The frames that used to carry pictures of Bashar al-Assad on the walls of the Damascus Governorate building are now bare. Instead, the photos serve as doormats for visitors and staff to step on as they enter – a reminder that they are in the new Syria.
Shattered glass, broken furniture and a crumbling flag littered the ground, a reminder of the rebel groups' rapid rise to power. But upstairs, administrators hand-picked by the former rebels were already working to untangle the tangles and winding bureaucracy of the Assad regime's Baathist state.
On Tuesday, they gathered about 30 department heads in an ornate room, in a meeting witnessed by the Financial Times, the focus of which was the impending liquidation of incompetent employees in local government.
Officials participating in the transition process promised to create a new, unified government Syriareconciling the rebel-controlled government in northwestern Idlib province, known as the Syrian Salvation Government, with the capital against which they have rebelled for 13 years.
But the roots of the leading rebel group, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, as a former Sunni Islamist offshoot of al-Qaeda, have led to deep concerns among some minorities about how they plan to rule this broadly secular state after the Assad regime was ousted three days later. since.
“Everything will become one. All government bodies will be dissolved: no rescue government, no factions, no “It will all be resolved soon in one Syrian republic.”
Ghazal and his colleagues demonstrated strong leadership of the state apparatus they had inherited a few hours earlier, and hinted that HTS's plans to reform it had long been underway. But the task they face is enormous. Syria's dysfunctional state institutions became plagued by corruption, nepotism, and centralized power over Assad's five decades of rule. lion dynasty.
In his soft Aleppo accent, Ghazal asked the department heads to state their specialties and explain their department's tasks. The two-hour meeting demonstrated how Assad's government had been “stopped” just in time, he later told the Financial Times in an interview.
Employees quoted government manuals from the 1930s and 1960s, and could neither answer direct questions about their duties, nor explain why decisions were made. He added: “Problems accumulated and they left them standing.” “They don't consider themselves responsible.”
One man introduced himself as the head of the public relations department, which he said included “international cooperation” as well as the “festival and events management” department. When asked what exactly this department does, the employee replied, “Flags.”
“Is there a media section?” Gazelle asked incredulously.
“Yes, when prominent foreign figures come, we raise a lot of flags,” he said. “We hang them on the poles. It's a big job.”
The same department head also had a translation department, staffed by two English-speaking staff. Ghazal asked whether there were Russian or Iranian translators — countries that support the Assad regime and have repeatedly sent envoys — and was told there were none because representatives of those countries had brought their own translators.
“But you haven't visited the English-speaking dignitaries?”
The department head said: No.
Gazelle shook his head. “A ridiculous case,” he said.
Gazelle will eventually assume many of the governor's duties in the newly created position of City Council President. Ghazal grew up in the United Arab Emirates, pointed to his long beard as a reflection of his religious faith, and left his civil engineering career in Saudi Arabia in 2014 to move to Idlib, which was in the midst of civil war. The mild-mannered former engineer eventually helped form the Syrian Salvation Government four years later.
He met with department heads in a ballroom-style room, appropriate to the style of the previous regime, where one person held a microphone and issued directives that had to be obeyed without question. The gilded hall included the names of former governors dating back 60 years, a reminder of the pact the former regime made with loyalists: Take action, and we will glorify you.
Civil servants were ordered to return to work this week, as Mohammed al-Bashir, head of the Syrian Salvation Government, was appointed prime minister of Syria's new interim government for the next four months. Its future shape is being negotiated in ministries across Damascus, after rebel-linked technocrats like Ghazal descend on the city.
On Tuesday evening, Al-Bashir held a meeting of the Salvation Government ministers with the ministers of the ousted regime to begin the process of transferring power to the new caretaker government, which will continue until next March. He draped the new Syrian flag and the flag of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham behind him.
The Damascus Governorate Government has broad powers, ranging from approving licenses for barbering, cosmetology, housing, construction, tourism, and electricity. Today's tasks included understanding the extent of corruption inherent in this local government machinery, including eliminating bogus jobs that have no purpose other than to collect state salaries.
Ghazal described “organized corruption” and rampant bribery in government departments as a result of the “crumbs” received by government employees whose average salaries dropped to the equivalent of $25 per month, as a result of the stifling economic crisis that struck the country. Since 2019. A bloated and ineffective state was a major factor in the regime's collapse, after its predatory methods spread discontent across Syria.
At the meeting, another man introduced his Department of Reconstruction and Rehabilitation: which was created in 2012 to rebuild areas devastated by civil war, and had – like others – waited more than a decade for long-promised funds that never came. Gazelle wrote down the information, muttering the word “fancy” out loud in English.
The atmosphere in the room was tense, but people felt comfortable enough to air their complaints. One woman cried out over the discrimination she faced under the previous leadership because she was a Christian, and accused the state of paying her a $25,000 bribe. Another woman accused her of lying.
Ghazal politely asked them to bring up these issues to him later, but let them continue. He addressed the staff with “excuse me” and “if you please”—a respectful tone no man in his seat had ever used.
But old habits die hard: Staff referred obliquely to “crisis” and “events” — euphemisms used by the regime for the war that has decimated their country for much of the past two decades. “What crisis?” Ghazal asked before realizing that they meant the uprisings and war to which he had given his life for the past decade.
Ghazal spoke of the new government's aversion to the reactionary measures followed by the old regime. In Idlib, a long-neglected corner of the country that was completely cut off after rebels took control early in the conflict, everything is digital and you can get an ID card in five minutes, he said. In Damascus, it can take months, and usually requires a bribe.
It took 15 minutes for Financial Times journalists to receive their media accreditation from the newly arrived government – something unimaginable in the old Kafkaesque regime, which had not given Western journalists permits to enter the country for years.
Ghazal told the Financial Times that a technocratic government is currently being formed, but moving forward with its plans “will require political recognition (and addressing) the terrorism designation, which I believe will happen soon.”
Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group formerly affiliated with Al Qaeda, has been designated a terrorist organization by the United Nations, the United States and other countries. its leader, Abu Muhammad Al-JulaniAnd an American bounty of $10 million for his head.
He cut ties with Al Qaeda in 2016 and sought to rebrand the group as a more moderate government-in-waiting. But it has maintained control over Idlib with an iron fist, and UN agencies have documented abuses.
Outgoing US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Tuesday that “the transitional process in Syria must lead to credible, inclusive, and non-sectarian governance.”
Ghazal insisted that his mandate would not take into account the sectarian affiliations of government employees, but only the value of the work each of them brings.
“You saw how the (Assad) regime raised them: they call us my lord ('Sir'),” he said. “You feel they are broken. (We just want them) to get out of that mindset. You're a person with self-dignity, I'm not your master or anything. “I am an employee like you.”
