HTS struggling to find the hard answers to its Syrian riddle

Alameen Templeton

The hard questions are piling up as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) occupies the high ground in Damascus while it tries to get a defeated government bureaucracy working again amid reprisal executions and Israeli air attacks throughout the wider Syrian countryside.
Obeida Arnaout, an HTS spokesman, is struggling to find answers as hundreds of Israel’s airstrikes spread across the country.
Dodging the issues
During an interview on Britain’s Channel 4 Wednesday night, Arnaout avoided answering the question twice. He would only say: “Our priority is to restore security and services, to revive civilian life and institutions, and care for newly liberated cities. There are many urgent parts of day-to-day life to restore, bakeries, electricity, water, communications, so our priority is to provide those services to the people.”
“I understand it’s not your priority, but are you honestly telling me that you have nothing to say about Israel striking 300 sites in this country?” Channel 4’s interviewer asked a second time, to which Arnaout responded: “Have no doubt, we want everyone to respect the sovereignty of the new Syria. This point is very important to us.”
The Oracle reports the Israeli attacks, which have exceed 350 since the fall of Damascus, have wiped out most of Syria’s military capabilities. The Israeli army has also significantly expanded its illegal occupation in the country.
More Israeli strikes targeted Syrian military infrastructure in the Damascus outskirts on Thursday and Friday.
Israel unrestrained
The intense strikes have left “nothing of the Syrian army’s assets,” regional security sources and officers within the now-fallen Syrian army told Reuters.
Sources speaking with the agency described Tuesday’s airstrikes as the “heaviest yet, hitting military installations and airbases across Syria, destroying dozens of helicopters and jets, as well as Republican Guard assets in and around Damascus.”
Other reports in Israeli media suggested the strikes had destroyed some 80 percent of Syria’s military assets.
Israeli targets in Syria also include missile depots, manufacturing facilities, drones, tanks, radars, navy vessels, and more, the army said.
AFP correspondents reported on Tuesday that Israeli strikes in Damascus’s Barzeh area completely destroyed a defense ministry research center.
Israeli military sources said that the Navy carried out a wave of bombings on Monday to destroy the Syrian naval fleet stationed at Minet al-Beida Bay and Latakia Port on the Syrian coast.
Old friends
Plenty of documented evidence has emerged over the years regarding HTS and its precursors’ cooperation with Israel, particularly during 2014 battles in Quneitra.
Then, fighters from the Nusra Front – the Al-Qaeda subsidiary corporation that rebranded itself as HTS – enjoyed air support from Israeli jets. Injured “HTS fighters” were treated in Israeli hospitals in the occupied Golan Heights. They would be picked up by Israeli ambulances, day or night, for premium treatment in Israel’s world-class military hospitals.
Such top-tier treatment had many observers wondering if Shin Bet or Mossad had agents operating under cover of the Nusra Front.
Syrian opposition political organizations have also enjoyed support from Tel Aviv.
Fahd al-Masri, a former Free Syrian Army (FSA) spokesman and member of the Belgium-based National Salvation Front in Syria, told Israeli news outlet i24 after president Bashar al-Assad’s government was ousted on Sunday: “Without the blows you inflicted on Hezbollah and Iran, we could not free Syria,” Masri said. “Thank you, Israel. This is an Israeli victory, our brothers and neighbors.”
Showing their roots
HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa nee al-Julani, said this week his message to foreign countries is that Syria is tired from war and not looking to enter another one, adding that the main “fear” was of Hezbollah and “Iranian militias.”
Arnaout, who refused to answer Channel 4’s questions on Israeli airstrikes, gave an interview on December 7 with the Center for Peace Communications – a New York-based “non-profit” organization that is funded by pro-Israel lobbies.
Asked if the HTS-led assault against Aleppo resembled Hamas Al-Aqsa Flood operation, Arnaout said his organization did not attack anyone – adding that former government troops who surrendered or did not fire were spared.
He also said isolated incidents would be closely monitored and “dealt with swiftly.”
But several videos of militants executing unarmed soldiers – including wounded ones in hospital – have emerged since Arnaout’s interview.
Is this Islam?
Scores of former ISIS fighters and commanders are incorporated into Turkiye’s proxy in Syria, the Syrian National Army (SNA) – which was part of the assault with HTS that led to the fall of Damascus and the collapse of the Syrian government, The Oracle reports.
