De facto Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa says factions agreed to disband following a meeting with the heads of the groups.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has reached an agreement with rebel factions to come together as one force under the Defence Ministry, according to the new Syrian general administration.
A meeting between al-Sharaa and the heads of the groups “ended in an agreement on the dissolution of all the groups and their integration under the supervision of the ministry of defence”, a statement by the new administration said on Tuesday.
However, the Kurdish-led and United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces group is excluded from the newly announced deal in northeastern Syria.
The head of government had announced last week the formation of a ministry made of former rebel factions and officers that had defected from Bashar al-Assad’s army.
“Since the fall of the Assad regime, this is perhaps the most important development that has happened in Syria,” said Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Damascus. He explained that immediately after the fall of al-Assad’s regime, opposition fighters from across the country streamed into Damascus, with some of them claiming different territories of the capital.
“The main fear was, how these groups that were fighting against the regime during the course of 13 years of the civil war – groups that are heavily armed – how they are going to merge and unite”, said Serdar.
After talks and talks, several sessions and meetings … now Ahmed al-Sharaa, the de facto leader of Syria and also the leader of HTS – the most dominant military and political power in Syria – is saying that all the armed groups have decided to come together under the Ministry of Defence; that is quite a remarkable development.