Assad Falls In Syria - Will The New Regime Be Better?

 The last couple of weeks in Syria have shocked the world. The Syrian rebels (Hyatt Tahrir al-Sham or "HTS") proved stronger than anyone expected. They have captured Syria's major cities, including Damascus, and ousted Assad. Reports are that Assad has left the country, leaving instructions for his government to have a peaceful transfer of power.

What does this mean for Syria? Have they jumped from the frying pan into the fire? Will they have a new government that respects all people of the country, or a strict Islamic government like Iran (or even worse, like Afghanistan)? There is some evidence that the former may be true. Here is how The Washington Post reports it:

According to a broad array of analysts and Syria experts, HTS also has changed, not just in its rhetoric but in its actions, including at least an initial public embrace of pluralism and religious freedom in areas that it has come to occupy.

Whether HTS’s professions of reform are genuine is far from clear. It is one unknown among a swirl of uncertainties in a crisis changing so rapidly that Western intelligence analysts acknowledge they are struggling to keep up.

The outcome could have major security impacts for Syria’s neighbors as well as the hundreds of U.S. service personnel deployed at military outposts in southern and northeastern Syria. The consequences could be even more profound for ordinary Syrians, including the 14 million — more than two-thirds of the country’s population — who are internally displaced or living as refugees, and the vast numbers of others who are simply exhausted after 13 years of conflict. . . .

By all accounts, HTS has evolved considerably since the days of the “catastrophic success” warnings. By 2015, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front had changed its name and disavowed any ties with the Islamic State, its parent organization. In 2016, its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, had also publicly broken with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups.

Jolani has sought since then to cultivate a more moderate, tolerant image and to root out — sometimes brutally — Islamic State supporters in his enclave as well as extremists within his organization, analysts say.

Even as his army was on the march in the past two weeks, Jolani has gone out of his way to present his reformer’s credentials to Western audiences, offering interviews to CNN and the New York Times.

“No one has the right to erase another group,” Jolani said of Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities in a CNN interview broadcast on Friday. “These sects have coexisted in this region for hundreds of years, and no one has the right to eliminate them.”

Jolani even suggested that he might disband his own organization in order to build a new government that represented all parts of Syrian society.

“We are talking about building Syria,” Jolani said. “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is merely one part of this dialogue, and it may dissolve at any time. It is not an end in itself but a means to perform a task: confronting this regime.”

Syrian advocacy groups say Jolani has generally followed through on his pledge of moderation by allowing freedom of worship and granting rights to women — including the right to pursue professional careers and attend college — in HTS’s Idlib stronghold, as well as the cities that have recently fallen to the group.

Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based advocacy group with an extensive network in northern Syria, said Aleppo’s citizens have largely welcomed the HTS fighters. A prominent leader of the city’s Orthodox community told him that Christian neighborhoods were putting up Christmas decorations without rebel interference, Moustafa said. . . .

Still, several U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts said they are not yet convinced by Jolani’s claims of reform.