DANIEL:

At the start of this year, Heidi Pett met with the newly declared Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa.

HEIDI:

I met him the day after he had declared himself interim president.

And so you know, he's taken up residence in the presidential palace. So they sent these two armoured cars to come and pick us up and take us through Damascus and up into the presidential palace.

It's all of the choreography of meeting any world leader. They take your phones and your electronics, the security screening, all that kind of stuff. But it was sort of striking right, because the presidential palace here in Damascus is enormous. It is bigger than the White House, but it was completely empty.

DANIEL:

The palace was empty because Ahmed al-Sharaa and his men had rolled into Damascus and taken over suddenly.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“Verified footage shows Syrian rebel tanks in one of Damascus’ central squares.”

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“Today, it is a coalition of rebel groups that are in charge in Damascus.”

DANIEL:

Just a few months before announcing himself president, Al-Sharaa had a $10 million bounty for his arrest.

Once a leader of the al-Nusra Front, and member of al-Qaeda in Iraq – he was an enemy of the United States.

HEIDI:

In person, I found it quite interesting actually because you would expect a man who has the background that he has as a fighter, as a man who has engaged in direct conflict with groups like ISIS and has managed to survive all of these shifting alliances there. To have a more physically imposing presence than I felt that he did. I found him quite, almost awkward. He sat there during the interview with his hands on both of his knees, almost like he was having his school portrait taken. All of a sudden he's in the presidential palace and he's expected to run a country. Yeah, it's a big job and a mantle that I don't feel that he is always wearing particularly comfortably.

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DANIEL:

Recently, Al-Sharaa had another meeting: with Donald Trump.

Trump praised him – and announced he would lift sanctions on Syria.

DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media. I’m Daniel James, this is 7am.

Today, Damascus-based correspondent Heidi Pett – on how al-Sharaa pulled that off – and what it means for the future of his country.

It’s Wednesday, May 28.

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DANIEL:

Heidi, when Donald Trump met Ahmed al-Sharaa earlier this month, he called him a “young, attractive guy”, a “tough guy” with a “strong past”.

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“I think very good, young, attractive guy, tough guy, you know, strong past, very strong past. Fighter.”

DANIEL:

What did you make of that description?

HEIDI:

Yeah, I mean, I thought that quote was really funny, right? It's a strong past. It's quite an interesting way for the US president to describe Sharaa. You know, this is a guy who, the US had a $10 million bounty on Sharaa’s head until very, very recently. And I think that just goes to show this incredible journey that Sharaa has gone on. You know, he was a real man of mystery for a long time. Not much was known about him.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“He was born in Saudi Arabia in 1982, after his family was forced to leave the Golan Heights.”

HEIDI:

What we do now is he grew up in a middle-class suburb, in a mid-class family in Damascus. His father was an economist. But he gradually started spending a lot more time in the mosque.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“By around 2000, he started to become radicalised.”

HEIDI:

And with some preachers who encouraged some of the people at that mosque to board these sort of famous buses that left Damascus for young men to go and fight in Iraq after the American invasion, and Sharaa got on one of those.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“He left Syria, joining al-Qaeda in Iraq. Which led to his subsequent arrest.”

HEIDI:

And he ended up detained in Iraq for some time. He was actually able to pose as a local in Iraq. He's noted for being able to speak Arabic with an Iraqi accent, which meant that he wasn't treated as harshly. If it had been known that he was a foreign fighter in Iraq, he would have had a much harder time of it. And I think this indicates how much of a kind of, you know, his ability to shape-shift to adapt.

You know, and then going on to navigate these shifting alliances and this conflict between al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, which he was the leader of. He has managed to really rise to the top and sort of pick off opponents along the way. And there's been this sort of questioning about him, about whether, whether the jihadi, you can become a politician.

But certainly. You know, my sense of him in that meeting and just in general is actually, you know, I think this man has been a politician all along. You know his ability to make and break alliances when it suits him is quite notable.

DANIEL:

Yeah, so when you meet him, he'd just taken over as president of Syria. So what did he say at the time about his vision for the country's future?

HEIDI:

Yeah, it was interesting, right, because there was at that time a lot of apprehension about what kind of rule we would see, whether there would be anything resembling democracy. And he did commit to that, but it was quite tempered. He said, in our region, there are various definitions of democracy.

