Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa (R) hosts Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Damascus, December 22, 2024 (Arda Küçükkaya/Anadolu Agency)
UPDATES: Demonstration in Damascus for Democracy and Women’s Rights
UPDATE, 1152 GMT:
NPR’s Jane Arraf reports from the Rukban camp in the desert near the Jordanian border, where about 12,000 displaced Syrians have endured malnutrition, lack of medicine and health care, and poor shelter and hygiene for more than nine years.
Some of Rukban’s families are finally returning to their homes, without fear of retribution or “disappearance” by the Assad regime, in the Homs region in central Syria.
An activist, prominent in humanitarian efforts amid the siege by the Assad regime and Russia, said “the 50 most vulnerable families” have now been able to leave the camp.
UPDATE, DEC 25:
Freelance journalist Fared Al Mahlool posts video of gatherings, with a restored Christmas tree, in al-Saqlabiyah in Hama Province in central Syria.
Al-Saqlabiyah city in Hama countryside, Syria.
— Fared Al Mahlool | فريد المحلول (@faredalmahlool.bsky.social) December 24, 2024 at 7:24 PM
The city drew international attention when the Christmas tree was set afire by hooded fighters, raising fears of sectarian conflict.
Local religious officials said those who had torched the tree were “not Syrian”, promising that they would be punished and that “the tree will be restored and lit up by tomorrow morning”.
UPDATE 1339 GMT:
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Christian areas of Damascus to protest the burning of a Christmas tree near Hama in central Syria.
“We demand the rights of Christians,” protesters chanted in the Bab Sharqi neighbourhood.
A video on social media showing hooded fighters setting fire to a Christmas tree in the Christian-majority town of Suqaylabiyah near Hama.
No culprit was identified. A religious leader from Syria’s Islamist faction Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham told local people that those who had torched the tree were “not Syrian”. He promised that they will be punished and that “the tree will be restored and lit up by tomorrow morning”.
UPDATE 1224 GMT:
Syria’s General Command has announced an agreement to dissolve all rebel factions, merging them under the Defense Ministry.
The announcement followed a meeting between General Command head Ahmed al-Sharaa and leaders of rebel factions from southern Syria.
UPDATE 1127 GMT:
Thousands of women rallied in the Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishli in northeast Syria on Monday.
The demonstration called for respect of women’s rights and criticized Turkish-backed fighters attacking Kurdish areas.
Many of the protesters waved the green flag of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), part of the Kurdish security apparatus.
Women’s rights activist Sawsan Hussein said:
We are demanding women’s rights from the new state…and women must not be excluded from rights in this system.
We are condemning the attacks of the Turkish occupation against the city of Kobani.
Hemrin Ali, an official in the Kurdish administration, said, “Yes to supporting the YPJ. Yes to preserving the rights and gains of the women’s revolution in northern and eastern Syria.”
UPDATE 1034 GMT:
Turkey’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya says. “The number of people returning to Syria in the last 15 days has exceeded 25,000.”
Yerlikaya said migration offices will be established in Turkey’s Embassy in Damascus and Consulate in Aleppo where the records of returning Syrians will be kept.
UPDATE 1002 GMT:
Two Syrian doctors and a nurse have said that the Assad regime coerced them into providing false testimony to international investigators, covering up the regime’s responsibility for a deadly chlorine attack near Damascus.
On April 7, 2018, regime helicopter dropped a chlorine-filled canister on a building in Douma, east of the capital, killing 43 civilians as they tried to leave. A day later, rebels surrendered to the regime offensive, supported by Russian bombing.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found the regime was responsible for the chemical attack, but Russia, Assad officials, and activists continued to push disinformation to blame the opposition and the White Helmets civil defense.
OPCW Formally Blames Syria’s Assad Regime for Douma Chlorine Attack Killing 43 Civilians
Denying Syria’s Chemical Attacks, Attacking the Inspectors — The Douma Case
The three medical staff, who treated the wounded at a field hospital, said they were summoned to national security headquarters in the capital.
“I was told…that they knew where my family is in Damascus,” said orthopaedic surgeon Mohammed al-Hanash.
A team of us doctors who were at the hospital went to the national security building and met an investigator, and we tried as much as possible to give vague answers.
I was asked, for example, what happened that day….I told them that I was in the operating room [and not with chemical attack victims].
Emergency and intensive care specialist Hassan Oyoun said:
When I arrived before the investigator…his gun was on the table pointing towards me.
I immediately understood what was being asked for.
Oyoun said medical personnel “denied the incident” by avoiding responses to certain questions such as “Where were the dead taken?” and blaming cases of suffocation on “the dust, the dirt, and the smoke from the fighting”.
