered a short-term ceasefire over the Kurdish-held city of Manbij in Aleppo Province, and SDF head Gen. Mazloum Abdi has offered to demilitarize the border city of Kobani.

But the SDF vowed on Thursday to hold Kobani in any battle with Turkey and the Turkish-backed Syrian fighters, and Turkey denied the ceasefire in Manbij.

A Turkish official said, “It is out of the question for us to have talks with any terrorist organisation. The [US] statement must be a slip of the tongue.”

UPDATE, DEC 19:

Christmas celebrations in Homs on Wednesday night:

And in Latakia:

UPDATE 1608 GMT:

White Helmets civil defense has discovered unidentified bodies and remains in a medicine warehouse in a Damascus suburb.

The site is 50 meters from the Shia Muslim shrine in Sayyeda Zeinab. The area was a central position for Assad regime forces and the units from Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah supporting them.

White Helmets official Ammar al-Salmo said the corpses were found in a refrigerated room. Human bones of around 20 victims were scattered on the ground.

After Syria’s liberation, more than 100,000 bodies have been found in mass graves, say activists and investigators (see 1232 GMT).

UPDATE 1534 GMT:

A ceasefire has been extended between Turkey and the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces around Manbij in Aleppo Province in northern Syria.

The arrangement averts — for now — a battle for territory between Turkish-backed Syrian fighters and the SDF. Ankara considers Syrian Kurdish groups to be part of the Turkish Kurdish insurgency PKK.

The US brokered an initial ceasefire last week. State Department Matthew Miller said on Tuesday:

We continue to engage with the SDF, with Turkey about a path forward. We don’t want to see any party take advantage of the current unstable situation to advance their own narrow interests at the expense of the broader Syrian national interest.

Referring to the PKK, Miller said, “We understand the very legitimate concerns that Turkey has about the presence of foreign fighters inside Syria, and so we’re talking to them about those concerns and trying to find a path forward.”

SDF commander Gen. Mazloum Abdi posted on Tuesday that the group is ready to present a proposal for a demilitarized zone in the Kurdish-controlled northern city of Kobani, with the redeployment of security forces under US supervision and presence.

“This initiative is to address Turkish security concerns and ensure permanent stability in the region,” he posted.

UPDATE 1232 GMT:

More than 100,000 people may have been killed by the Assad regime’s “death machine” of torture, says war crimes investigator Stephen Rapp.

A former US Ambassador-at-Large, Rapp visited two mass graves in the towns of Qutaifa and Najha in Damascus.

We definitely have more than 100,000 people who disappeared and were tortured to death by this machine. I have no doubt about these numbers, given what we saw in these mass graves.

We have not seen anything like this since the Nazis. We are talking about a system of state terror that has become a death machine.

Human rights activist Mouaz Mustafa, the head of the US-based Syria Emergency Task Force, visited the Qutaifa site and said there were at least 100,000 bodies buried there alone.

The International Commission on Missing Persons in The Hague says it has evidence that there are as many as 66 unverified mass gravesites in Syria. The commission has received reports that more than 157,000 people are missing in Syria.

Syrians living near the graves at Qutaifa and Najh said they saw bodies being continually brought in by truck and dumped in long trenches dug by bulldozers. “This is a place of horror,” said one resident.

The Commission said, according to satellite images, large-scale excavation work in Qutaifa began in 2012-2014 and continued until 2022 with excavators, trucks, and large trenches.

Raya Jalabi and Sarah Dadouch open their lengthy profile in the Financial Times:

In Tadamon, the children know the difference between a human jaw and a dog’s.

So inured are they to decomposing remains, a consequence of living in this desolate Damascus suburb, that the boys casually toss around skulls and fractured femurs.

Once a rebel stronghold, Tadamon was turned into an industrial killing field by militias loyal to Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s 13-year civil war. Broad swaths of the district were reduced to rubble, and it was the site of a notorious massacre by regime loyalists in 2013 before being retaken by government forces five years later.

It has remained a wasteland since, reflecting Assad’s policy of ruthlessly punishing those who stood against him: a sea of rubbish and human remains; an ashen purgatory wafting with the souls of unnamed dead.

/p>

UPDATE, DEC 18:

The first flight since Syria’s liberation has taken off from Damascus International Airport, bound for Aleppo in the northwest of the country.

The Airbus of Syrian Air has 43 passengers, including journalists.

Syria Air’s planes are now painted with the three-star independence flag.

UPDATE 1826 GMT:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated an indefinite extension of Israel’s occupation of southwest Syria.

