The United States has been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad a week ago, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Saturday.
His remarks were the first official confirmation that Washington is communicating with a group that it designated a terrorist organization several years ago but whose behavior Washington hopes to influence now that the group controls Syria’s interim government.
“We’ve been in contact with H.T.S. and with other parties” in Syria, Mr. Blinken said, referring to the rebel group, after a meeting with Arab ministers in Aqaba, Jordan, to discuss how to assist Syria’s political transition.
He said that the United States had communicated a set of governing principles that it is urging Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to adopt, including respect for human rights and rejecting extremism. The United States has also stressed the importance of finding and returning Austin Tice, a freelance American journalist kidnapped in Syria seven years ago.
Mr. Blinken spoke at the end of a three-nation tour through the region, scheduled hastily in response to the sudden change of power in Syria. The trip, which also featured stops in Ankara, the Turkish capital, and Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, ended with the meeting in Aqaba.
The abrupt demise of the Assad government in Syria has prompted celebrations but also uncertainty over how the new interim administration there can manage a transition in a country shattered by 13 years of civil war and decades of repression.
“We’ve seen how the fall of a repressive regime can swiftly give way to more conflict and chaos, how the shoes of one dictator can be filled by another,” Mr. Blinken warned. “Or how interference by an outside country can be thrown off, only to be replaced by another.”
Syria’s power shift is another upheaval in a region reeling since the attack by Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which set off war that has gone on for more than a year. The events in Syria have set in motion a realignment with implications for Turkey, Israel, Iran, Lebanon and the Russian government, which has given refuge to Mr. al-Assad and was a stalwart ally of his.
Mr. Blinken met in Aqaba with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt, as well as the caretaker prime minister of Lebanon and secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, according to a statement by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry. Turkey, the United Nations and the European Union also participated, but representatives of Syria’s new leadership did not attend.
The conference participants issued a joint statement after their meeting, saying that Syria “finally has the chance to end decades of isolation.”
They called for an inclusive and nonsectarian government that respects the rights of women and minorities, does not harbor terrorists and does not threaten its neighbors. The group also urged the free movement of returning refugees, the protection of foreign diplomatic personnel and the destruction of any remaining chemical weapons.
A senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said that Biden administration officials had opened two separate communication channels for the discussions with the newly empowered Syria rebels. The first was established shortly after Mr. Assad fled the country for Russia on Sunday, the other more recently as part of the search for Mr. Tice, who is believed to be alive.
Having direct contact with a group classified as a terrorist entity is politically dicey for the Biden administration. But many U.S. officials say the Syrian rebel faction appears to have grown more moderate, and may be prepared to govern in line with American principles, though they add that it is too early to remove the formal terrorist designation.
“What really counts is action — and sustained action,” Mr. Blinken said.
For now, Biden officials believe communication can have an important influence over the group’s behavior.
An aide to Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, called Saturday on Syria’s new leaders to “overcome their tortured history” to create a unified and inclusive state, resistant to the meddling of outside powers.
Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the Emirati president, praised the moderate statements of Syria’s new leaders but expressed concern about the rebels’ past affiliations with radical Islam.
“These are all indicators that are quite worrying,” Mr. Gargash said on Saturday at a World Policy Conference in Abu Dhabi as his country’s foreign minister attended the meeting in Jordan.
He said he hoped that Iran, a staunch ally of Mr. al-Assad, which recently mended ties with the Arab nations of the Gulf, will now concentrate on domestic economic issues and “reasonable and rational concerns about its national security.” Iran, he said, should stop trying to insert itself into the Arab world with regional ambitions and military proxies and should learn lessons from its defeats.
“To come back and try to reincarnate a program of regional expansion based on militias, based on sectarianism, is not really in the good of the region or in the good of Iran itself,” he said.
In a sign that the Gulf States may play a greater role in Syria’s future than they have in its recent past, Mr. Gargash promised to support the country’s reconstruction.
Turkey is another country that appears to be emerging with greater influence in Syria, given its support of the offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Some Syrian rebel factions backed by Turkey joined forces with the group in the assault.
The Turkish government made plans this week to reopen its embassy in Damascus, Syria’s capital, which has been closed for almost 13 years. It also conducted military operations, including airstrikes, in northern Syria against Kurdish militants whom it considers a threat.
On Friday, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, issued a stark warning to members of the Kurdish militia that controls northeastern Syria, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.
“It is our strategic target to eliminate the YPG,” he said in an interview with the Turkish broadcaster NTV. He said any members who were not Syrian should leave the country as soon as possible, and added: “The entire command level of YPG should leave the country, too. The remaining ones should continue living as they lay down their weapons.”
The Kurdish-led forces in Syria have been important partners with the United States in the fight there against the Islamic State terrorist group.
The outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011 helped to fuel the rise of the Islamic State, which conquered large swaths of Syria and Iraq and took years to defeat. The potential that ISIS might try to take advantage of the power shift in Syria is a chief concern for U.S. and regional leaders.
“This is a moment of vulnerability in which ISIS will seek to regroup, taking advantage of the transition in Syria,” Mr. Blinken said in Aqaba.
Compounding that worry is the fact that Turkey has funded and trained a Syrian rebel force, the Syrian National Army, which provided security for Turkish military bases in northern Syria and helped it fight Kurdish-led forces in the country.
The commander of Syria’s largest Kurdish militia accused the United States this past week of abandoning its Kurdish allies in Syria.
In another ripple effect of the rebel takeover in Syria, Russian forces appeared on Friday to be packing up some military equipment at an important air base near the Syrian port city of Latakia in a possible prelude to a broader withdrawal.
The Hmeimim base is a critical part of Moscow’s military foothold in the region. But the upheaval in the country has left the prospects for a continuing Russian military presence in Syria unclear for now.
Israel has also seized an opportunity created by the collapse of the Assad dynasty, bombing weapons stores and other targets in Syria to eliminate what it says are potential threats and also seizing territory in the country near the disputed Golan Heights.
Syria on Friday condemned Israel’s attacks and called on the U.N. Security Council to compel the Israeli government to cease any further attacks.
Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Koussay Aldahhak, said the Security Council should “compel Israel to respect international law,” and not allow it to benefit from Syria’s transition.
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