Muwafaq Nisrin, 30, an emergency responder and nurse in 2018, echoed, “I was under pressure because my family lives in Douma — like most of the medical personnel’s families.”
All three were told to repeat their responses in front of a camera as testimony for the OPCW’s Fact-Finding Mission. The footage was “edited and some passages were deleted or taken out of context”, and broadcast on State TV the following day.
On April 14, the trio were told the OPCW mission would interview them at a Damascus hotel. Regime authorities put recorders in their pockets or ordered them to record the interview on their phones.
“They forced us to repeat the story that they wanted,” Hanash said.
On April 25, with several other witnesses, the three travelled to OPCW headquarters in The Hague via Moscow.
“We expected to meet the investigating committee behind closed doors, but were shocked [that it was] an open session for [OPCW] members.” Russia said the regime had brought witnesses to demonstrate that footage of the attack was fabricated.
Hanash says he and his colleagues had waited a long time for “the security grip upon us to lift and for the day we could talk truthfully about what happened”: “We were happy… that our testimony did not impact the course of the investigation.”
But he adds that until those who carried out the attack are punished, “the joy is incomplete”.
UPDATE, DEC 24:
In his latest meetings with foreign diplomats, the head of Syria’s General Command, Ahmed al-Sharaa, hosted Jordan’s Foreign Minister and Qatar’s Minister of State on Monday.
Jordan’s Ayman Safadi expressed Amman’s support for Syria’s reconstruction. The two men also discussed cooperation over trade, border management, electricity connections, and security.
The visit of Mohammed bin Abdulaziz bin Saleh al-Khulaifi was the first by a high-level Qatari official in 13 years. He expressed “unrelenting support for the Syrian brothers to build a state of institutions, governed by justice, freedom, development and peace”.
UPDATE 1313 GMT:
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has warned that a war by Turkey against Syria’s Kurdish groups “must not happen” as this could empower “the IS [Islamic State] terrorists”.
“That would be a security threat for Syria, but also for Turkey and for us in Europe,” Baerbock told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.
She noted that “it was the Kurds in particular who pushed back the IS” after “terrible massacres committed by IS terrorists”. The city of Kobane on the Turkish border, which held out for months against an Islamic State assault, was “a symbol of the courageous fight of the Kurds against IS”.
Baerbock cautioned Ankara that the current situation in Syria should “not be used to drive out the Kurds again, to cause renewed violence”.
UPDATE 1020 GMT:
Iran’s Foreign Ministry says Tehran, which propped up the Assad regime for more than 12 years, has been unable to establish direct contact with Syria’s new government.
UPDATE 0817 GMT:
Writing for The Guardian, William Christou describes the search of Alaa Qasar, whose father disappeared in an Assad regime prison in 2013:
Qasar opened the door of the morgue. Twelve corpses lay on the ground, loosely covered by white plastic zip bags. A man followed Qasar inside, holding the neck of his sweater over his nose, but quickly fled, chased out by the smell. Qasar remained. She bent over and gently lifted the white plastic that covered each of them, lingering and studying their faces like her father did hers 11 years ago.
She moved to the individual morgue fridges, pulling out people who lay motionless on the refrigerated beds. Some bore obvious marks of torture: flesh missing from their jaws, skin turned black from electrocution, necks distended from hangings. All were emaciated, their ribs protruding dangerously from underneath their skin and their rail-thin arms able to be circled by two fingers. Others looked as if they were sleeping. Qasar paused on one man, his black hair parted down the middle, falling softly over his forehead.
She closed the last drawer. None of them were her father. If she could not identify the face, she was looking for a small tattoo on his wrist, the first initials of his and his wife’s name: AM. Qasar’s father had got the tattoo just before he and her mother got engaged.
The line of people continued their shuffling procession behind Qasar, each one pausing to look at the dead when it was their turn. “It feels like a museum. I started to hope that I wouldn’t find my father between them, I didn’t want to see him like this,” Qasar said.
ORIGINAL ENTRY, DEC 23: The head of Syria’s General Command, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has hosted Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Damascus.
For almost a decade, Turkey supported anti-Assad groups — including al-Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham — as they administered part of northwest Syria. Ankara continued that support during the 11-day rebel offensive that toppled the Assad regime on December 8.
However, liberation has brought the prospect of battles between Turkish-backed fighters and the US-supported, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northern Syria. Ankara considers Syrian Kurdish authorities to be part of the Turkish Kurdish insurgency PKK.
On Sunday, both al-Sharaa and Fidan called for the removal of international sanctions that were imposed on the Assad regime over its deadly repression throughout the Syrian uprising.
All the economic sanctions must be lifted, now the predator has gone and only the victims remain. The factors of injustice and oppression have gone. Now the time is opportune for these sanctions to be lifted.
