Syria's de facto leader says it could take up to 4 years to hold elections

[December 30, 2024]  By KAREEM CHEHAYEB

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria's de facto leader said Sunday it could take up to four years to hold elections in Syria, and that he plans to dissolve his Islamist group that led the country's insurgency at an anticipated national dialogue summit for the country.

Ahmad al-Sharaa, who leads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group leading the new authority in Syria, made the remarks in an interview with Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya. It comes almost a month after a lightning insurgency led by HTS overthrew President Bashar Assad's decades-long rule, ending the country's uprising-turned civil war that started back in 2011.

Al-Sharaa said it would take time to hold elections because of the need for Syria's different forces to hold political dialogue and rewrite the country's constitution following five decades of the Assad dynasty's dictatorial rule. Also, the war-torn country's battered infrastructure needs to be reconstructed, he said.

“The chance we have today doesn’t come every 5 or 10 years,” said al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani. “We want the constitution to last for the longest time possible.”

Al-Sharaa is Syria's de facto leader until March 1, when Syria's different factions are set to hold a political dialogue to determine the country's political future and establish a transitional government that brings the divided country together. There, he said, HTS will dissolve after years of being the country's most dominant rebel group that held a strategic enclave in the country's northwest.

Earlier, an Israeli airstrike in the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday killed 11 people, according to a war monitor, as Israel continues to target Syrian weapons and military infrastructure even after the ouster of Assad.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike targeted a weapons depot that belonged to Assad’s forces near the industrial town of Adra, northeast of the capital. The observatory said at least 11 people, mostly civilians, were killed. The Israeli military did not comment on the airstrike Sunday.

Israel, which has launched hundreds of airstrikes over Syria since the country's uprising turned-civil war broke out in 2011, rarely acknowledges them. It says its targets are Iran-backed groups that backed Assad.

Unlike his criticism of key Assad ally Iran, al-Sharaa hoped to maintain “strategic relations” with Russia, whose air force played a critical role in keeping Assad in power for over a decade during the conflict. Moscow has a strategic airbase in Syria.

Portraits of missing people whose families say they were taken by the Assad regime are plastered across a monument in Damascus, Syria, Saturday, Dec. 28, 2024 (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

The HTS leader also said negotiations are ongoing with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria, and hopes that their armed forces will integrate with the Syrian security agencies.

The Kurdish-led group is Washington’s key ally in Syria, where it is heavily involved in targeting sleeper cells belonging to the extremist Islamic State group.

Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have been clashing with the SDF even after the insurgency, taking the key city of Manbij, as Ankara hopes to create a buffer zone near its border in northern Syria.

The rebels attacked near the strategic northern border town of Kobani, while the SDF shared a video of a rocket attack that destroyed what it said was a radar system south of the city of Manbij.

In other developments:

— Syrian state-run media said a mass grave was found near the third largest city of Homs. SANA said civil defense workers were sent to to the site in al-Kabo, one of many suspected mass graves where tens of thousands of Syrians are believed to have been buried during a brutal crackdown under Assad and his network of security agencies.

— An Egyptian activist wanted by Cairo on charges of incitement to violence and terrorism, Abdulrahman al-Qardawi, was detained by Lebanese security forces after crossing the porous border from Syria, according to two judicial and one security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to to talk to the press.

Al-Qardawi is an Egyptian activist residing in Turkey and an outspoken critic of Egypt's government. He had reportedly visited Syria to join celebrations after Assad's downfall. His late father, Youssef al-Qaradawi, was a top and controversial Egyptian cleric revered by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. He had lived in exile in Qatar for decades.

— Lebanese security forces apprehended an armed group in the northern city of Tripoli that kidnapped a group of 26 Syrians who were recently smuggled into Lebanon, two Lebanese security officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information with the media. The Syrians included five women and seven children, and security officials are working to return them to Syria.

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