Syria’s president: From rebel fighter to meeting with Trump

At the start of the year, Hardy pet met with newly declared Syrian president almed alsra.

I met him the day after he had declared himself interim president, and so you know, he's taken up residents in the presidential palace. So they sent these two armored cars to come and pick us up and take us through Damascus and and up into the presidential Palace.

It's all of the choreography of meeting any world leader.

You know, they take your phones in, your electronics and security screening, all that kind of stuff. But it was sort of striking right because the Presidential Palace here in Damascus is enormous, you know, it's bigger than the White House. But it was completely empty.

The palace was empty because almed Alchurra and his men had rolled into Damascus and taken over suddenly.

Verified footage shows a Syrian rebel tanks in one of Damascus's central squares.

Today it is a coalition of rebel groups that are in charge in Damascus the law.

Just a few months before announcing himself president, al had a ten million dollar bounty out for his arrest. Once the leader of the Alnusra Front and a member of al Qaeda in Iraq, he was an enemy of the United States in person.

I found it quite interesting, actually, because you would expect a man who has the background that he has, you know, as a fighter, as a man who has engaged in direct conflict with groups like ISIS and has managed to survive, you know, all of these shifting alliances there, to have a sort of more physically imposing presence than I felt that he did. I found him quite almost awkward. You know, he sat there during an interview with his hands on both of his knees, almost like he was having his

Yeah, it's a big job.

A mantle that I don't feel that he is always wearing particularly comfortably.

Recently, Al Shara had another meeting with Donald Trump. Trump praised him and announced hit lift sanctions in Syria. From Schwartz Media, I'm Daniel James. This is seven am today, Damascus Space, corresponded Hardi pet on how El Sharra pulled that off and what it means for the future of his country. It's Wednesday, May eight, Heidi. When Donald Trump met with Almid al Shara earlier this month. He called him a young attractive guy, a tough guy with a strong past.

Right, I think very good, young attractive guy, tough guy, you know, strong pass stroke pass made him.

What did you make of that description?

Yeah, I mean I thought that quote was really funny. Right, It's a strong past. It's quite an interesting way for the US president to describe Sharah. You know, this, this is a guy who the US had a ten million dollar bounty on Charra's head until very very recently. And I think that just goes to show this incredible journey that Sharah has gone on. You know, he was a real amount of mystery for a lot time, not much was known about him.

He was born in Saudi Arabia in nineteen eighty two, after his family was forced to leave the Golan Heights.

What we do now now is, you know, he grew up in a.

Middle class suburb, in a middle class family in Damascus. His father was an economist, but he gradually started spending a lot more time in the mosque.

By around two thousand, he started to become radicalized. When asked how he felt aboutline and.

You know, and with some preachers who encouraged some of.

The people at that mosque to board these sort of famous buses that left Damascus for young young men to go and fight in Iraq after the American invasion, and Shira got on one of those.

Yet Syria, joining al Qaeder in Iraq, which led to his subsequent arrest and.

You know, he ended up detained in Iraq for some time. He was actually able to pose as a local in Iraq. You know, he's noted for being able to speak Arabic with an Iraqi accent, which meant that he wasn't treated as harshly. You know, if he had been known that he was a foreign fighter in Iraq, he would.

Have had much out of time of it.

I think this indicates how much of a kind of you know, his ability to shape shift and to adapt, you know, and then going on to navigate these shifting alliances and this conflict between you know, al Qaeda al Nustra, which he was the leader of, he has managed to really rise to the top and sort of pick off opponents along the way. And there's been this sort of questioning about him about whether, you know, whether the jihadi can become a politician.

But certainly.

You know, my sense of him in that meeting and just in general is actually, you know, I think this man has been a politician all along. You know, his ability to make and break alliances when it suits him is quite notable.

Yeah, So when you meet him, he'd just taken over as president of Syria. So what did he say at the time about his vision for the country's future.

Yeah, it was interesting, right, because there was at that time a lot of apprehension about what kind of rule we would see, whether there would be anything, you know, re mbling democracy, and he did commit to that, but it was quite tempered. He said, in our region, there are various definitions of democracy.

But he you know, he really emphasized the need for time.

You know that there will not be elections for several years. The country needs to be stabilized first. But you know, since that meeting, things have become a little more clear. So a draft constitution was issued in March, and that's committed the country to this five year transitional period during which he will be the leader. And you know a lot of measures were maintained from the old constitution, so Islamic law will be the main source of law.

There's new things in there, you.

Know, guaranteeing freedom of opinion, expression, the press, rights for minorities and women, which all, you know, all sounds really good. But the thing that is notable is this quite serious

Now he's managed to secure a lifting of sanctions for Syria, with Trump saying the country has a chance at greatness. You've been living in Damascus since the fall of Assad. How to describe the quality of life there for ordinary Syrians? And how do you think the announcement that sanctions will be lifted will change that?