But he really emphasised the need for time, that there will not be elections for several years. The country needs to be stabilised first. But you know, since that meeting, things have become a little more clear. So a draft constitution was issued in March and that's committed the country to this five year transitional period during which he will be the leader. A lot of measures were maintained from the old constitution, so Islamic law will be the main source of law. There's new things in there, guaranteeing freedom of opinion, expression, the press, rights for minorities and women, which all sounds really good. But the thing that is notable is quite a serious concentration of power in the hands of the president.

And so there is a great deal of concern about that from civil society here and from some international actors, about this concentration of power and whether... whether having exercised that power for five years, there will really be a democratic transition at the end of it.

DANIEL:

Now, he’s managed to secure a lifting of sanctions for Syria – with Trump saying the country has “a chance at greatness”. You've been living in Damascus since the fall of Assad. How would you describe the quality of life there for ordinary Syrians? And how do you think the announcement that sanctions will be lifted will change that?

HEIDI:

The economic situation for most Syrians is incredibly, incredibly dire. 90 per cent of people here are living under the poverty line. People can't afford fuel. People can barely afford food. Medicine is incredibly expensive. And so for a very long time now, it's been incredibly difficult to import anything into Syria. Including medicine, including medical equipment. And it's impacted the ability for any kind of international organisation to deliver humanitarian assistance, you know, smaller organisations that might take donations, you can't really legally send money to Syria at the moment. And so the impact of these sanctions on daily life for people here in Syria is really, really serious. And it's not just the kind of direct impact of these US sanctions either. When the regime fell and there was this need for funding and support to begin rebuilding this country. Countries like Qatar, they announced a very serious aid package, but that package of assistance was really delayed because the Qatari government was worried that even sending that money to Syria would mean that their own country fell foul of these U.S. Sanctions. So the kind of butterfly effect of the U.S. lifting these sanctions will be huge.

Audio excerpt – [Crowd celebrates]

HEIDI:

Speaking to people in Damascus in the last couple of days. There is a renewed sense of hope. Nobody expected this would happen so quickly.

DANIEL:

After the break – Can Ahmed al-Sharaa hold together a government, and country filled with unresolved tensions.

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DANIEL:

Heidi, the United States has a list of demands that Syria needs to adhere to in order for sanctions to be lifted. Things like Syria signing the Abraham Accords, to normalise relations with Israel, deporting quote Palestinian terrorists, helping the US prevent the resurgence of ISIS. And protecting religious minorities.

In March, nearly 900 Alawites civilians were killed in Syria. You went to these communities where these massacres took place. Can you tell me what happened?

HEIDI:

Yeah, the Alawites, they're one of the largest minority religious groups in Syria. It's an offshoot of Shia Islam. The Assad family were Alawites. And during the rule of the father and the son, they exploited and deepened these sectarian tensions within Syria. They promoted members of the Alawite sect to senior positions in the government and the military. So it bred a great deal of resentment. But they also deliberately kept the coastal regions, which is where many Alawites in Syria are from, they deliberately kept this region very poor and very underdeveloped so that it meant that They were actually very reliant on government jobs or military jobs because it was the only kind of viable career path for many people in these regions.

And since the fall of the regime, a lot of these former officers, they went back to their homes in the coastal villages and they've been kind of hiding out there because there have been sort of revenge attacks and things like that. Many of them know that justice is coming. They did horrible things, whether they were snipers during the siege of cities, whether they, you know, they flew the planes or helicopters that dropped barrel bombs on civilians, they know that trouble is coming for them.

And so in March, there was this sort of counterinsurgency led by what Syrians call the Falool, which is Arabic for kind of remnants, like remnants of the former regime. And so on one evening, there's a series of coordinated attacks across the coast where they ambushed members of the new security services and shot and killed many of them. And what we saw in response to that was this overwhelming show of force, you know, thousands of members of general security and the army were sent to the region, and you also just saw, you know, armed and motivated civilians basically showed up in the back of Hilux trucks with guns and participated in this sort of orgy of violence against Alawite civilians. Nearly a thousand civilians were killed across a couple of days.

