DAMASCUS: Syria’s prime minister said Monday that most cabinet ministers were still at work after militants overthrew President Bashar Assad, but some state workers failed to return to their jobs, and a United Nations official said the country’s public sector had come “to a complete and abrupt halt.”
Meanwhile, streams of refugees crossed back into Syria from neighboring countries, hoping for a more peaceful future and looking for friends and relatives who disappeared during Assad’s brutal rule.
There were already signs of the difficulties ahead for the alliance now in control of much of the country. The alliance is led by a former senior Al-Qaeda militant who severed ties with the extremist group years ago and has promised representative government and religious tolerance.
The militant command said Monday they would not tell women how to dress.
“It is strictly forbidden to interfere with women’s dress or impose any request related to their clothing or appearance, including requests for modesty,” the command said in a statement on social media.
Nearly two days after militants entered the capital, some key government services had shut down after state workers ignored calls to go back to their jobs, a UN official said, causing issues at airports and borders and slowing the flow of humanitarian aid.
Israel said it carried out airstrikes on suspected chemical weapons sites and long-range rockets to keep them from falling into the hands of extremists. Israel also seized a buffer zone inside Syria after Syrian troops withdrew.
In northern Syria, Turkiye said allied opposition forces seized the town of Manbij from Kurdish-led forces backed by the United States, a reminder that even after Assad’s departure, the country remains split among armed groups that have fought in the past.
The Kremlin said Russia has granted political asylum to Assad, a decision made by President Vladimir Putin. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Assad’s specific whereabouts and said Putin did not plan to meet with him.
Damascus was quiet Monday, with life slowly returning to normal while most shops and public institutions were closed. In public squares, some people were still celebrating. Civilian traffic resumed, but there was no public transport. Long lines formed in front of bakeries and other food stores.
There was little sign of any security presence, and Associated Press reporters saw a few SUVs on the side of a main boulevard that appeared to have been broken into.
In some areas, small groups of armed men were stationed in the streets. A video circulating online showed a man in military fatigues holding a rifle attempting to reassure residents of the Mezzeh neighborhood in Damascus that they would not be harmed.
“We have nothing against you, neither Alawite, nor Christian, nor Shiite, nor Druze, but everyone must behave well, and no one should try to attack us,” the fighter said.
In southern Turkiye, hundreds of Syrian refugees gathered Monday at two border crossings, hoping to return home.
Mustafa Sultan, at the Oncupinar crossing, said he was searching for his older brother who was imprisoned under Assad’s rule.
“I haven’t seen him for 13 years,” he said. “The prisons have been emptied so I am going to go see whether he’s alive.”
Prime minister says the government is still operational
Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, who remained in his post after Assad and most of his top officials vanished over the weekend, has sought to project normalcy.
“We are working so that the transitional period is quick and smooth,” he told Sky News Arabia TV on Monday, saying the security situation had already improved from the day before.
He said the government is coordinating with the insurgents, and that he is ready to meet insurgent leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, who made a triumphal appearance Sunday at a famed Damascus mosque.
Syrians who only days ago were working at all levels of the bureaucracy in Assad’s government were adjusting to the new reality.
At the court of Justice in Damascus, which was stormed by the militants to free detainees, Judge Khitam Haddad, an aide to the justice minister in the outgoing government, said Sunday that judges were ready to resume work quickly.
“We want to give everyone their rights,” Haddad said outside the courthouse. “We want to build a new Syria and to keep the work, but with new methods.”
But a UN official said some government services had been paralyzed as worried state employees stayed home.
The public sector “has just come to a complete and abrupt halt,” said UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria Adam Abdelmoula, noting, for example, that an aid flight carrying urgently needed medical supplies had been put on hold after aviation employees abandoned their jobs.
“This is a country that has had one government for 53 years and then suddenly all of those who have been demonized by the public media are now in charge in the nation’s capital,” Abdelmoula told the AP.
Separately, a Syrian opposition war monitor said a top aide to Assad’s brother, Maher, was found dead in his office near Damascus. A video that circulated on social media purportedly showed Maj. Gen. Ali Mahmoud covered with blood and with his clothes burned. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not clear if he was killed or died by suicide.
Maher Assad led the army’s 4th Armored Division, which played a major role in the civil war that erupted in 2011 after a popular uprising against Assad led to a violent crackdown on dissent and the rise of an insurgency.
Syrian PM says government is still functioning, UN official says public sector came to a halt
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Syrian PM says government is still functioning, UN official says public sector came to a halt
- Streams of refugees crossed back into Syria from neighboring countries, hoping for a more peaceful future and looking for friends and relatives
Israel says it will maintain control of Gaza-Egypt crossing
Israel also will approve the movement of all people and goods
RAFAH: Israel said it will maintain control of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip during the first phase of the ceasefire with Hamas.
A statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Wednesday denied reports that the Palestinian Authority would control the crossing.
The truce, now in its fourth day, is supposed to bring calm to the war-battered Gaza for at least six weeks and see 33 Hamas-held hostages released in return for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The statement said European Union monitors would supervise the crossing, which will be surrounded by Israeli troops. Israel also will approve the movement of all people and goods.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Around 100 hostages still remain in Gaza, after the rest were released, rescued, or their bodies were recovered.
Israel’s military campaign has killed over 47,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health authorities, who say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities but do not say how many of the dead were fighters. Israel says it killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Algeria and US sign MoU on military cooperation, Algeria defense ministry says
- Defense ministry said the MoU focuses on military cooperation
ALGIERS: Algeria signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States on Wednesday that focuses on military cooperation, its defense ministry said in a statement.
The MoU was signed during a meeting between Deputy Defense Minister Said Chengriha and Michael Langley, commander of the US Africa Command, the ministry added.
WEF panel stresses correlation between environmental degradation and security
DUBAI: “Safeguarding Nature, Securing People” was the title of a panel gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday which discussed the connected issues of environmental degradation and security.
The discussion also highlighted the impact of land degradation, droughts, and extreme weather events on human and national security.
Ibrahim Thiaw, undersecretary-general of the UN and executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, moderated the session and opened by saying that in many countries, security concerns were focused on “national security, armed forces and intelligence services, but we know that the environment is also affecting us deeply.”
Ilwad Elman, chief operating officer of the Elman Peace Centre, said that only recently had we “begun to draw the strong correlation and the intersection of the two crises of human security and (that) caused by environmental stressors and environmental aggregation” and added: “In Somalia, “we find ourselves right at the nexus of that.”
She added that food and water insecurity posed not only environmental challenges but also had a “direct linkage to the desperation that yields young people particularly to be motivated to join armed groups” — not because they agreed with the ideology, but “to be able to survive.”
Elman explained the Elman Peace Centre works on “sustainable peace building” and “the rehabilitation and reintegration of young people.”
It focuses on climate resilience even though that is not its main mandate because “the environments we’re sending people back to are changing so rapidly our peace building interventions were not sustainable,” she said.
Such crises are not only limited to developing countries. Ukraine, which supplies food to 400 million people globally, was unable to do so due to the war, according to the country’s Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Vitalii Koval.
Some 60 percent of Ukraine’s income comes from agrarian food exports, which has been drastically impacted. This, combined with the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, has had disastrous consequences for the country, he said.
Koval added: “It is very important that the world community should elaborate new mechanisms to respond, and these mechanisms need to be immediate — not tomorrow, not sometime in the future, (but) today.”
Conflicts undoubtedly exacerbate environmental stressors, but the opposite is also true.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir said: “Land degradation leads to conflicts, leads to violence, leads to extremism, leads to terrorism, leads to migration, leads to political instability, and leads to all of us paying an extremely high price to deal with the consequences of an issue that, had we paid attention to at the outset, would have cost us a fraction of the resources.”
The link between environmental degradation and security was “very clear, but we have not been paying sufficient attention to it,” he added.
Both Al-Jubeir and Elman said environmental and land degradation were not issues limited to desert or developing countries.
They pointed out the wildfires in California and the impact of such issues on declining water levels on Germany’s Rhine river and the Panama Canal. Drought has meant lower water levels, which means fewer ships can pass through, resulting in delays and increased shipping costs.
Elman also highlighted how the “discourse of climate change has only recently shifted from a very Global North perspective, overlooking the lived realities, the indigenous best practices and solutions from communities on the ground. Resources are distributed in a way that is, I would say, still very imperialistic.”
For example, Elman addressed a meeting of the UN Security Council on the effects of climate change on international peace and security in 2021. The resolution, put forth by Ireland and Niger, was vetoed despite 111 member states being in favor of it.
And so, she said, there was a need for “spaces that are able to move the agenda forward and recognize it as a security threat of global impact, and if the Security Council is not the place for that, other avenues need to be explored.”
Al-Jubeir responded: “If it’s not efficient enough, you do it unilaterally.”
Multilateralism was great for talks, he added, but “if those talks do not lead to concrete results, there should be nothing in the way of preventing countries who have the means to engage with other countries directly and put in place mechanisms that actually work.”
As an example, he said Saudi Arabia launched the Middle East Green Initiative that brought together over 22 countries in the region to help them adopt a circular carbon economy, along with other funding and knowledge-sharing programs that ensured a comprehensive approach.
