SA’s ambassador in Damascus sticks to his post despite Pretoria’s defence of Assad

South Africa’s ambassador to Syria has remained at his post as have other members of the embassy, despite the toppling of the government of President Bashar al-Assad by a largely unknown Islamist rebel force early on Sunday, 8 December.

Ambassador Ashraf Suliman’s decision to remain on post in Damascus suggests that he and Pretoria trust the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led rebels who captured the city to keep their promises not to harm minorities and to protect public and private property in Damascus.

“Through our Embassy in Syria we are monitoring the situation in Syria and will comment at an appropriate time,” Chrispin Phiri, spokesperson for International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola, tweeted on Sunday. 

“I’m in contact with the Ambassador. He assured us that he and the officials are safe,” he told Daily Maverick on Monday, confirming that Suliman and his staff were not evacuating Syria.

This was despite his department issuing a statement as recently as last Thursday, saying: “We express our grave concern at the offensive attack in Aleppo and Idlib by Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN Security Council, and a coalition of foreign mercenaries.”

“South Africa stands in solidarity with the Government and people of the Syrian Arab Republic who have been subjected to untold suffering since the outbreak of conflict in 2011,” the statement added, calling for a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Clearly then, the ANC will not be delighted that Assad has been so suddenly ousted, precipitating an expected tilt in the balance of forces in the Middle East against Iran and Russia, which were Assad’s close allies – and also allies of the ANC’s – and both of which have now suffered major setbacks.

Blow to Moscow, Tehran

“The rapid collapse of the Assad regime in Syria – a regime that the Kremlin helped prop up since 2015 – is a strategic political defeat for Moscow and has thrown the Kremlin into a crisis as it seeks to retain its strategic military basing in Syria,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said. 

“Putin… intervened on behalf of Assad in 2015 to secure Russian military bases in Syria, support Russia’s wider efforts to project power in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, increase its global footprint in the Middle East and Africa, and threaten Nato’s southern flank. 

“Russia is attempting to secure its bases in Syria as opposition forces come to power, but Russia’s continued military presence in the country is not guaranteed, especially as Russia’s actions in support of Assad over the past nine years have likely undermined Moscow’s ability to form a lasting, positive relationship with ruling Syrian opposition groups,” the institute said. 

It noted that Russia had a critical warmwater naval base at Tartus, an air base at Khmeimim to the north and a helicopter base at Qamish in the far northeast. 

The ISW also expressed doubts about HTS negotiating a peaceful power-sharing government with other rebel groups, notably the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA). It noted that both the SDF and SNA “have capitalised on the HTS-led offensive to expand their territory, including by fighting with each other”.

The fall of Assad was also a major strategic setback for Iran which had backed him strongly in part because Syria has been a key conduit for supplying arms to its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. 

Syria’s new leaders

Despite its reassurances, there is widespread uncertainty about the intentions of HTS which was once an affiliate of Al-Qaeda but, under its previous name of Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front), broke away from Al-Qaeda in 2016.

“When they took over Aleppo, they reassured members of minority groups that they would allow them to coexist,” Chrissie Steenkamp, an associate professor in Social and Political Change at UK’s Oxford Brookes University, told Deutsche Welle (DW) news agency.

HTS is a Sunni Muslim organisation and Sunnis are estimated to constitute about 70% of Syria’s population of close to 25 million people; with Shia Muslims constituting around 13%, of which about 10% are Alawites – the group to which Assad belongs. Kurds, Christians and Druze comprise most of the rest.

“For the past five years when it had been acting as the de facto administration of the northwestern Idlib region of Syria, HTS had restored houses and lands to Christian owners who had lost them during the war and allowed them to celebrate their religious holidays such as Easter and Christmas,” Jerome Drevon, an International Crisis Group analyst who has met HTS leaders, told DW.

He said HTS was not seeking to create an Islamist caliphate, but sought to take over the running of Syria.

However, Nadine Maenza, president of the Washington-based International Religious Freedom Secretariat, told VOA that although the HTS coalition had so far protected religious and ethnic minorities in areas it had conquered, “HTS has a troubling history of governing under a harsh version of Islamic law in Idlib.” 

SA’s defence of Assad

The ANC government helped shield the Assad regime from international censure through the course of the civil war which erupted in 2011 as part of the wider Arab Spring.

In July 2011, when representatives of the political Syrian opposition visited South Africa to seek South Africa’s support for a resolution at the United Nations merely condemning Assad’s brutal suppression of peaceful unarmed protesters against his dictatorship, Pretoria refused. 

Then deputy minister of international relations and cooperation Ebrahim Ebrahim said South Africa “wants to send a very clear message, that we will not be taken for a ride again”.

He was referring to Pretoria’s feeling that it had been betrayed by Western powers into voting for UN Security Council Resolution 1973 in March 2011, which authorised military action against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Pretoria said the resolution should only have justified military action to protect the civilian opposition in Libya, but that a Nato-led military force had abused the resolution to topple Gaddafi. 

South Africa continued after that to oppose any international censure or sanctions against Assad’s regime. In 2018, for example, when about 400 men, women and children were trapped under Syrian government bombardment in Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, South Africa opposed the holding of an urgent debate on the Syrian crisis in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Pretoria cited procedural grounds, saying the council had not been given enough notice of the urgent debate and that Syria was due to be discussed anyway, later in the council’s session.

South Africa joined countries like Syria itself, China, Venezuela, Russia and Cuba in opposing the debate. The resolution to hold the debate was carried nonetheless by a large majority. During the debate, UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid al-Hussein called for Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court.

In response, Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, an NGO closely monitoring the UN Human Rights Council, said this was another worrying example of South Africa siding with dictators rather than democrats on international human rights issues.

UN Watch had surveyed South Africa’s voting record at the UN from 2014 to 2018 and concluded that “South Africa was often siding with the perpetrators” of human rights abuses rather than the victims.

At the UN General Assembly, South Africa had abstained on three resolutions concerning Syria’s human rights abuses during the war by that time. At the UN Human Rights Council, Pretoria had abstained from a previous resolution in 2017 condemning human rights abuses in Syria.

Opportunity for dialogue

The Democratic Alliance said on Monday this week that the collapse of the Assad regime, however worrying, had created an opportunity for peace. 

MP Emma Powell, DA spokesperson for International Relations and Cooperation, expressed concern that: “Sadly, it is the innocent citizens of Syria who are likely to suffer the most as they attempt to rebuild following decades of terror and oppression wrought by Assad and his allies which intensified following the 2011 uprising.”

She said the DA supported the efforts of Geir O Pedersen, the UN’s special envoy to Syria, to find common ground and facilitate an ongoing dialogue with all opposition forces in the country.

“It is vital that this process be as inclusive as possible and involve a broad coalition of Syrians, irrespective of ethnic or religious affiliation, to prevent a further escalation into a broader civil war and to protect minority interests.

“Furthermore we hope that in due course Assad’s alleged human rights abuses – including the reported use of chemical weapons against his own people – is thoroughly investigated and at the appropriate time brought before the ICJ.” DM