For years, Ahmed al-Shara was the leader of a rebel group once allied with Al Qaeda that was fighting the rule of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
After a rebel coalition led by his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, toppled Mr. al-Assad in December, Mr. al-Shara suddenly found himself president.
He faces a dizzying array of challenges as his country — which the Assad family ruled for five decades — undergoes a momentous period of transition.
He must rebuild a country destroyed by war and bankrupted by sanctions. He has to persuade the West he is a reliable partner despite his previous affiliations with Al Qaeda and navigate geopolitical tensions playing out on his territory between Turkey to the north and Israel to the south. And he needs to forge a new relationship with Russia, which was allied with Mr. al-Assad.
All of this involves navigating a far more complex geopolitical situation than he had as a rebel leader governing a tiny slice of Syrian territory. It also comes at a precarious moment of upheaval in the Middle East.
Mr. al-Shara sat down for an interview this month at the presidential palace in the capital, Damascus, to discuss the challenges his new government faces and his vision for Syria.
Here are some of key takeaways:
Courting Russia and Turkey
For decades, the main regional players — Israel, Iran and Turkey — and global powers like the United States and Russia have fought for influence in Syria. The country occupies a key geographical crossroads for the entire Middle East.
Mr. al-Shara said his government was currently negotiating with Turkey and Russia over their military presence in Syria and alluded to the possibility that both could provide military support to his government.
For Turkey, a longtime political ally of Mr. al-Shara’s rebel group, a military agreement with Syria’s new authorities could help extend its influence closer to Israel’s border, curtail the power of Kurdish armed groups in the north and keep Iran at bay.
Russia, which provided military backing to prop up the Assad government, has a strategic interest in keeping military bases it operates on Syrian soil.
Mr. al-Shara noted that Russia has provided arms to the Syrian military for decades and technical support for Syria’s power plants, implying that Syria may need Russia in the future.
“We must take these interests into consideration,” he said of the benefits for Syria.
In January, as part of the negotiations with the Kremlin, Mr. al-Shara’s government requested that Mr. al-Assad, who fled to Russia as his regime collapsed, be handed over. The Kremlin denied that request, Mr. al-Shara said — his first public acknowledgment of the Russian response.
An Appeal to the U.S.: Lift Your Sanctions
A key message from Mr. al-Shara is directed at the United States: Lift your sanctions on Syria.
During Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, the United States, Britain and the European Union all imposed tough sanctions on the Assad government. Mr. al-Shara and the rebel group he led are still subject to sanctions imposed by the United Nations. And the United States still designates the group as a terrorist organization.
Since Mr. al-Shara seized power, Europe and the United States have temporarily eased some sanctions on Syria. But Mr. al-Shara will need much more relief if he is to rebuild the country’s shattered economy.
In the interview, Mr. al-Shara said the sanctions needed to be permanently lifted because they were imposed on the Assad regime, which is no longer in power. Those penalties were hobbling his government, he said, and its ability to kick start the economy.
“The sanctions were implemented as a response to crimes committed by the previous regime against the people,” he said.
Last month, American officials listed eight demands for lifting sanctions, including the destruction of chemical weapons stores and cooperation on counterterrorism efforts, according to two officials with knowledge of the issue.
Mr. al-Shara said that some of the American conditions “need to be discussed or modified” but declined to go into further detail.
Foreign Fighters May Be an Issue
One sticking point in ongoing negotiations about sanctions is the fate of the thousands of foreign fighters who helped Mr. al-Shara topple the Assad regime. Some have been appointed to positions in the new rebel-led government.
Western officials have pushed for Mr. al-Shara to remove those fighters — who tend to hold more extremist views than the Syrian president’s group — from government positions as a condition for badly needed sanctions relief.
But Mr. al-Shara needs to balance that demand with the need to appease the fighters to keep them from taking up arms against his rule or carrying out revenge killings across the country.
In the interview, Mr. al-Shara suggested that his government would consider giving Syrian citizenship to foreign fighters who lived in the country for many years and “who have stuck beside the revolution.”
That offer could stoke fears among Western countries about Syria becoming a haven for extremists, experts say. Mr. al-Shara has sought to assuage those concerns, pledging to prevent Syrian land from being used to threaten any foreign country.
Christina Goldbaum is the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for The Times, leading the coverage of the region.
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