Houthis announce the release of the Galaxy Leader ship's crew, transferring them to Oman
DUBAI: Yemen's Houthi rebels said Wednesday they released the crew of the Galaxy Leader, a ship they seized in November 2023 at the start of their campaign in the Red Sea corridor.
The rebels said they released the sailors after mediation by Oman.
The crew of 25 included mariners from the Philippines, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and Mexico.
The Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they hijacked the ship over its connection to Israel. They then had a campaign targeting ships in international waters, which only stopped with the recent ceasefire in Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Why is Israel launching a crackdown in the West Bank after the Gaza ceasefire?
- Prominent human rights groups call it a form of apartheid since the over 500,000 Jewish settlers in the territory have all the rights conferred by Israeli citizenship
In the days since a fragile ceasefire took hold in the Gaza Strip, Israel has launched a major military operation in the occupied West Bank and suspected Jewish settlers have rampaged through two Palestinian towns.
The violence comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces domestic pressure from his far-right allies after agreeing to the truce and hostage-prisoner exchange with the Hamas militant group. US President Donald Trump has, meanwhile, rescinded the Biden administration’s sanctions against Israelis accused of violence in the territory.
It’s a volatile mix that could undermine the ceasefire, which is set to last for at least six weeks and bring about the release of dozens of hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, most of whom will be released into the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Escalations in one area frequently spill over, raising further concerns that the second and far more difficult phase of the Gaza ceasefire — which has yet to be negotiated — may never come.
A rampage and a military raid
Dozens of masked men rampaged through two Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank late Monday, hurling stones and setting cars and property ablaze, according to local Palestinian officials. The Red Crescent emergency service said 12 people were beaten and wounded.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, carried out a raid elsewhere in the West Bank that the military said was in response to the hurling of firebombs at Israeli vehicles. It said several suspects were detained for questioning, and a video circulating online appeared to show dozens being marched through the streets.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military launched another major operation, this time in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, where its forces have regularly clashed with Palestinian militants in recent years, even before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the war there.
At least nine Palestinians were killed on Tuesday, including a 16-year-old, and 40 were wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The military said its forces carried out airstrikes and dismantled roadside bombs and “hit” 10 militants — though it was not clear what that meant.
Palestinian residents have reported a major increase in Israeli checkpoints and delays across the territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz cast the Jenin operation as part of Israel’s larger struggle against Iran and its militant allies across the region, saying “we will strike the octopus’ arms until they snap.”
The Palestinians view such operations and the expansion of settlements as ways of cementing Israeli control over the territory, where 3 million Palestinians live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering cities and towns.
Prominent human rights groups call it a form of apartheid since the over 500,000 Jewish settlers in the territory have all the rights conferred by Israeli citizenship. Israel rejects those allegations.
Netanyahu’s far-right partners are up in arms
Netanyahu has been struggling to quell a rebellion by his ultranationalist coalition partners since agreeing to the ceasefire. The agreement requires Israeli forces to withdraw from most of Gaza and release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners — including militants convicted of murder — in exchange for hostages abducted in the Oct. 7 attack.
One coalition partner, Itamar Ben-Gvir, resigned in protest the day the ceasefire went into effect. Another, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has threatened to bolt if Israel does not resume the war after the first phase of the ceasefire is slated to end in early March.
They want Israel to annex the West Bank and to rebuild settlements in Gaza while encouraging what they refer to as the voluntary migration of large numbers of Palestinians.
Netanyahu still has a parliamentary majority after Ben-Gvir’s departure, but the loss of Smotrich — who is also the de facto governor of the West Bank — would severely weaken his coalition and likely lead to early elections.
That could spell the end of Netanyahu’s nearly unbroken 16 years in power, leaving him even more exposed to longstanding corruption charges and an expected public inquiry into Israel’s failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack.
Trump’s return could give settlers a freer hand
Trump’s return to the White House offers Netanyahu a potential lifeline.
The newly sworn-in president, who lent unprecedented support to Israel during his previous term, has surrounded himself with aides who support Israeli settlement. Some support the settlers’ claim to a biblical right to the West Bank because of the Jewish kingdoms that existed there in antiquity.
The international community overwhelmingly considers settlements illegal.
Among the flurry of executive orders Trump signed on his first day back in office was one rescinding the Biden administration’s sanctions on settlers and Jewish extremists accused of violence against Palestinians.
The sanctions — which had little effect — were one of the few concrete steps the Biden administration took in opposition to the close US ally, even as it provided billions of dollars in military support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza, among the deadliest and most destructive in decades.
Trump claimed credit for helping to get the Gaza ceasefire agreement across the finish line in the final days of the Biden presidency.
But this week, Trump said he was “not confident” it would hold and signaled he would give Israel a free hand in Gaza, saying: “It’s not our war, it’s their war.”
