Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) slotted into power in Syria following a brutal civil war that lasted over a decade. Was the reason HTS quickly found themselves in power because the previous Assad government had lost all support and “the people” had enough or were there other reasons for the rise of this new Islamist regime?
[HTS] hasn’t gained the power because of people’s sympathy with its stances. Actually, Hayat is a radical Islamist fundamentalist obscurantist band, group, gang. Simply, they are terrorists and criminals.
They have been recognized so, not only by the Syrian people or by some political forces based on their political agenda or their ideology, but they have been viewed so by the major world countries, who apparently know them best because they backed them. They have been functioning as their proxies in Syria to oppose the resistant powers in the region. Basically, we are speaking about opposing Iran, opposing Syria, the Syrian previous regime.
So, it’s not because people sympathized with them, on the one hand. On the other hand, what concerns Al Assad’s regime or the government?
Well, there is a simple rule saying that the ones who have the sympathy of the popular masses are unbreakable. It’s impossible to break or to defeat leaders or governments that are supported by the popular masses, because the popular masses see that these leaders or these governments or the political system supports their interests or reflects their interests.
But this wasn’t the case with the Al Assad regime. The Al Assad regime has been changing the political course – or the social, economic and political course – of the country over decades, by supporting or taking into account mainly the interests of an emerging oligarchic class, that has become more powerful during the last decade or over a decade. I’m speaking here about the war period and, even before, the political or the economic policy of the country was seeking the interests of the oligarchs that are powerful, politically speaking and economically speaking. They were the influential rich people who monopolized everything, almost all the main assets in the country, and that just played the major role in impoverishing the popular masses of Syria, and those who previously were supporting Al Assad as a “moderate”, let’s say, or secular leader representing the secular political system in Syria, in comparison to the radical fundamentalists. They started, by and by, feeling desperate and feeling hopeless, and finding it impossible to see any benefit of supporting such a leader.
I’m speaking about the popular masses… who represent the main resource for the army. I’m speaking about people who go to the army who will fight for the government and for the people to preserve peace, to confront the enemies. I’m speaking about the people who would go and join the army. They didn’t see any hope. Not to mention that as soldiers go to the army as conscripts, because we had an army basically of conscripts. They had to serve in the military throughout the war for over eight years. We are speaking about young people, young men whose life is destroyed totally because they would spend eight years of their lives serving in the military.
The army is corrupt, the officers are corrupt. Bribery, corruption is everywhere. Many conscripts could leave the army whenever they want for a good bribe, [what] they have to do is pay their bosses, their officers there in their military bases.
They didn’t see those officers as role models that they could follow. They were hungry. They have been stolen, like they have always been stolen and dropped. Because officers would steal even the food, the provision of the soldiers, and take it, sell it somewhere in the markets or even take it home. Because the salaries of the professional officers are not that good. And even when they are good, they don’t feel that it’s enough. Many military officers had property built based on their corruption and on the bribery.
Because of the war situation, the conscripts had to serve for a long time in the army, and there was a decree issued that they can get a higher salary as they are [kept as] the reservists in the army for that period of time. So, they started getting salaries for this, and once they finish their military service, they get paid not that decent amount of money, it will not support the person for a long time. And it will not just make it up or compensate the [seven or eight] years of serving in the military anyway. So, these officers would allow the conscripts, the soldiers, to go home to practice their job mainly as a taxi driver or as a minimal wage working person who is illegally in among the civilians practicing the job. So, he would always be blackmailed by the owners of the businesses they would work for and be forced to work under long hours, further poor pay, and terrible conditions – or face being reported
So, the officers would turn a blind eye and in return, they would take their salary. So, if an officer allows, for example,15, 20, 30 conscripts to go home and practice their job, they would take a large portion of their military money in their pocket. This corruption, this rubbish, just weakened the army in general. People started feeling hopeless and desperate.
