Syria’s post-Assad leadership convened a “national dialogue” summit in Damascus on Feb. 25, in which hundreds of people from across the country are said to be participating.
“Syria liberated itself on its own, and it suits it to build itself on its own,” interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said in his opening remarks.
“What we are living today is an exceptional, historic, and rare opportunity. We must take advantage of every moment of it to serve the interests of our people and our country.”
According to organizers, the one-day event is aimed at charting Syria’s political future two and a half months after the long-ruling regime of President Bashar al-Assad collapsed in the face of a Turkey-backed rebel offensive.
Attendees are expected to discuss recommendations for a new national economic framework and the interim government’s plans for institutional reform.
In past remarks, al-Sharaa has said that the summit would yield a final statement on which a constitutional declaration might eventually be based.
Hassan al-Dughaim, a spokesman for the summit’s preparatory committee, said recommendations made at the conference would be considered by an incoming transitional government set to assume power on March 1.
A day before the conference, officials said hundreds of people from across Syria had been invited to take part in what al-Dughaim hailed as a “historic event.”
Last December, Syria’s long-ruling Assad regime was toppled by a Turkey-backed rebel offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a terrorist group with prior links to al-Qaeda.
Late last month, rebel commanders met in Damascus, where HTS leader al-Sharaa (previously known as Mohamed al-Golani) was declared interim leader for an unspecified “transitional phase.”
Syria’s parliament was also dissolved, its Assad-era constitution abrogated, and al-Sharaa was empowered to form a temporary legislative council.
In his first public address as leader on Jan. 30, al-Sharaa, 43, pledged to convene a national dialogue summit to hear “different points of view on our future political program.”
In televised remarks shortly afterward, he said the summit would tackle the country’s most urgent problems and produce a final document on which a “constitutional declaration” might be based.
After the Assad regime fell in early December, al-Sharaa had initially stated that formulating a new constitution could take up to three years.
Groups Urged to Disarm
According to al-Dughaim, the committee spokesman, between 400 and 1,000 people from across Syria are slated to attend the national dialogue summit.In mid-February, the committee declared that armed groups that refused to lay down their weapons and submit to the HTS-led administration’s authority would not be invited to the event.
“Whoever does not lay down his arms ... will have no role in the national dialogue,” al-Dughaim told reporters at the time.
In the days leading up to the summit, the preparatory committee held meetings in all of Syria’s 14 provinces to decide who would be invited to participate.
The seven-member committee reportedly includes five individuals who are either HTS members or known to be close to the group. It does not include any Alawites—the group from which the Assad family hails—or any members of Syria’s sizable Druze community.
Druze and Alawites are among the country’s most significant religious minorities.
Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri, the spiritual leader of Syria’s Druze community, questioned the HTS-led administration’s ability to manage the country or resolve its myriad problems.
“We respect all opinions,” al-Hajri told Reuters in a recent interview. “But we haven’t seen the ability to lead the country or shape a state in the correct way.
“We’re going along with it, hoping that things will become organized or that something new will happen by the end of the transitional period.”
Nor was anyone from Syria’s Kurdish-led autonomous region, located in the country’s northeast, or from the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) invited to attend the summit, officials from both groups told Reuters.
In previous statements, the HTS-led administration has called for the integration of SDF members into Syria’s reconstituted national army.
Armed, supported, and trained by the United States, the Kurdish-led SDF was cobbled together in 2015.
It works closely with roughly 2,000 U.S. troops still deployed in northeastern Syria as part of an international coalition tasked with fighting the ISIS terrorist group.
