Leila Molana-Allen:
So, this is a big question, of course, because what’s happened is, this incredible rebel sweep through the country, but they don’t have that much manpower.
Part of why they were so successful is because essentially the Syrian regime forces laid down their weapons. Many of them were conscripts who didn’t want to fight in the first place and couldn’t stand up against these rebels. But they swept down.
They don’t have enough manpower right now to run the whole country, to man the whole country. So they’re going to have to make decisions pretty quickly about whether they’re going to bring other groups on board, potentially bring former soldiers on board, potentially work with the Kurds in the northeast.
We are starting to see a little bit more organization. When we came through the border from Lebanon a week ago, there wasn’t a soul on the Syrian side. HTS has now said that, from tomorrow morning, all the borders with Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon will be closed on the Syrian side until they have managed to make some sort of organization to have visa stamps again, to have people Manning those borders.
We’re also starting to see more checkpoints popping up now, where people are searching cars. These fighters are allowing people through quite freely, but they are checking who is traveling. And one of the reasons, of course, is that they’re trying to apprehend people from the Assad regime’s time who are responsible for crimes against the Syrian people.
And that question of justice is going to come in pretty soon. How will justice be administered? We have seen a couple of administrators from the regime tackled and dragged through the streets with violent treatment.
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham saying, we don’t want that, we want proper justice here.
And just a few little concerns starting to pop up about this liberalization agenda, people not sure if it’s really true, some women starting to report problems, some female judges saying they have been told by fighters they won’t be allowed to keep serving.
Now, that could be individual fighters, but pretty soon the commander of HTS, Ahmed al-Shar’a, who has renamed himself from his former jihadi name, is going to have to make some decisions about how he’s going to institute discipline among these fighters if they’re going to properly organize the country.
