«Do you see those hills with the big villas? It is all Assad’s property and his loyalists live there, who have put aside their weapons, lots of them, and even some tanks. They prepare for the worst and have a plan.” Ahmed is an Alawite, the Shiite sect of the dictator of Damascus who fled to Russia, but he still wanders among the remains blackened by the flames of the great mausoleum of al-Qordaha, dedicated to the founder of the dynasty Hafez al Assad. The sumptuous tomb was stripped of everything, like the other symbolic buildings of the Assads, but the body was not there and the new conquerors, former jihadist rebels or presumed such, took away the remains of the eldest and favorite son, Bassil , who died in a car accident.
During the Christmas days, violent armed clashes broke out in al-Qordaha, an Alawite stronghold, and in Tartus, where the Russians still have a naval base, with the militiamen of the new National Salvation government set up in Damascus by Ahmed al-Sharaa. Nom de guerre Al Joulani is a former follower of Al Qaeda, who presents himself to the world as a “good guy”.
The Committee for the Liberation of the Levant (Hts) which brought him to power has 40 thousand men, too few to control the whole of Syria. Syrians dream of a future of stability and peace, but many – Kurds, Druze, Christians – trust very little and do not want to know about an Islamic state, sharia and close ties with the Turkish “sultan” Erdogan.
The first who are not there are the pockets of diehard Alawites, who in the triangle between Latakia, Qordaha and Tartus «feel abandoned by Assad to their fate, but do not want to give up their weapons. The new government had to send a thousand men to keep the situation under control” according to an intelligence source. Between 25 and 26 December, violent clashes broke out with dozens of men from the new government killed before managing to capture General Mohammed Kanjo Hassan. The wanted man was responsible for the military justice of the regime accused of the horrors of the Sednaya prison-slaughterhouse on the outskirts of Damascus. In Latakia, another stronghold of the former regime, the collapse is depicted by the kilometre-long queue at the entrance to a barracks of the Ministry of the Interior, where former soldiers and policemen hand over their weapons and obtain a coveted safe-conduct. «We manage to manage two thousand a day at most and it has been like this since the end of the regime» explains Mohammed Mostafa, a young bearded man in uniform. «Don’t treat us like Assad’s dogs» snaps a former soldier in line «We too are happy that the son of a bitch has fallen. I even deserted so as not to get killed, but I was caught and sent back to war.”
The militiamen guarding them make the victory sign with their fingers and the shout goes off takfirthe “excommunication” against apostates like Assad, among the former soldiers who seem to align themselves with the new course. At the back of the barracks, weapons and keys to government cars are handed over. A police officer brought his gun, although he doesn’t seem very convinced that everything will go well. The important thing is to obtain the safe conduct with photo and registration number, which should be used in the future to call soldiers and agents back into service. One of Assad’s bodyguards also appears in the queue and is not recognized by the bearded men. He also hands over the gun and pretends nothing happened.
In Homs the gloomy wings of buildings crumbled by the fighting they remember the brutality of the Syrian civil war. Alawites took to the streets and a curfew was imposed. Bishop Jacques Murad was kidnapped in 2015 by the cutthroats of the Caliphate. Brother of Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, the Italian Jesuit who disappeared into thin air in 2013, denounces that «in Homs the Sunnis enter houses masked to kill the Alawites. Even if they participated in the massacre perpetrated by the regime, they must be tried by an independent court with respect for human rights. The government wanted by Al Joulani claims that these are individual actions. I don’t believe it”. And then he reveals that «in a meeting with emissaries from Damascus, the head of the delegation said that they have a list of 40 thousand people to kill…».
The Christians, reduced to 300 thousand from the over one and a half million Syrians before the war, are the weakest. The first Christmas without Assad, after 53 years, is lived between hope and fear. Firas Lufti, the Franciscan custodian of the Holy Land in Damascus, underlines that «the militiamen in power have an Islamo-fanatic and jihadist background behind them. Such a government cannot hold in Syria, a country-mosaic of ethnic groups and religions. Let’s hope we don’t end up realizing that we were better when we were worse.” Fahda Nasr, with long, loose hair, has just left Sunday mass in Bab Touma, the Thomas Gate, the Christian neighborhood in the capital. “It’s okay to change,” he reiterates. «But there is also the fear that they will impose the veil on us. I hope they respect our religion.”
Georges Assadourian, Armenian bishop of Damascus – who speaks Italian – has hope for a “free, independent and secular Syria”. However, he reveals that «they started going around Christian shops saying they didn’t sell alcohol. It is one of our fears.”
The main road, which leads north, from where the rebels who conquered Damascus quickly descended on 8 December, is cluttered with abandoned military vehicles. A truck with a self-propelled cannon, tanks with the tank drivers’ uniforms thrown away, undefended air bases where the MiGs still carry Russian bombs under their wings and cars riddled with machine gun bursts are the symbol of a kind of “September 8th” and ” April 25″ Syrians one after the other.
