World Leaders Who Rushed To Embrace New Syrian Leader Nearly Silent Following Massacre by His Forces

Perhaps some would call it the good massacre: Following a global rush to legitimize the new strongman at Damascus, Ahmed al-Sharaa, his forces are killing Syrians — up to 15,000 over one weekend — and condemnations, including at the United Nations, are nearly nonexistent.A few days after Secretary-General Guterres shook Mr. Sharaa’s hands and praised his efforts at uniting all Syrians, has the world body’s chief made a call to Damascus? “No, he has not,” the UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, tells the Sun.Images of mass executions around the port city of Latakia in Syria’s northwestern coastal region flooded social media, even as they garnered no major coverage on top news outlets. Forces loyal to Mr. Sharaa’s interim government seemed to return to their Al Qaeda roots, executing Alawites accused of loyalty to the ousted president, Bashar al-Assad. While Mr. Guterres so far has not addressed the massacre directly with Mr. Sharaa, the deputy to his envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, “is in Damascus and has been in touch with officials there.” Mr. Dujarric said. The UN, he added, has “a lot of communications channels with the transitional authorities, and we’re using all of them.”The UN chief was one of the world leaders who rushed to embrace Mr. Sharaa’s “new Syria.” The two met last week at Cairo, where an emergency Arab summit was convened, seeking a united front to address the situation in Gaza. During their meeting Mr. Guterres “pledged UN support to the country’s recovery and to the people of Syria to meet their humanitarian needs,” according to a statement. While the UN chief was extremely active on the Gaza front, mostly highlighting alleged Israeli misdeeds in a war on Hamas there, his reaction to the weekend events in Syria’s coastal region was cautious. “The bloodshed in Syria must stop immediately,” he said, adding that “perpetrators of violations,” which he declined to name, “must be held to account.”Mr. Sharaa, who has cultivated a moderate image to distance himself from a jihadist past, was quick to attempt to blunt criticism of the massacre. He named a loyalist, Yasser Farhan, to head a committee to investigate the weekend’s events. On Tuesday Mr. Sharaa also sponsored an agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Front and is reportedly negotiating a similar pact with the Druze community. The Syrian Kurds, who have fought ISIS alongside American troops, fear that as President Trump calls to end the American presence in Syria they would fall prey to Turkey, which considers them terrorists. Ankara is Mr. Sharaa’s top sponsor and the uneasy Damascus-Kurd pact could unravel quickly. The weekend massacre of Alawites is threatening Mr. Sharaa’s attempt at uniting Syria’s minorities under his rule, though. “As many as 15,000 people were killed in the massacre of Alawites, and the world is silent,” the leader of the Druze community in Israel, Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, told Kan radio.Israeli Druze are tightly connected to their Syrian brethren, and Mr. Tarif says he is concerned after incidents that threatened the Druze there. The Israeli air force on Tuesday struck targets in southern Syria. Earlier, Israel destroyed large arms depots, including chemical weapons, fearing they would fall in jihadi hands. The Alawite Assad family has ruled Syria with an iron hand since 1971. When minorities rebelled, they were crushed, as in the 1982 Sunni uprising at Hama, where up to 40,000 people were massacred in one month. Now the roles are reversed. The Iran-backed Assads were bitter foes of the Jewish state. Yet, the weekend massacre prompted Allawites to appeal to Israel for help. Mr. Guterres’s demurred reaction to the massacre, meanwhile, was widely echoed at European capitals, where leaders who had previously rushed to hobnob with Mr. Sharaa issued weak statements of condemnation. Secretary Rubio, in contrast, accused “Islamists” of the massacre, and urged defense of Syria’s minorities. America “condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis that murdered people in western Syria in recent days,” Mr. Rubio said in a statement over the weekend. America “stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers.”While Mr. Sharaa claims his government has no animosity toward Israel, Jerusalem is leery of the new Damascus regime. “The challenge for Israel is to convince Western countries, especially its allies, that al-Sharaa’s moderate image and statements cannot be trusted,” an Alma Research Center analyst, Zoe Levornik, writes. “It is essential to wait and observe what the new regime’s actual policies will be, both domestically and externally.”

World Leaders Who Rushed To Embrace New Syrian Leader Nearly Silent Following Massacre by His Forces

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