They might not be “the nicest blokes”, but the fellows on the other side are even hairier. Ahmed Hilmi, a Syrian human rights activist and survivor of the Baath regime’s prisons, also has plenty of hard questions he wants answered.
He is calling for justice for thousands of victims subjected to systematic torture and killings.
“I want justice, not revenge,” said Hilmi, who endured three years in the regime’s detention centers and bore witness to the atrocities inflicted on detainees during Syria’s civil war.
Anadolu Ajansi reports the collapse of the regime and the opposition’s takeover in Syria led to the release of anti-regime prisoners held in Sednaya and other detention centers.
Mother can’t recognise him
Hilmi says he was abducted by regime forces while on his way to classes. Five months later, his mother found him in a state prison. He was so emaciated and transformed by the abuse, torture and starvation that she could not recognise him, despite his entreaties.
Only after he identified a secret codeword they had shared did she acknowledge him in tears.
Now, he’s started an organisation, “Ta’afi”, to support torture victims and their families.
Hilmi described Sednaya Prison, notorious for its brutal conditions, as comparable to the circles of hell in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.
“There are no windows, no fresh air, and the fluorescent lights are on 24/7, making it impossible to tell night from day,” he said.
Prisoners were crammed into overcrowded cells, deprived of toilets or water, and given minimal food. Many succumbed to starvation, untreated illnesses, or poor hygiene, he added.
Horrors upon horrors
“This is only 10% of the suffering that occurs in Syrian prisons,” Hilmi said.
He emphasized the significance of the ‘Caesar photos’, taken by a military photographer codenamed ‘Caesar,’ which document the torture and deaths of detainees under the regime, serving as crucial evidence of war crimes.
“These photos are the only visual evidence of what happened in the prisons,” he said, noting that the images, taken between 2011 and 2013, expose scars of torture and the effects of inhumane conditions.
“Some didn’t die from beatings but from the complete absence of sunlight, air, or basic care,” he said. Bodies would only be taken away once they’d been piled up to the roof.
He too has hard questions he wants answered.
Meanwhile, both Moscow and Washington are dusting off the red carpets as they seek to start wooing HTS whom they still have registered as a terrorist organisation.
Vultures are circling
Moscow wants to maintain its two military bases in the country – a naval base in Tartous and the Hmeimim Air Base near the port city of Latakia – according to informed sources who spoke with Bloomberg.
Russian officials feel they “reached an informal understanding” with the Al-Qaeda offshoot. However, they warned that things could quickly change due to the “instability” in Syria.
Alongside the Hmeimim Air Base in Latakia, Moscow also controls the Tartous naval facility, which the Kremlin previously said would host up to 11 Russian warships, including nuclear vessels, The Oracle reports.
“The implications are grim, as there is little expectation – despite current claims – that Syria’s unity can be preserved or that its diverse religious communities can continue to coexist peacefully,” Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.
The reprisal attacks against former government soldiers in hospital beds, are demanding HTS’s attention, but it is also trying to keep its own allies from attacking each other, as America prepares to turn its back on its erstwhile Kurdish allies. They, too, have hard questions they want answered.
Embers are smouldering
Clashes flared up again around Aleppo Thursday between Turkish-supported extremists and Kurdish fighters from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. The SDF claimed it had pushed back the “Turkish mercenaries”, killing at least 350 during a foiled three-day attack on the Tishrin Dam, ANHA agency reports.
Meanwhile, Israeli tanks “infiltrated deep into Quneitra countryside overnight, entering the town of Khan Arnabah, one of the largest towns in the province,” local sources from Quneitra told Al-Mayadeen Friday afternoon.
The Israeli tanks “entered an abandoned former military position in Khan Arnabah before later withdrawing,” the sources added.
As part of its continued incursions into Syria, the Israeli occupation military also issued warnings to residents of villages in western rural Daraa, ordering them to remain in their homes, according to Al Mayadeen’s correspondent.
Israeli airstrikes “targeted Mount Qasioun in the Syrian capital, Damascus, where sites belonging to the former regime’s Republican Guard are located,” Al-Mayadeen reports
Meanwhile, Israeli Security Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to “prepare to remain” throughout the winter in the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.
“Due to the situation in Syria, it is of critical security importance to maintain our presence at the summit of Mount Hermon, and everything must be done to ensure the (army’s) readiness on-site to enable the fighters to stay there despite the challenging weather conditions,” Katz’s spokesman said Friday.