Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has reached an agreement with rebel factions to come together as one force under the Defence Ministry, according to the new Syrian general administration.
A meeting between al-Sharaa and the heads of the groups “ended in an agreement on the dissolution of all the groups and their integration under the supervision of the ministry of defence”, said a statement by the new administration on Tuesday.
However, the Kurdish-led and United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) group in northeastern Syria is not part of the deal just announced.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir had said last week that the ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Bashar al-Assad’s army.
“Since the fall of the Assad regime, this is perhaps the most important development that has happened in Syria,” said Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Damascus. He explained that immediately after the fall of al-Assad’s regime, opposition fighters from across the country streamed into Damascus, with some of them claiming different territories of the capital.
“The main fear was how these groups that had been fighting against the regime during the course of 13 years of the civil war – groups that are heavily armed – how they are going to merge and unite,” Serdar said.
“After talks and talks, several sessions and meetings … now Ahmed al-Sharaa, the de facto leader of Syria who is also the leader of HTS – the most dominant military and political power in Syria – is saying that all the armed groups have decided to merge under the Ministry of Defence; that is quite a remarkable development.
