As Canadian government celebrated Assad's overthrow in Syria, GAC officials cautioned about what comes next
Documents obtained through ATIP reveal officials' concerns about Tahrar al-Sham's history as an al-Qaeda offshoot and "significant skepticism" of their rebranding efforts.
On Dec. 8, Syrian opposition forces conquered Damascus, bringing an end to the rule of Bashar al-Assad and his family dynasty, which had ruled the country for more than half a century.
“A new chapter for Syria can begin here — one free of terrorism and suffering for the Syrian people,” Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau tweeted.
In a statement the same day, Global Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly described Assad’s overthrow as an opportunity “to rebuild a Syria where all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, religion or background, can live with dignity.”
Absent from Trudeau or Joly’s remarks was any mention of the group that had removed Assad from power: Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda offshoot that remains listed as a terrorist entity not only by Canada, but by the United Nations.
Internal Global Affairs Canada (GAC) documents The Orchard obtained through access to information reveal that, as HTS was in the process of conquering Syria, the head of GAC’s Syria Office repeatedly cautioned about the potential impact of an HTS-led government on Syria’s minority communities, given the group’s history of extremism.
The documents, which consist entirely of emails, include a draft of Joly’s Dec. 8 statement, with sections that weren’t included in her final remarks redacted.
According to Public Safety Canada, which listed HTS as a terrorist organization in 2013, HTS has been involved in more than 600 attacks, including “ambushes, kidnappings, assassinations, Improvised Explosive Device attacks and suicide bombings – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr.”
Beginning on Nov. 29, when HTS and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) entered Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, Rasta Daei of GAC’s Syria Office wrote a series of emails to the director general of GAC’s Middle East Office and the associate deputy minister for Europe, Arctic, Middle East and Maghreb, as well as consular officials in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Qatar and Israel, to update them on the Syrian situation.
“HTS-linked entities in recent days have been emphasizing freedom, human rights and their respect for religious pluralism,” Daei, who is based in Beirut, Lebanon, after Canada closed its Syrian embassy in Damascus in 2012, wrote on Dec. 4, as HTS and the SNA were in the process of conquering Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city.
“The proof will come in coming weeks and months and significant skepticism is warranted [emphasis added].”
These concerns were echoed months later by Canada’s special envoy to Syria, Omar Alghabra. After he and Minister Joly met with HTS officials in Paris, Alghabra warned about “darker forces” being emboldened in Syria.
“All I can tell you is I’m hearing a lot of the right things. A lot of the right vision, the commitment to having an inclusive, civil society-based Syria,” said Alghabra, a former Liberal MP who is Syrian-Canadian. “Having said that, we need to hold this government accountable.”
Marie-Joëlle Zahar, a political scientist at the Université du Québec à Montréal who is an expert in intrastate violence in the Middle East, told The Orchard that GAC officials were responding to a fluid situation on the ground.
“As it was moving towards Damascus, there was more information that started filtering in, including from people on the ground, activists, statements by HTS leaders when they actually arrived in Damascus and when the regime fell, which I think warranted a re-evaluation,” Zahar explained, adding that HTS engaged didn’t target civilians during its rapid offensive.
“This is not the Taliban coming back to Afghanistan.”
The Canadian government, Zahar added, is taking a cautious approach towards lifting HTS’s terrorist designation “to give them a chance to prove by their actions whether they had changed or not,” which she agrees is prudent.
“This is not the Taliban coming back to Afghanistan to put all the women back in their homes and prevent them from having any kind of opportunities,” said Zahar.
In a Dec. 2 email, Daei notes that there Syrians have “two separate concerns” about the potential fall of Assad.
“The obvious one is the uncertainty. The Syrian state has been hollowed out and it is broke. State institutions are weak and corruption is endemic,” he wrote.
“The other source of anxiety concerns HTS and its allies. [Redaction] HTS has cleverly said all the right things: it is a movement inclusive of Syria’s varied confessions.”
