Syria May Not Be Ready for Elections for 4 Years, Says de Facto Leader

The leader of Syria's Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Ahmed al-Sharaa, addresses a crowd at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 8, 2024. Aref Tammawi / AFP

Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has said it could take up to four years to hold elections in the country, following the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad this month.

In an interview with the Saudi television network Al Arabiya, Sharaa also said that he planned to dissolve his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, which launched a lightning offensive at the end of November and toppled the Russian-backed regime.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) means Organization for the Liberation of Syria in Arabic. It began as al-Nusra Front, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, the Islamist terrorist group founded by Osama bin Laden. The group was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 2018.

Earlier this month, the United States dropped a $10 million counter-terror bounty against Sharaa. The decision coincided with a U.S. diplomatic visit to Syria on Dec. 20.

Now that the country is free of the Assad regime, Sharaa believes that HTS has served its purpose.

He did not say if he intended to form a new political party and lead it into future elections.

Sharaa, who uses the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, said he planned to hold a national dialogue summit to discuss the way forward for Syria.

He set up a transitional government after the Assad regime fell and it is set to rule until March 1, when the national dialogue summit will determine Syria’s political future.

Sharaa said there would need to be a new population census before elections could be held.

He also told Al Arabiya that he hoped to maintain “strategic relations” with Russia, even though Moscow’s air force spent the past decade bombarding anti-government forces in northern Syria.

Moscow is seeking to renegotiate the lease of two military bases in Syria, a naval base at Tartous and the Hmeimim air base.

Since 2011, Syria has been embroiled in a civil war that appeared to have died down, until the recent HTS offensive, which led to the fall of Aleppo, Hama, and Homs in quick succession, and the departure of Assad to Moscow on Dec. 8.

Sharaa said the groups who hold power in different parts of Syria need to have a political dialogue before the country’s constitution is redrafted.

These groups include the Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkey-backed group that controls a large chunk of northern Syria, and the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-dominated faction that holds sway in the northeast.

The HTS leader said negotiations were ongoing with the SDF and that he hoped to reintegrate them back into a national security force.

The SNA has taken the city of Manbij from the SDF in recent weeks, and fighting persists in Kobani.

He has made no such offer to elements of ISIS who hold out in remote parts of eastern Syria.

“The chance we have today doesn’t come every 5 or 10 years,” Sharaa said. “We want the constitution to last for the longest time possible.”

De-Ba'athification?

The Assad dynasty has ruled the country since the early 1970s, and the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party has won every election since 1973.

There have been calls for the Ba‘ath Party to be banned, like its namesake and political cousin in Iraq, which was dissolved during a so-called de-Ba’athification process following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Mohammed Hussein Ali, 64, who was a member of the Syrian party until he quit at the start of the anti-government uprising in 2011, said, “The party should not only be dissolved, it should go to hell.”

Up to 7 million Syrians are living abroad—in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, as well as in Germany and other European countries—and many of them are expected to return home in the next few years.

Sharaa said Syria’s badly damaged infrastructure also needed to be reconstructed.

Israel continues to target Syria’s military infrastructure.

Following the collapse of Assad’s regime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the Golan Heights would be “an inseparable part of the State of Israel forever.”

Israel took control of the Golan Heights during the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed it in 1981, a move not recognized by most of the international community.

In early December, Netanyahu said Israeli forces had moved to control a roughly 155-square-mile demilitarized buffer zone in Syrian territory, citing security concerns.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.