Syria Debuts Cabinet Featuring Sanctioned Terrorist Alongside Christian Woman

Syria President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of the jihadist terror organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), announced the installment of a formal, 23-person cabinet in which his close HTS allies took the top positions but Christians, Kurds, and Alawites obtained some minor representation.

In announcing the formation of a full Syrian government, Sharaa declared the moment on Sunday “a new phase in our national process” and placed heavy emphasis on the task of working to “rehabilitate industry, protect national products, and create an encouraging environment to investment in all sectors” after over a decade of civil war.

Sharaa became the president of the country after HTS launched a surprise offensive in late November that toppled the regime of former dictator Bashar Assad, who fled the country for Russia on December 7, targeting first the city of Aleppo. Syria had been mired in a civil war featuring over ten belligerent parties – including, at times, the United States – since 2011, when Assad had responded to a peaceful uprising with outsized state violence. The struggle between anti-Assad rebels and the regimes created a vacuum in which jihadist terror groups such as HTS, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and various Iran-backed jihadists sought to establish themselves, coming into conflict with ethnic minorities such as the Kurds, Druze, and Assyrian Christians.

While many Syrians celebrated the fall of the brutal Assad regime, its replacement with HTS, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, has caused global alarm. Sharaa has repeatedly claimed to be seeking the establishment of an “inclusive” government – and transparently courted foreign investment from nations uncomfortable investing in terror regimes. Christians and Alawite Muslims, the sect of Shia Islam to which the Assad family belongs, have documented targeted attacks against them since the fall of the regime as “revenge” for their identity. The wave of massacres against Alawites in March inspired fears of further ethnic cleansing under Sharaa’s watch.

The prominence of individual tied to HTS and its predecessor institution, the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front, prompted significant concern among the nation’s ethnic and religious minorities. The political authorities in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) reportedly announced they would simply disregard any directives out of Damascus in light of the near-total exclusion of Kurds from the government’s highest ranks.

Many of the individuals on the list were already serving in their announced roles in an interim capacity, most prominently Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani. In addition to rehabilitating ties with Sunni Muslim states that Assad had alienated with his loyalty to Iran, Shaibani has been the face of efforts to attract foreign, especially Western, foreign investment. He has also spearheaded Sharaa’s campaign to have free states lift sanctions on Syria imposed in response to the Assad regime’s routine human rights abuses against its citizens. Shaibani’s most high-profile appearance yet was a stop in Davos, Switzerland, in January to attend the World Economic Foreign (WEF), in which he welcomed foreigners to consider investing in Syria.

Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, formerly known by his jihadi name “Abu Hassan al-Hamawi,” also kept his job. Qasra reportedly played a pivotal role in organizing and executing the surprise campaign in November that ultimately toppled Assad, making him a valuable asset in rebuilding the defunct Syrian national armed forces. Justice Minister Mazhar Abdul Rahman al-Wais also has an extensive history alongside Islamist groups, which the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) described as work in “revolutionary judicial bodies.”

The only designated terrorist on the list of cabinet appointments is Minister of the Interior Anas Khattab. Khattab is believed to have been a founding member of the Nusra Front, which ultimately evolved into HTS, and is a United Nations designated terrorist. The U.N. identified him in 2014 as “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf of, or in support of” the Nusra Front. Khattab also appears in the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of designated individuals under the “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” category.

These officials will have to coexist with a small collective of ministers who are not Arab Sunni Muslim men. Sharaa appointed only one woman to his cabinet: Minister of Social Affairs Hind Kabawat, a Christian woman and longtime Assad opponent who has worked as a professor at George Mason University. Kabawat also has ties to the World Bank and WEF, including serving as a member of the WEF’s Global Agenda Council for war intervention in 2011 and 2012.

In addition to Kabawat, the Kurdish outlet Rudaw identified one Kurdish member of the cabinet, Education Minister Mohammad Turko, and a Druze member, Agriculture Minister Amjad Badr. Two of the cabinet members also reportedly worked under the Assad regime: Economy Minister Nidal al-Shaar and Transportation Minister Yaroub Badr, who is reportedly a member of the Alawite minority.

“We will pay great attention to keeping pace with technological developments, artificial intelligence programs, and digital transformation,” Sharaa promised in an address to introduce his cabinet. “We will begin by building the necessary infrastructure for this, including training personnel, attracting expertise, research centers, and a market that encourages this goal.”

Syria is far from establishing itself as an artificial intelligence power; the Assad regime reduced some of the nation’s largest cities to rubble and much of it remains uninhabitable. In the nation’s north, particularly in Kurdish areas, hostilities continue as a separate jihadist militia, the Turkish proxy Syrian National Army (SNA), launched a campaign to eradicate the Kurdish presence along the Turkish border shortly after HTS first struck Aleppo. Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for years attempted to erase U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in Syria by repeatedly invading the country or backing jihadists there similarly hoping to eliminate the Kurdish presence.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition dominated by members of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ), had for much of the civil war distanced themselves from the struggle between Assad and rebel forces, focusing instead of destroying the Islamic State “caliphate” that had sprung up in the city of Raqqa. Following the collapse of the Assad regime, the SDF kept its distance from HTS until mid-March, when the militia’s command, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, appeared at an event with Sharaa to announce that the SDF would be formally incorporated into the Syrian military, with Sharaa as its presumed commander-in-chief.

“We are committed to building a better future that guarantees the rights of all Syrians and achieves their aspirations for peace and dignity,” Abdi wrote on social media. “We consider this agreement a real opportunity to build a new Syria that embraces its components and guarantees a good neighborhood.”

It is unclear at press time how or if the new cabinet appointments will affect that agreement. The Democratic Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (DAANES), a civilian Kurdish administration in Syrian Kurdistan, appeared to depart from the SDF decision on Sunday by announcing that it would simply ignore any edicts from the HTS government.

“We will not be concerned with implementing and executing decisions issued by it [the new cabinet], as this insistence on repeating past mistakes will harm Syrians and will never launch a comprehensive political process that can provide solutions to the pending issues, problems, and crises Syria is experiencing,” the group said in a statement.

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