In Aleppo, those who aren’t there are the Kurds, who have been garrisoning two neighborhoods in the “Milan of Syria” for years. You can only enter through the checkpoint, where women and men armed with Kalashnikovs check all the cars. «We are willing to collaborate with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which must respect our language and autonomy. Our enemy is the Syrian National Army set up by the Turks, which has committed crimes against the Kurds” explain Nouri Sheikho and Heaven Suleiman, men and women who lead the neighborhoods. The portrait of Apo Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, who the Turks brand as a terrorist, is half hidden so as not to attract the attention of journalists. The Kurdish area is crowded, but with open sewers, intermittent electricity and refugee camp buildings. There is no shortage of Yazidis, exterminated by the Caliphate, who are also armed. The bête noire of the Kurds is precisely the Sna, the Syrian National Army, which exploited the collapse of the regime to attack the ethnic group in their strongholds. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to create a buffer zone along the border with the autonomous administration area in northeast Syria called Rojava. A third of the country controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, who defeated ISIS with US support. And Israel considers the Kurds “natural allies”. At the semi-deserted Sheraton hotel, you notice a Turkish team in civilian clothes but, under their sweaters, some have guns on their waists. The new ambassador from Ankara had arrived at the Four Seasons, the luxury hotel in Damascus, with the men of MIT, the Turkish intelligence, since the first week of “liberation”. It is no coincidence that the newly appointed governor of Aleppo, Azzam Garib, a graduate in Türkiye, is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood of the SNA which is inspired by Erdogan.
The new Foreign Minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shaybani, also obtained a master’s degree in Istanbul. And even the first woman in the provisional executive, Aisha al Dibs, is a human rights activist with dual Turkish and Syrian citizenship. “If the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Joulani’s Salafists come to an agreement, they can manage the state” explains a diplomat in Damascus. “And Turkey can find a way out and stabilize Syria.” An undertaking full of unknowns, starting from the thousands of volunteers of the international holy war no longer isolated in the pocket of Idlib, the small Caliphate from where the conquest of Damascus began.
The megavilla of Bashar Assad, the cousin of the same name of the deposed president, is stripped of everything after the looting. They also took away the shutters, but left the large eagle at the entrance and the tacky plasterboard Roman pseudo-sculptures. A white off-road vehicle without license plates arrives at full speed with three Uzbeks in camouflage and their finger on the trigger. Suspicious they immediately ask: “Do you speak Russian?”. The answer is “no”, even though I know a few phrases, but it takes a while to calm them down by explaining that I’m Italian. Eventually they take selfies in the villa, as if they were the new owners, and leave.
In the entrance square of Idlib, the jihadist stronghold, the white flag waves with the verses of the Koran written in black. It is the same as that of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Women walk around with the niqabthe veil that covers from head to toe. The market is full of groceries, but you pay with Turkish lira. And in a small square, Al Joulani authorized a small monument “from Idlib to Gaza” praising the Hamas massacre attack on 7 October with a mosaic-painting of a terrorist arriving from the sky on a paraglider towards the golden dome of the Jerusalem mosque .
A young man with almond-shaped eyes and a military watch on his wrist, originally from Kyrgyzstan, buys a kilo of potatoes from a greengrocer. «I came to fight the holy war to defend my Syrian brothers» he explains with the camera off. «I am part, together with other volunteers from Central Asia such as the Uyghurs (Chinese Islamic militants, ed.), of the Kahtiba al Tawid Wal Jihad”. The group, linked to al-Qaida, is on the blacklist of terrorist organizations. When asked what he will do now, he replies that «the dictator has escaped. We will probably go to Jordan” to fight. A car with tinted windows is waiting for him to leave.
South of Damascus, near the Jordanian border, the stronghold of Sweida is a city of 120 thousand inhabitants controlled at gunpoint by the Druze, who do not intend to relinquish power. At the entrance, a sentry wearing a helmet and bulletproof vest from Liwa al Jabal, one of Sweida’s volunteer defense groups, greets with a friendly Salam aleikum“peace be with you”. A dozen armed men are lined up in the base with the red flag and crossed rifles in the background. «We reject radicalism, the sharia and the Islamic State” says their commander Shaker Azzam. “We will never negotiate on this.” Ziad, who wears a Venezuelan cap and speaks English, acts as escort for a tour from the Christian church manned to protect her, to the central bank and Assad’s former intelligence base nicknamed “hell” for the torture of prisoners. “The old regime put it in the heads of the entire Syrian population that Israel is the enemy,” explains Ziad. «It’s not like that. There are many Druze in Israel who are our brothers and grandfathers.” A young man is even more clear: «If I had to choose between the sharia and Israel I would have no doubts in preferring the latter.”
Yousuf al Jarbu, silver beard, black outfit and typical white headdress of Druze leaders, is one of the three sheik who govern the community. “We know well that the new arrivals in Damascus were from Al Qaeda,” he says. «They assured us that they will respect all minorities. We will soon see if they will keep their promises.”
Many hope that Ahmed al-Sharaa is the first enlightened jihadist on the road to Damascus, who instead of weapons and the Caliphate will bring the country out of the tunnel. One of our field intelligence veterans is sceptical: «Pandora’s box has been opened in Syria. The West will suffer the effects for years.” n
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