Tanks and military uniforms directly abandoned on the road by soldiers who surrendered to the rebel advance, rifle shots in the air that are more a sign of power than celebration, administrative buildings burned by the crowd or, like the airport, military, bombed by Israel (from which smoke is still coming out), cars attacked with broken windows, a duty free completely looted… This is Syria this Monday, in the space between a regime, that of Bashar al Assad, overthrown just 36 hours before, and the one formed by the different groups that overthrew him.
Rebel fighters try to bring order to a country where the army that imposed its law for half a century shows no signs of life. For now, the once ubiquitous military checkpoints on the Lebanese-Damascus border road are simply empty. Three men in military uniforms without identification and beards typical of Salafis watch the almost non-existent cars that pass by. In the capital you can count the open stores on your fingers and people pass by with bread. In the middle of traffic there is a mixture of uncertainty and traces of joy. Some cars circulate with the so-called Flag of Independence, with three stars, which has already begun to fly officially. The rebel flag has already been placed even in the embassy of Russia, El Assad’s great ally along with Iran, who has been welcomed in Moscow along with his family for “humanitarian reasons.”
In the heart of Damascus, the capital, there is an abandoned truck with a sign in Russian. There is also a poster shot up, in which Bachar appears with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and a phrase in Russian. Another, shattered, where he is seen next to Hafez el Assad (1971-2000), his father and predecessor.
Near the border, the duty free has been completely looted. Only beer and bottles of whiskey and vodka are left lying on the floor. Three men (two of them with a cross around their necks) take the opportunity to enter and leave, each one with a box of high-grade alcohol. Some young people arrive shooting into the air and there is silence. Here, today, no one knows who is authority and who is not because there is none. A few seconds later everyone understands that it was a mere demonstration of power by a man with a long gun.
—Don’t photograph me, I’m a combatant, he warns.
At some intersections you can also see piles of sandbags. It was the “impregnable ring” around Damascus that the Interior Minister promised hours before the fall of the capital, with almost no shots fired or resistance.
The rebels’ hurried attempt to establish some semblance of order is slowly becoming noticeable on the streets. Two men in unmarked military uniforms have become makeshift traffic guards at a busy crossroads.
Two men have stationed themselves at the entrance to a police station that was burned down the day before. They are the new police, the word written on their pants. The bracelet is from the National Salvation Government that Hayat Tahrir El Sham formed in Idlib, the fundamentalist movement that led the offensive. It is not very clear what they are guarding, because only documents blackened by the fire and discarded furniture remain.
They have arrived from Idlib, the rebel province from which the lightning offensive that ended the Assad regime in just a week and a half began. And, aware of the concern it generates in the Christian neighborhood where they are and that the world will look at them with a magnifying glass, these first days they are quick to say that it was civilians who set the fire motu proprio the documents from the police station, due to accumulated anger against the regime. Not the rebel troops that entered the city.
Meanwhile, several countries are trying to establish their area of influence in the new Syria. On the one hand, the United States is working with its allies in the Middle East to “destroy the chemical weapons of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad” and prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, according to explanations given by a senior US official to the press, according to Reuters. That same source has explained that, in recent days, Joe Biden’s Government has made efforts to monitor the Syrian chemical arsenal with the aim of preventing possible use by terrorist groups or armed factions. And he has indicated that the US intelligence services have located that inventory of weapons and believe that it will remain safe. “We are taking very prudent measures. “We do everything possible to ensure that these materials are not available to anyone and remain protected,” he stated.
From Moscow, Russian authorities have warned that they will give a “tough response” if their military bases located in Syria are attacked, according to a senior Russian official told the Interfax agency. Israel maintains military deployments on the Syrian ground, although its Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, explained at a press conference this Monday that it is a “limited and temporary” measure intended to guarantee Israel’s security during the confusion that followed the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
For its part, the Government of Turkey, which has perhaps been the main military and financial support of part of the rebels, has expressed its intention that the Syrian immigrants it welcomes return safely to their country. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hakan Fidan. The Turkish minister included two rival organizations, such as the Islamic State (ISIS) and the militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in the same group, pointing out that neither of them should benefit of the current situation.
At least 11 members of the same family, including six children, died this Monday in an attack with a drone launched by Turkey against a house on the outskirts of the city of Ain Isa, in northern Syria, controlled by the Syrian Kurdish , an NGO has reported.
