DAMASCUS — Exuberant Syrians noticed the primary Friday prayers because the ouster of President Bashar Assad, gathering within the capital’s historic most important mosque, its largest sq. and across the nation to rejoice the tip of half a century of authoritarian rule.
The gatherings illustrated the dramatic adjustments which have swept over Syria lower than every week after insurgents marched into Damascus and toppled Assad. Amid the jubilation, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with allies across the area and referred to as for an “inclusive and non-sectarian” interim authorities.
Blinken arrived in Iraq on a beforehand unannounced cease after talks in Jordan and Turkey, which backs a number of the Syrian rebel factions. To date, U.S. officers haven’t talked of direct conferences with Syria’s new rulers.
The primary rebel pressure, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has labored to ascertain safety and begin a political transition after seizing Damascus early Sunday. The group has tried to reassure a public each surprised by Assad’s fall and anxious about extremist jihadis among the many rebels. Rebel leaders say the group has damaged with its extremist previous, although HTS continues to be labeled a terrorist group by the US and European international locations.
HTS’s chief, Ahmad al-Sharaa, previously generally known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, appeared in a video message Friday congratulating “the nice Syrian folks for the victory of the blessed revolution.”
“I invite them to go to the squares to point out their happiness with out taking pictures bullets and scaring folks,” he stated. “After which after, we are going to work to construct this nation, and as I stated to start with, we can be victorious by the assistance of God.”
Enormous crowds, together with some insurgents, packed Damascus’ historic Umayyad Mosque within the capital’s previous metropolis, many waving the insurgent opposition flag — with its three purple stars — which has swiftly changed the Assad-era flag with with its two inexperienced stars.
Based on Arab tv stations, the Friday sermon was delivered by Mohammed al-Bashir, the interim prime minister put in by HTS this week.
The scene resonated on a number of ranges. The mosque, one of many world’s oldest courting again some 1,200 years, is a beloved image of Syria, and sermons there like all mosque sermons throughout Syria had been tightly managed beneath Assad’s rule.
Additionally, within the early days of the anti-government rebellion in 2011, protesters would go away Friday prayers to march in rallies in opposition to Assad earlier than he launched a brutal crackdown that turned the rebellion into an extended and bloody civil warfare.
“I didn’t step foot in Umayyad Mosque since 2011,” due to the tight safety controls round it, stated one worshipper, Ibrahim al-Araby. “Since 11 or 12 years, I haven’t been this blissful.”
One other worshipper, Khair Taha, stated there was “worry and trepidation for what’s to return. However there’s additionally a whole lot of hope that now we’ve a say and we are able to attempt to construct.”
Blocks away in Damascus’ greatest roundabout, named Umayyad Sq., 1000’s gathered, together with many households with young children — an indication of how, up to now at the very least, the nation’s transformation has not seen violent instability.
“Unified Syria to construct Syria,” the group chanted. Some shouted slurs in opposition to Assad and his late father, calling them pigs, an insult that might have beforehand led to offenders being hauled off to one of many feared detention facilities of Assad’s safety forces.
One man within the crowd, 51-year-old Khaled Abu Chahine — initially from the southern province of Daraa, the place the 2011 rebellion first erupted — stated he hoped for “freedom and coexistence between all Syrians, Alawites, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze.”
The interim prime minister, al-Bashir, had been the pinnacle of a de facto administration created by HTS in Idlib, the opposition’s enclave in northwest Syria. The rebels have been bottled up in Idlib for years earlier than fighters broke out in a shock offensive and marched throughout Syria in 10 days.
Comparable scenes of pleasure unfolded in different main cities, together with in Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Latakia and Raqqa.
Al-Sharaa, HTS’ chief, has promised to deliver a pluralistic authorities to Syria, searching for to dispel fears amongst many Syrians — particularly its many minority communities — that the insurgents will impose a hard-line, extremist rule.
One other key issue can be profitable worldwide recognition for a brand new authorities in a rustic the place a number of international powers have their arms within the combine.
The Sunni Arab insurgents who overthrew Assad did so with very important assist from Turkey, a longtime foe of the U.S.-backed Kurds. Turkey controls a strip of Syrian territory alongside the shared border and backs an rebel faction uneasily allied to HTS — and is deeply against any features by Syria’s Kurds.
In different developments, Turkish International Minister Hakan Fidan stated Turkey’s Embassy in Damascus would reopen Saturday for the primary time since 2012, when it closed because of the Syrian civil warfare.
The U.S. has troops in jap Syria to fight remnants of the Islamic State group and helps Kurdish-led fighters who rule a lot of the east. Since Assad’s fall, Israel has bombed websites throughout Syria, saying it’s attempting to stop weapons from falling into extremist arms, and has seized a swath of southern Syria alongside the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, calling it a buffer zone.
After talks with Fidan, Blinken stated there was “broad settlement” between Turkey and the U.S. on what they want to see in Syria.
That begins with an “interim authorities in Syria, one that’s inclusive and non-sectarian and one which protects the rights of minorities and girls” and doesn’t “pose any type of risk to any of Syria’s neighbors,” Blinken stated.
Fidan stated the precedence was “establishing stability in Syria as quickly as potential, stopping terrorism from gaining floor, and making certain that IS and the PKK aren’t dominant” — referring to the Islamic State group and the Kurdistan Staff Occasion.
Ankara considers the PKK inside Turkey’s borders a terrorist group, because it does the Kurdish-backed forces in Syria backed by the U.S.
A U.S. official stated that in Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fidan each advised Blinken that Kurdish assaults on Turkish positions must be responded to. The official spoke to reporters on situation of anonymity to debate personal diplomatic talks.
The U.S. has been attempting to restrict such incidents in current days and had helped manage an settlement to stop confrontations across the northern Syrian city of Manbij, which was taken by Turkey-backed opposition fighters from the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces earlier this week.
In Baghdad, Blinken met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani, saying each international locations wished to make sure the Islamic State group — additionally identified by its Arabic acronym Daesh — does not exploit Syria’s transition to re-emerge.
“Having put Daesh again in its field, we are able to’t let it out, and we’re decided to ensure that that doesn’t occur,” Blinken stated.
The U.S. official who briefed reporters stated that Blinken had impressed upon al-Sudani the significance of Iraq exercising its full sovereignty over its territory and airspace to cease Iran from transporting weapons and tools to Syria, both for Assad supporters or onward to the militant Hezbollah group in Lebanon.
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Lee reported from Ankara, Turkey. Related Press Author Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report.