This regime has been ruling for more than 50 years, and some of these sanctions were handed down in the 1970s. That’s why the action must be swift, these sanctions must be lifted quickly in order for us to take our country forward.
Fidan added, “The sanctions imposed on the previous (Syrian) regime need to be lifted as soon as possible. The international community needs to mobilize to help Syria get back on its feet and for the displaced people to return.”
The two men said they discussed the necessity of drafting a new Syrian constitution that protects the country’s minorities, as well as the issues of Syrian refugees and Israel’s attacks and occupation of Syrian territory.
The Syrian leader declared that “we are working on protecting sects and minorities from any attacks that occur between them” and from external actors trying to exploit the situation “to cause sectarian discord”.
“Syria is a country for all and we can coexist together,” al-Sharaa asserted.
Turkey and Syria’s Kurds
The discussion included the issue of the security personnel, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), in Kurdish-controlled areas.
Without directly addressing Turkey’s fight against the Kurdish forces and authorities, al-Sharaa said, “We will absolutely not allow there to be weapons in the country outside state control, whether from the revolutionary factions or the factions present in the SDF area.”
Fidan framed Ankara’s campaign as one for post-Assad Syria:
This is not the time to wait and see; we must act.
The territorial integrity of Syria is non-negotiable. The PKK/YPG is occupying Syrian lands and exploiting its natural resources. The group must dissolve itself immediately.
He declared that the fall of the Assad regime had created a power vacuum exploited by the Kurdish groups, but proclaimed the resilience and determination of the Syrian people to confront the PKK and YPG.
On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signalled to reporters after a summit in Cairo that the Kurdish forces “must be eradicated” and “will be crushed in the shortest time possible”.
An SDF official, Riad Darar, said the forces will negotiate to ensure their participation in a new Syrian political structure unifying the country — but only if there is a ceasefire with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and the establishment of a demilitarized zone around Kurdish-controlled Kobani on the Turkish border.
Fidan said Turkey will only discuss the establishment of the demilitarized zone after the SDF reaches a settlement with Syria’s interim government.
Syria Monitor Says One Killed As Forces Opened Fire To Disperse Protest: https://www.barrons.com/news/syria-monitor-says-one-killed-as-forces-opened-fire-to-disperse-protest-e751756e
“A Syria war monitor said one protester was killed and five others wounded on Wednesday in central Syria after security forces opened fire to disperse demonstrators protesting an attack on an Alawite shrine. Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP that “one demonstrator was killed and five others wounded after security forces in the city of Homs opened fire to disperse those demonstrating against the attack on the shrine”, after video footage of the incident emerged earlier in the day.”
[Editor’s Note: The transitional government in Syria has made no statement about an election date. The comment on Iran ignores the disputed 2009 Presidential election and the disqualification in every election of candidates opposed for political and religious reasons by the Iranian leadership.]
The new regime’s leaders want to postpone elections to mid-2026. However, in both the Iranian and Egyptian revolutions free and fair elections were held within months of the old regime collapsing. In Iran, two referenda were held in 1979 to decide on the new system that combined “theocratic jurisprudence” with democratic republicanism to create a hybrid political regime in the Islamic Republic : https://www.nytimes.com/1979/12/04/archives/iran-charter-gets-expected-landslide-but-turnout-appears-to-be.html
Presidential and parliamentary elections, contested by all political groups, were held months later. In Egypt, they went straight to elections within a year: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16665748
The democratic movement of Egyptians was ultimately crushed by the military and a coup that ousted elected leaders. In Iran, despite a stringent vetting process and bans on certain parties, competitive and fair elections still continue, exemplified in surprising victories for reformists and conservatives alike in presidential contests (1997, 2005, 2013, 2024).
US Hypocrisy Reaches a New Level: Israel’s Occupation of Syria Is ‘Security,’ Russia’s Moves in Ukraine Are ‘Aggression’: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2024/12/us-hypocrisy-reaches-a-new-level-israels-occupation-of-syria-is-security-russias-moves-in-ukraine-are-aggression/
“The hypocrisy couldn’t be more obvious. In Syria, Israel’s territorial ambitions are labeled “security-driven” and legally defensible, despite clear violations of international law. In Ukraine, Russia’s security concerns were dismissed as “imperial aggression,” regardless of NATO’s relentless eastward expansion threatening its borders. Both Moscow and West Jerusalem justified their actions by citing urgent national security concerns – yet only Israel’s reasoning was embraced as legitimate by Washington, while Russia’s was dismissed as imperialist aggression. And resulted in sanctions and condemnation.”
The goon is wearing a suit and tie now! Meanwhile, protests against the salafist takeover continues in Syria: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-christmas-tree-christians-b2669573.html