When the Syrian government, or the Syrian previous leadership, took the course of stabilizing the situation in some areas and just concentrating the presence on the rebels or the radical Islamists in the area of Idlib, they would send anybody who doesn’t accept what was known back then as Muthallah, which is like The Reconciliation, they would send them to Idlib. And in Idlib, in that area, in the northwest of Syria, it became an area of concentration of these radical Islamist militants who were backed by the Turks, who were backed by the English intelligence and so forth.
So on the one hand we have this concentration area of the militants, on the other hand, the tendency of not confronting them. The officers in the army would find it comfortable to just send some conscripts away because they were assured that there will not be a war anymore, that the major powers here and there will come to a consensus and those in Idlib will just vanish, the Turks will take them somewhere or something like that. But this didn’t work like they expected.
They would say always to their soldiers that there is no war anymore in Syria. So, it’s really complicated to explain why. Why the Assad regime has lost the power and how Hayat came to power or slotted into power. Because I will tell you plainly, Syrian people are moderate, even the religious ones are moderate. They don’t accept the radical views of the Wahhabi, the Salafi and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham who represent this branch of Islam.
Western governments, alongside the media, have stated that the HTS led by Ahmad Sharaa (who was on the USA’s most wanted list with a bounty of $10million) has changed drastically since it was an al-Qaida affiliate. They state that they have abandoned extremist Islamist ideology for a more “moderate” political orientation. What is your view on the western rehabilitation of Ahmad Sharaa’s character and how would you define the new government?
First of all, we don’t recognize him under his new name or under his civilian name. We still see him (Ahmad Al Shara) as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. We have been, always, following how the West and the Turkish regime are trying to change the image of the al Qaeda branch and its members, which was called Jabhat Al Nusra.
Generally speaking, the name of Jabhat Al Nusra, and how it’s interpreted anyway, that front was just a Levantine branch of al Qaeda. Abu Muhammad al-Jolani says that he came into bad terms with the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq. So, he convinced others that he could be a leader of another branch of al Qaeda in the Levantine area. And he gained their blessings, giving him his support as a new leader of al Qaeda in the Levant. And now we are seeing him change his image again, we have always been following that procedure of the changing image of those like this “bawbag” Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – I really would like to use this Scottish swear word here – this bawbag has been changed into a so-called moderate now, who wears a tie and not his Islamic suit that he used to wear previously. Now he’s wearing a fancy political uniform of the west and shakes hands with only European ladies, if you’ve noticed that. So, this person is just the Western puppet changing his image according to what interests the West. He is just a tool of imperialism.
The imperialism that has always tried to depend on the far right wing forces everywhere, starting with Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, and establishing the fascism.
Well, we don’t see al Qaeda as anything other than a form of fascism. We don’t see Israel as anything other than a form of fascism. It may differ from one society to another, but it plays the same role. It has the same function: far right wing, fundamentalist, crazy people who hate others, who are not satisfied until like they gain their sacred war crazy goals, which is just something to manipulate the religious, or the national emotions of some people.
Let’s remember that the fundamentalists, the Islamist fundamentalists, were basically established as organizations, mainly the Muslim Brotherhood, by Western forces and mainly by the British intelligence, to confront the communist wave that was gaining popularity back then in the Middle East. They were worried that this communist wave was influencing the nationalist movement in in the area, like the figure of Abraham Nasser, or the figures of some other leaders who became closer by circumstances – by the Western policies, by their support to the Zionist entity, they were forced into having good relations with The Soviet Union. I mean these leaders, and they would gain some of the characteristics of the socialist system [as] they wanted the Soviets to view them as decent allies who would confront the West, the imperialists. And this led the Western world, the imperialist powers, to look for enemies to the socialists, to the communists, to confront the so-called communist wave in in in the area. The Islamist fundamentalists have been always a creation of their mother, America, and of their father in the UK.
To this day they still gain the support of both intelligence services in the US and in the UK. They give them backing – financial support, training instructions, intelligence, and so on. So of course, the mainstream media in the West will try, not only in the West, but also here, will try to show Ahmed al-Sharaa, the so-called Ahmed al-Sharaa, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, as the new image of a professional “moderate” – wearing a tie and suit and shaking hands with the German Minister of Foreign Affairs. But we are not fools, the Syrians are not fools, the people who live in Idlib are not fools. They know these people. They know them. They know that they are incapable of changing, that they are not willing to change. They are not willing to establish a democratic state.
