[ad_1]
The frames that held Bashar al-Assad’s portraits on the partitions of the Damascus governorate constructing at the moment are naked. As an alternative, the photographs function doormats for guests and workers to trample as they stroll in — a reminder that they’re in a brand new Syria.
Shattered glass, damaged furnishings and a crumpled flag littered the ground, a reminder of the insurgent teams’ lightning rise to energy. However upstairs, directors picked by the previous insurgents had been already at work untangling the mechanics and serpentine forms of the Assad regime’s Ba’athist state.
On Tuesday they gathered about 30 heads of division in an ornate room, in a gathering witnessed by the Monetary Occasions, whose focus was an imminent cull of ineffective staffers within the native authorities.
Officers concerned within the transition have promised to create a brand new, unified Syria, reconciling the rebel-held authorities within the northwestern province of Idlib, generally known as the Syrian Salvation Authorities, with the capital they rebelled towards for 13 years.
However the roots of the main insurgent group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, as a Sunni Islamist former affiliate of al-Qaeda have led to deep worries amongst some minorities about how they plan to manipulate this broadly secular state after toppling the Assad regime three days in the past.
“It’s all going to turn out to be one. All the federal government our bodies shall be dissolved: no Salvation Authorities, no factions, nothing,” mentioned Mohammad Yasser Ghazal, a 36-year-old technocrat within the insurgent authorities seconded from his job to assist reconfigure the Damascus governorate. “It can all quickly be dissolved into one Syrian republic.”
Ghazal and his colleagues displayed a powerful command of the state equipment they inherited simply hours earlier, and hinted that HTS’ plans to overtake it had lengthy been within the works. However the activity they face is formidable. Syria’s dysfunctional state establishments turned engorged by corruption, cronyism and centralised energy over 5 a long time of rule by the Assad dynasty.
In his lilting Aleppan accent, Ghazal requested the division chiefs to record their remits and clarify their departments’ capabilities. The 2-hour assembly showcased how Assad’s authorities was “stopped in time”, he later instructed the FT in an interview.
Staff quoted authorities handbooks from the Nineteen Thirties and Sixties, and had been unable to reply direct questions on their duties, nor clarify why selections had been made. “The issues piled up, they usually allow them to be,” he mentioned. “They don’t see themselves as accountable.”
One man launched himself as the pinnacle of the general public relations division, which he mentioned included “worldwide co-operation” in addition to a division for “pageant and occasions administration”. Requested what this division did precisely, the civil servant answered, “flags”.
“There’s a division for flags?” Ghazal requested incredulously.
“Sure, when overseas dignitaries come, we put up lots of flags,” he mentioned. “We grasp them from the poles. It’s a giant job.”
The identical division head additionally had a translation division, staffed by two workers who spoke English. Ghazal requested if there have been Russian or Iranian translators — states that propped up the Assad regime and ceaselessly despatched envoys — and was instructed there have been none as a result of representatives of those international locations introduced their very own.
“However you didn’t have English-speaking dignitaries go to?”
“No,” the division head mentioned.
Ghazal shook his head. “A ridiculous state,” he mentioned.
Ghazal will ultimately tackle most of the duties of the governor in a newly created place of metropolis council president. Raised within the United Arab Emirates, Ghazal, who pointed to his lengthy beard as a mirrored image of his religious spiritual religion, left his civil engineering profession in Saudi Arabia in 2014 to relocate to Idlib, which was within the throes of civil battle. The urbane former engineer ultimately helped arrange the Syrian Salvation Authorities 4 years later.
He met the division chiefs in a room formed like an auditorium — appropriate for the earlier regime’s type, wherein one individual had the microphone and issued directives to be unquestioningly obeyed. The gilded corridor featured the names of ex-governors going again 60 years, a reminder of the compact the earlier regime held with loyalists: put within the work, and we’ll glorify you.
Civil servants had been ordered again to work this week, because the SSG’s Mohamed al-Bashir was named prime minister of Syria’s new interim authorities for the subsequent 4 months. Its future form is being negotiated in ministries throughout Damascus, after rebel-affiliated technocrats like Ghazal descended on town.
On Tuesday night, Bashir convened a gathering of SSG ministers with these of the deposed regime to start the method of transferring energy to the brand new caretaker authorities that shall be in place till March. Draped behind him had been the brand new Syrian flag and that of HTS.
Damascus’s provincial authorities has an enormous remit, starting from approval of barbers’ licenses to beautification to housing, building, tourism and electrical energy. The day’s duties included understanding the extent of the corruption embedded on this native authorities equipment, together with hunting down phantom jobs with no goal aside from to extract state salaries.
Ghazal described “organised corruption” and rampant bribery in authorities circles, the results of “crumbs” meted out to authorities workers whose common wage had been lowered to the equal of $25 per 30 days, a results of the crippling financial disaster that has gripped the nation since 2019. The bloated and ineffective state was key to the regime’s undoing, after its rapacious methods unfold discontent throughout Syria.
On the assembly, one other man launched his Reconstruction and Rehabilitation division: arrange in 2012 to rebuild areas destroyed within the civil battle, it — like others — waited over a decade for long-promised funds that by no means got here. Ghazal jotted down the data, muttering “fictional” out loud, in English.
The ambiance within the room was charged, however individuals felt snug sufficient to air their grievances. One girl screamed about discrimination she skilled below the earlier management for being a Christian, accusing the state of creating her pay $25,000 in bribes. One other girl accused her of mendacity.
Ghazal politely requested them to convey these points to him later, however allow them to stick with it. He addressed workers with “excuse me” and “when you please” — a respectful tone virtually by no means struck by males in his seat.
However previous habits die arduous: workers referred obliquely to the “disaster” and “the occasions” — regime euphemisms for the battle that had decimated their nation for a lot of the previous 20 years. “Which disaster?” Ghazal requested, earlier than realising that they had meant the uprisings and battle to which he had given his life for the previous decade.
Ghazal spoke of the brand new authorities’s aversion to the previous regime’s atavistic procedures. In Idlib, a long-neglected nook of the nation that was absolutely reduce off after rebels took it over early within the battle, every part is digitised and you may get an ID in 5 minutes, he mentioned. In Damascus, it might take months, and often wants a bribe.
It took quarter-hour for Monetary Occasions journalists to obtain their media accreditation from the lately arrived authorities — unimaginable within the Kafkaesque previous regime, which had not awarded Western journalists permits to enter the nation in years.
A technocratic authorities is being put in place for now, Ghazal instructed the FT, however shifting ahead with its plans will “require political recognition [and addressing] the terrorist designation, which I feel is quickly”.
HTS, an Islamist group previously affiliated with al-Qaeda, is branded a terrorist organisation by the UN, the US and different states. Its chief, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has a $10mn US bounty on his head.
He reduce ties with al-Qaeda in 2016 and has sought to rebrand the group as a extra average government-in-waiting. However it maintained management in Idlib with an iron grip, and UN businesses have documented abuses.
On Tuesday, outgoing US secretary of state Antony Blinken mentioned Syria’s “transition course of ought to result in credible, inclusive, and nonsectarian governance”.
Ghazal insisted his state wouldn’t take authorities employees’ sectarian affiliations into consideration, solely the worth of the work that every brings.
“You noticed how the [Assad] regime raised them: they name us Sidi [‘my master,’]” he mentioned. “You’re feeling they’re damaged. [We just want them] to get out of that mindset. You’re an individual with self-dignity, I’m not your grasp or something. I’m an worker, such as you.”
[ad_2]