In Aleppo, rebels give a sense of what may come in Syria

In Aleppo, rebels give a sense of what may come in Syria

The New York Times reports:

The rebels who are now Syria’s de facto rulers have started to make their mark on the country’s government.

They took control of Aleppo just two weeks ago, but already police officers are in the streets sporting new uniforms, administrators are busy in the halls of government and there are posters on lampposts with QR codes directing people to updates on government policy.

Gone are the ubiquitous photos of President Bashar al-Assad, whose visage, like that of his father before him, had dominated the city. The Assad regime controlled the country for decades, then crumbled in a matter of days.

It has been replaced by an array of rebel factions led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that has tried to gain international legitimacy while also being criticized for its authoritarian tactics. The group, which has controlled most of the northwestern province of Idlib for years, supports a conservative and at times hard-line Sunni Islamist ideology.

With all eyes on the rebels’ plans for the future, Aleppo offers early hints on how the group might approach governance — at least in the immediate future. In a country that has been deeply divided by 13 years of civil war, the group is vowing to maintain security and continuity, aiming to avoid the kind of power vacuum that has followed other Arab revolutions or regime changes.

Over the past week, there have been flashes of normalcy in the city, residents said, expressing some hope for the future.

The rebels took over much of the city on Nov. 27, the first in a series of fast-falling dominoes that led to the takeover of Damascus, the capital, on Sunday. After capturing Aleppo, the fighters moved on, leaving the city in the hands of its bureaucrats to preserve government institutions, said Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, until recently known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

In a sign of rebel efforts to show the country that it is in capable hands, the interim government on Tuesday appointed Mohammed al-Bashir as the new prime minister. Mr. al-Bashir previously served as the head of the rebel-run administration in northwestern Syria. [Continue reading…]

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