They called for a dialog conference, the so-called dialog conference, and they try to avoid using the word democracy anywhere as they are not democratic. They don’t want to be democratic, not to mention their economic course, they say that plainly, that they will support the “Free Market” course, which was something important for the West.
We know that Abu Mohammed al-Jolani wouldn’t have reached Damascus without his hyenas that are now killing, and massacring people everywhere, and he is unable to restrain them. They have been unleashed by the West. Everyone is seeing the massacres in the coastal area, the events in the recent few weeks at the end of April when they attacked the Druze communities, as they are ready to proclaim anyone as an infidel and attack their confession or their sect without making or distinguishing differences between people. There are facts that have not been announced about villages that were slaughtered, killed entirely. In some areas, they killed all the men, all the men, all the boys in some Alawite villages based on sectarian discrimination. Of course, these crimes are still being committed without being filmed. Previously, they were filmed because these jackals were happy and proud of what they were doing, they would say that they are taking ‘revenge’ over people who are innocent, who had nothing to do with the crimes that have been committed by some figures of the previous Assad regime – that nobody denies, of course. So, this is the true image of these criminals, everybody knows that, but people seem to just follow the trends, and the Western media is very good at creating trends.
The ongoing massacres against Alawite civilians across the coastal areas has been nothing short of disturbing. What was the trigger for this extreme violence and how is the new regime responsible for its undertaking? Have the new authorities shown similar brutality elsewhere in the region and are these kind of atrocities likely to occur again against a new target?
Of course, what triggered this is something trivial. It’s not important what triggered the massacres. This new regime is responsible because first of all, who committed these massacres? Our militants. These are the militants; I call them like the hyenas of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. These hyenas, these cowards, take their revenge over the civilians. There were attempts to organize some armed resistance in the coastal area. After many cases of attacks in different villages in the coastal area or in the Alawite areas, the governor of Homs confirmed that there were attacks that the new regime would justify and excuse as individual cases, and the government and the military forces or the security forces have done very little to deal with them.
They would sometimes enter an area, speak to the people, shake hands with the elderly, with the senior members of the community, have lunch with them, and after that they would kill them. So, these fascists who are there are incapable of being trusted by anyone, anywhere, and concerning other regions, other areas.
Now, the Israelis are trying to show themselves as the protectors of the minorities in Syria. And these “bawbags” who are in the government now are now doing everything to support that image of the Israelis. We know that the Israelis are fascists. We know them from their behaviours in Gaza. We know them from their behaviours in the West Bank. We know them from their behaviours, historically speaking, and how they treat the Arabs and the non-Jewish people or how they treat even the Jewish people that they don’t like. We know the Israelis. But these scumbags are now giving them what they want. They give them an excuse, or they give them a chance to appear in that image as protectors of the minorities in the Middle East. Of course, the majority of Syrian people, especially in these communities, see Israel and refuse Israel, refuse their support, refuse to give them that image.
The new government seems content with the continued US and Turkish military presence in Syria and to the expansion of Israel from the south. Why do you think this is?
Why do we think this is? Well, I want to just remind you or to refer to something that we highlighted, we mentioned in the statement on May Day, the statement of the Syrian Democratic Youth Union, in which we said that the new regime, is ready to kiss the hands of all the Western leaders. Well, we wanted to say something more. They are ready to kiss the arses of all these leaders in the West and the East in order to preserve power. And they are not ready to listen to the Syrian people or to give the Syrian people guarantees of peace, of peaceful development of like a new democratic modern state. They are ready to do whatsoever to preserve power, to stay, to remain in power by kissing all the hands and arses of all the leaders.
[This is part 1 of a longer interview, find part 2 here]
Nathan Hennebry is a member of the YCL’s Glasgow branch