Standing on Syria’s Mount Hermon, Netanyahu said Israeli troops will remain on its peak “until another arrangement is found that guarantees Israel’s security”.

I was here 53 years ago with my soldiers on a Sayeret Matkal patrol. The place hasn’t changed, it’s the same place, but its importance to Israel’s security has only been reinforced in recent years, and especially in recent weeks with the dramatic events taking place here below us in Syria.

We will determine the best arrangement that will ensure our security.

The remarks were a contrast to those of the head of the Islamist faction Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who said Syria will not be used for attacks against Israel.

Al-Sharaa said of the 1974 accord that established a demilitarized zone in Syrian territory:

We are committed to the 1974 agreement and we are prepared to return the UN [monitors].

We do not want any conflict whether with Israel or anyone else and we will not let Syria be used as a launchpad for attacks. The Syrian people need a break, and the strikes must end and Israel has to pull back to its previous positions.”

The UN envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, said Israel has conducted more than 350 strikes on Syria after the fall of the Assad regime.

“Such attacks place a battered civilian population at further risk and undermine the prospects of an orderly political transition,” Pedersen said.

Addressing the UN Security Council, the envoy called for Israel to “cease all settlement activity in the occupied Syrian Golan [Heights]”.

UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric added, “The presence of the Israel Defense Forces in the buffer zone is a violation of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement….[The agreement] needs to be respected, and occupation is occupation — whether it lasts a week, a month or a year, it remains occupation.”

UPDATE 1821 GMT:

German diplomats have met representatives of the Islamist faction Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, discussing a transitional process of power and the protection of minorities, and human rights.

The delegation, led by Germany’s Middle East commissioner Tobias Tunkel, met HTS head Ahmed al Sharaa, its foreign affairs representative Zaid al-Attar, and the transition government’s Education Minister.

The German delegation spoke with civil society and religious organizations.

UPDATE 1222 GMT:

After Iran’s failure to save Bashar al-Assad, whom it propped up since March 2011, the Supreme Leader has insisted, “The perception of US, Israeli regime and their allies resistance has ended is completely wrong. The one that will be eradicated is Israel.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s currency continues to set new all-time lows. It is now trading at 770,500:1 v. the US dollar.

The rial, which traded at 45,000:1 in early 2018, has lost around 6% in value in the past week.

UPDATE 1216 GMT:

The Assad regime almost exhausted Syria’s foreign reserves.

A source told Reuters that the Central Bank has $200 million in cash, and another said the US dollar reserves were “in the hundreds of millions”.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry commented about the state of relations with the new Syria:

In June 2011, the bank had 25.8 tons of gold, worth $2.2 billion at current market prices. It reported $14 billion in foreign reserves.

UPDATE 1038 GMT:

A Syrian woman screams at a UN delegation visiting Sednaya Prison outside Damscus: “You came here now? After everyone has already died?”

Under the Assad regime, tens of thousands of detainees perished in Sednaya from torture, executions, or poor conditions.

Human rights activists are reported the discovery of mass graves with more than 100,000 bodies near the capital.

ORIGINAL ENTRY, DEC 17: Nine days after the fall of the Assad regime, Syria’s new authorities are calling for the removal of international sanctions.

The sanctions were imposed on the regime over its deadly repression of protests and dissent — including unlawful detentions, torture, mass killings and the use of chemical weapons — since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of the Islamist faction Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, stressed to a British delegation on Monday “the importance of ending all sanctions imposed on Syria so that displaced Syrians…can return to their country”.

Around 5.4 million Syrians are refugees, and another 6.8 million are internally displaced. The total of 12.2 million is more than half of Syria’s 22 million population before March 2011.

Conferring in Brussels on Monday, the European Union’s top diplomats set conditions for lifting sanctions and accelerating aid.

The EU’s high representative for foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, said the 27-nation bloc wants a “stable, peaceful and all-comprising government in place”. She said it will probably take weeks, if not months, for Syria’s new path to be clear.

Syria faces an optimistic, positive, but rather uncertain future, and we have to make sure that this goes to the right direction.

For us, it’s not only the words, but we want to see the deeds.

Kallas said HTS is “saying the right things” but will be judged on its actions: “We want to see no extremism, no radicalization.”

At least 70% of Syria’s population officially lives in poverty.

“Syria Must Remain United”

In a discussion with members of the Druze community, the HTS leader said that with the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, all rebel factions will “be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the Defense Ministry”.

“All will be subject to the law,” he declared.

Al-Sharaa emphasized, “Syria must remain united. There must be a social contract between the state and all religions to guarantee social justice”.