A rebel coalition led by the revolutionary Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is on the outskirts of Damascus, and wants to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.
Damascus soon to be surrounded? This is what the rebels said on Saturday December 7. “Our forces have begun the final phase of the encirclement of the capital Damascus,” said a senior rebel coalition commander, Hassan Abdel Ghani. The insurgents are thus getting closer and closer to their goal: to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in power since 2000.
Since November 27, a Turkish-backed coalition of rebels led by the revolutionary Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has moved south, capturing town after town. HTS, meaning “Levant Liberation Organization”, is a former branch of Al-Qaeda, founded in 2017. It is led by Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, former leader of the al-Nusra Front, classified as a “terrorist” by Washington . “They are rigorous and Islamist, but they are not jihadists in the sense of Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group,” specifies Franceinfo journalist Wassim Nasr, specialist in jihadist movements. “They are declared enemies of the Islamic State group. Their prisons are full of sympathizers” of this organization.
“Diversity will be our strength, not a weakness”
The Islamist group also wishes to smooth its image, notes The Worldby giving pledges to be removed from the lists of terrorist organizations. The journalist Wassim Nasr from France 24 notes on this subject that HTS has given directives to its members: “No shooting in the air” since it is dangerous and “terrorizes the inhabitants”, “evacuate the city centers”, “spare public institutions because they belong to the people”, or even “do not open private property”. The group also moved closer to Syrian Kurds, and asserted that “in the future Syria, we believe that diversity will be our strength, not a weakness.” Unimaginable a few years ago, point The World.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, HTS had between 12,000 and 15,000 members in 2018. It has controlled the province of Idlib, in the northwest of the country, since 2020 and has set up a sort of of a mini-state, with an administration and an army. The group leads the rebels, who have already seized Aleppo, Syria’s second city, and are advancing towards Homs, north of the capital. They also took control of Derraa on Friday, south of Damascus. Their advance is the most spectacular in thirteen years of war. “Damascus is waiting for you,” Abu Mohammed Al-Joulani said in a message broadcast on Telegram on Saturday.
The day before, he had declared on CNN that rebel forces had “the right to use all means necessary to achieve” their goal of overthrowing the Russian-backed Assad regime. A task that could be made easier by the struggling Syrian army. “Syrian soldiers no longer seem to want to serve the president,” notes France 24. Nearly 2,000 Syrian soldiers have also fled the fighting in Iraq, notes the media.
The Syrian Ministry of Defense defended itself against any withdrawal of its troops, and affirmed that “information according to which our armed forces, present in all areas of the Damascus countryside, have withdrawn, are unfounded “.