Yeah, I mean, the economic situation for most Syrians is incredibly, incredibly dire. Ninety percent of people here are living under the poverty line. People can't afford fuel, people can barely

At the moment.

And so the impact of these sanctions on daily life for people here in.

Syria is really really serious.

And it's not just the kind of direct impact of these US sanctions either. When the regime fell and there was this need for funding and support to begin rebuilding this country. Countries like Cutter, they announced a very serious aid package, but that package of assistance was really delayed because the Cuttery government was worried that even sending that money to Syria would mean that their own country fell foul of these US sanctions.

So the kind of butterfly effect of the US lifting.

These sanctions will be will be huge. Speaking to people in Damascus in the last couple of days, there is a renewed sense of hope.

Nobody expected this would happen so quickly.

After the break. Can Ahmad Altrarad hold together a government and country filled with unresis tensions? Heidi, the United States has a list of demands that Syria needs to adhere to in order for sanctions to be lifted, things like signing the Abraham Accords, to normalize relationships with Israel, deporting quote Palestinian terrorists, helping the US prevent the resurgence of vices, and protecting religious minorities. In March, nearly nine hundred Ala

Yeah. The Alowites are They're one of the largest minority religious groups in Syria.

It's an offshoot of Shia Islam.

And the Assad family were Alowites, and during the rule of the Father and the Son, they sort of exploited and deepened these sectarian tensions within Syria. They promoted members of the Alowites sect to senior positions in the government and the military, so it bred a great deal of resentment. But they also deliberately kept the coastal regions, which is where you know many Allo Whites in Syria are from.

People in these regions.

And since the fall of the regime, a lot of these former offices they went back to their homes in the coastal villages and they've been kind of hiding out there because they have been you know, sort of revenge attacks and things like that. And many of them they know that justice is coming. They did horrible things, you know, whether they were snipers during the siege of cities, whether they you know, they flew the planes or helicopters that dropped barrel bombs on civilians.

They know that trouble is coming for them.

And so in March there was this sort of counter insurgency led by what Syrians called the Fullul, which is a bit for kind of remnants, like remnants of the former regime. And so on one eve there was a series of coordinated attacks across the coast where they ambushed members of the new security services and you know, shot and killed many of them. And what we saw in

They would ask people only one question, are you Alowite or Sunni? Then they would shoot when they know you were Alowite.

You have groups kind of sweeping through these villages and knocking on doors and basically pulling all Alohite men out of their homes and shooting them in the street. You know, a man from one of these towns, Baniasi, sent me a voice note describing what had happened. Basically all the men in some apartment buildings being just taken up to the roof and shot.

We learned that they took my sixty eighty year old uncle to the roof with five people and shot them in cold blood. Entire families, including children and women, were wiped out.

And you know, you saw this play out across multiple towns and villages. So we're just entering now the village of Arosa, which is in the eastern edge of the mountains, where I went to one of them not long afterwards. It's a very very small village called Ala. It's incredibly poor, and there were sixty eight people killed there, mostly men, but women and children as well. And I think what was striking was the level of coordination that they described

Meanwhile, so the game the.

Armed groups and they were asking if they have weapons, searching for weapons, and that we don't have any weapons. They told him that he's lying, and then they took him out of the house and they shot between their legs.

And while it was very unclear to them who was doing exactly what, because there was a range of different kind of uniforms and styles of dress between all of these different groups, they all very clearly described to me, you know, the presence of general security alongside this, and the fact that you know, they were not reigning in this violence, they were, if not participating, certainly turning a blind eye to it.

So what you're describing, Hardy, is a horrific and extremely complex situation. What sense do you have about whether Ahmed Altrara will be able to hold together a government and create a sense of stability in Syria.

So how he deals with what happened on the coast actually will be a big tell for you know, his ability to hold things together, because it will give us some kind of insight into whether he's willing to, you know, be accountable for crimes in his own backyard and to what degree he actually is sort of held hostage by some of these more extreme factions that had a huge role to play in this violence, but that he is reliant upon in order to keep the country together and

To move towards that.

And the other big challenge is many of these sort of remnants of various armed groups that took up residents in Syria at the course of the civil war looking to exploit any kind of chaos that they're able to.

And the big one there is ISIS.

You know, we've seen a resurgence just in the last few days, there was a car bomb in eastern Syria, the first ISIS car bomb since the fall of the regime, and direct fighting between the new government and ISIS cells in Aleppo as well. So that's a real challenge that he'll need to keep a hand along. But I think given how brutal the regime was and how brutal the war was, there has been a remarkable amount of stability

I think that's a real risk.

There are still many many actors in SA that would be seeking to exploit any any kind of chaos.

Heidi, thank you so much for your time.

It's been really good to talk to you.

Also in the news today, electricity prices are set to rise for almost half a million households in New South Wales,