While nearly three-quarters of Syria’s population is Sunni Muslim, including a significant Kurdish minority, 10% of the population is Christian and 13% percent follows other sects of Islam, chief among them the Alawites.
On Nov. 30, the day HTS conquered Aleppo, Daei wrote that “Syrians are happy about Assad’s weakening, and there are many grievances from all sides.”
“Aleppo is home to many minorities, Kurdish, Assyrian, Alawite and a large Armenian community. Whether they can find better outcomes for themselves remains to be seen,” he wrote, adding that “HTS made a specific point to declare its intent to welcome and protect the city’s Christian community.”
The Assad family, which is Alawite, presented itself as the guardian of Syria’s religious minorities, depicting any opposition to its rule as an expression of the Salafi jihadism represented by HTS.
In 2011, as part of the broader Arab Spring protest movement which toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, Syrians began protesting the Assad government.
But, as was the case in Libya, the Syrian uprising soon became militarized, with outside powers, including the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, among others, arming and funding their preferred rebel groups.
“Part of that fragmentation is a direct consequence of the way in which the regime had managed to control its society,” explained Zahar. “This was a society which was completely atomized.”
Meanwhile, Assad received support from Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia.
The ensuing civil war killed 617,910 people. Of 507,567 people whose identities are verified, about a third are civilians, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In a Dec. 8 email, written after HTS conquered Damascus, Daei described Assad as a “savage dictator,” but expressed concern that “weapons stashes and depots are littered throughout the country and are in the possession of various groups.”
He noted a “weakness and blind spot,” but what he is referring to is redacted.
Earlier this month, forces loyal to Assad attempted to launch an insurgency against the HTS regime. In response, HTS loyalists launched a series of revenge killings against Alawites in Syria’s western and central provinces.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, this vengeance campaign killed 1,200 civilians, including entire families, in the Latakia, Tatous, Hama and Homs provinces.
In a video obtained by CNN, a masked fighter in Sanobar, Latakia boasted that he was committing “ethnic cleansing.”
Zahar cautioned that while it’s clear Alawites were massacred, the sectarian affiliations of those who participated in the massacres is not entirely clear, with “contrasting descriptions of what happened” percolating on social media.
“HTS do not have effective control over the entire country. There are other groups there, not all of whom have benevolent intentions,” she added.
On March 9, Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as an opposition fighter, announced an investigation into the killings. The depth of Sharaa’s commitment to holding the perpetrators accountable, Zahar noted, “still has to be proven.”
The next day, Sharaa signed an agreement to integrate the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which controls northeast Syria, into the Syrian state.
On March 13, Sharaa unveiled an interim Syrian constitution, which the U.S.-backed SDF’s political wing criticized, saying it “reproduced authoritarianism in a new form”and “contradicts the reality of Syria and its diversity.”
Zahar agreed that the interim constitution has “indications of areas of potential concern,” namely its lack of explicit protections for specific minority groups, but noted that the constitution was drafted prior to the Kurds being brought into the fold, emphasizing that “it's not the final word on the matter.”
“It is one thing to say that you want to fight against the dictator, but it's another to agree on what should come and replace it, and that's part of what is playing out currently,” she explained.
After Assad fell, Daei wrote to his GAC colleagues that “the country now needs a Moses to lead the way and a Mandela to heal its wounds.”
You can read the GAC documents below.
An interesting probe into what is happening in Syria....after years of a war I never really understood. What seems to be missing however, is the recent news of Israeli bombings in Syria....and efforts to perhaps appropriate some Syrian territory. What's going on on that front?
Since anything the current Israeli government gets up to seems to have American support, I'm a bit curious to what extent the entire Syrian debacle has underground fibrous connections to American foreign policy.........and the constant need America seems to have to 'weaken' Russian influence in the world.
I admit to total confusion about the Syrian tragedy.......but where are they getting their weapons...and who in the west continues to support efforts at a peaceful solution??