Audio excerpt – Baniyas Survivor:

“They would ask people only one question, are you Alawite or Sunni? And they would shoot when they know you're Alawite.”

HEIDI:

You'd have armed groups kind of sweeping through these villages and knocking on doors and basically pulling all Alawite men out of their homes and shooting them in the street.

You know, a man from one of these towns, Baniyas, he sent me a voice note describing what had happened. Basically all the men in some apartment buildings being just taken up to the roof and shot.

Audio excerpt – Baniyas Survivor:

“We learned that they took my... 68-Year-old uncle to the roof with five people and shot them in cold blood. Entire families including children and women were wiped out.”

HEIDI:

And you saw this play out across multiple towns and villages.

Audio excerpt – Heidi Pett:

“So we're just entering now the village of Al-Rusafa, which is in the eastern edge of the mountains.”

HEIDI:

I went to one of them not long afterwards. It's a very, very small village called Al-Rusafa. It was incredibly poor. And there were 68 people killed there, mostly men, but women and children as well. And I think what was striking about it was the level of coordination that they described between these armed factions and the new authorities. So they described them meeting at the police station beforehand, coming in convoy in the same cars,

Audio excerpt – Blank:

Translator
“So they came, the armed groups, and they were asking if they had weapons, searching for weapons, and he told them that we don't have any weapons. They told him that he's lying, and then they took him out of the house and they shot between their legs.”

HEIDI:

And while it was very unclear to them who was doing exactly what because there was a range of different kind of uniforms and styles of dress between all of these different groups. They all very clearly described to me the presence of general security alongside this and the fact that they were not reigning in this violence. They were, if not participating, certainly turning a blind eye to it.

DANIEL:

So what you're describing Heidi is a horrific and extremely complex situation. What sense do you have about whether Ahmed al-Sharaa will be able to hold together a government and create a sense of stability in Syria?

HEIDI:

So how he deals with what happened on the coast actually will be a big tell for, you know, his ability to, to hold things together. Because it will give us some kind of insight into whether he's willing to be accountable for crimes in his own backyard and to what degree he actually actually is sort of held hostage by some of these more extreme factions that had a huge role to play in this violence, but that he is reliant upon in order to keep the country together and to kind of exert basic security control. So that will be a real indicator, I think, of his strength among his allies.

The other big challenge is the need for transitional justice. I think that wouldn't have seen such a wave of extreme violence if many Syrians felt like there was movement towards accountability and punishment and some kind of formal court process for members of the regime. In the last couple of days, we have seen a formal body established to start tackling that. It's taken a long time and many Syrians are confused about why it's taken so long to move towards that.

And the other big challenge is many of these sort of remnants of various armed groups that took up residence in Syria over the course of the civil war, looking to exploit any kind of chaos that they're able to. And the big one there is ISIS. We've seen a resurgence just in the last few days. There was a car bomb in eastern Syria, the first ISIS car bomb since the fall of the regime, and direct fighting between the new government and ISIS cells in Aleppo as well. So that's a real challenge that he'll need to keep a handle on.

But, I think given how brutal the regime was and how brutal the war was, there has been a remarkable amount of stability really so far. One of the main threats I think will be, you know, whether you see these, some of these groups being unhappy with compromises that Sharaa will need to make in order to satisfy the international community. So whether that's something like signing the Abraham Accords, whether it is a perception that he's being too progressive or he's not implementing the Islamic law that many of these guys have been fighting for for a long time, I think that's a real risk.

There are still many, many actors in Syria that would be seeking to exploit any kind of chaos.

DANIEL:

Heidi, thank you so much for your time.

HEIDI:

It's been really good to talk to you.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today…

Electricity prices are set to rise for almost half a million households in New South Wales, south-east Queensland, and South Australia from July 1st.

The Default Market Offer, which acts as a price cap for energy retailers, will increase for households and small businesses in these states — with the Australian Energy Regulator saying the wholesale costs and the price of transporting electricity have risen.

And

Labor MP Ed Husic says the Australian government should commit to targeted sanctions, if Israel refuses to relent in its expanded military offensive in Gaza.

The comments came after at least 54 Palestinians were killed - most of them sheltering in a school building - during Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

Ed Husic says he wants stronger action from the Australian government.

You’ve been listening to 7am, we’ll be back tomorrow.

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