Syrian Rebel Leader Calls for Lifting of Sanctions, as al-Assad Defends Exit

Ahmed al-Shara urged nations to remove sanctions from Syria and the terrorism designation from his group so Syria could rebuild. Bashar al-Assad also gave his first account of fleeing to Russia.

Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of the rebel coalition that swept into Damascus last week and ousted the Assad regime, urged the United States and other nations to remove sanctions imposed on the country, saying in an interview on Monday that all constraints needed to be lifted so that Syria could rebuild.

The rebel leader spoke in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on the same day that Syria’s deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, seemed to break his silence about his decision to flee to Russia. In a statement posted to social media accounts he had used while in office, Mr. al-Assad said he had wanted to stay and fight, but was evacuated by Russian forces as the rebels bore down on the city.

Mr. al-Assad said that Syria was now in the “hands of terrorism.”

The comments by the two men, the past and present faces of a country decimated by a 13-year civil war, came as the rebel alliance sought to fill the power vacuum left by the collapse of Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian government, and foreign governments and Syria’s minorities looked for indications of the country’s new direction.

Mr. al-Shara appears to be making rapid progress toward international recognition, with a parade of officials from the United Nations, Europe and the Middle East descending on Damascus to meet with him or reopen embassies.

He met on Sunday with the United Nations special envoy to Syria, Geir O. Pedersen. France’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that a team of diplomats would travel to Syria on Tuesday. And Turkey and Qatar were in the process of reopening their embassies in Damascus.

Mr. al-Shara and Mr. al-Assad’s dueling remarks occurred as the Kurdish-led administration in Syria’s northeast called for unity on Monday with the new authorities in Damascus and an end to all military operations in the country.

And the United States Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said it had conducted airstrikes on Monday targeting Islamic State forces in central Syria, killing 12 of what it described as operatives. Central Command said the airstrikes had been conducted in areas formerly controlled by the Assad government and Russia, which has two military bases in the country.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said on Monday that there had been “no final decisions” on the future of Russia’s bases in Syria. He added that Russia was “in contact” with the new Syrian authorities.

Journalists for The New York Times witnessed a convoy of Russian military vehicles — including armored personnel carriers, supply trucks and mobile surface-to-air systems — traveling along a highway between Russia’s two bases in Syria. Satellite imagery on Friday appeared to show Moscow’s forces packing up military equipment at their bases with hulking transport aircraft waiting nearby.

Along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes, targeting former Syrian Army positions including air defense sites and missile warehouses, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization based in Britain that tracks the conflict in Syria, said on Monday. Israel has struck Syria more than 450 times since the collapse of the Assad government, according to the observatory. Israel has said it aimed to prevent “extremists” from seizing the sites and any weapons there.

Since Mr. al-Assad was deposed, Israel’s military has occupied an expanse of territory in Syria as well as a buffer zone between the two countries, including on the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon. Israel has given no timeline for its departure.

On Sunday, the Israeli government unanimously approved plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expand settlements in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, part of an $11 million plan to double the population in the area seized from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967.

In the interview on Monday, Mr. al-Shara criticized the Israeli military’s advance into and beyond the buffer zone. He said that Syria would continue to abide by the 1974 agreement that followed the end of the Yom Kippur war and called on the international community to make sure that Israel followed it, as well. Israel no longer needed to hold that land to protect itself, he said, because the toppling of the Assad regime had removed the threat to Israel from Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias.

Mr. al-Shara, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, spoke in Arabic with a group of nine journalists — eight men and one woman, including a New York Times reporter — in the reception room of a cavernous government building that until recently had held the prime minister’s office. The rebel leader called for sanctions placed on the Assad regime to be lifted, emphasizing that they had been imposed on “the executioner”— meaning Mr. al-Assad, who was now gone — and that Syria needed to prioritize building a state and creating public institutions that served all residents.

For the interview, he had shed his military uniform and wore a gray suit and a blue shirt, with no tie. Mobile phones and recording devices were not allowed inside. Asked about his change in attire, Mr. al-Shara, who until recently went by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said the time for military affairs had ended with the fall of Mr. al-Assad. Now, he said, it was time for Syria to rebuild.

“We were in military uniforms because there was a battle,” he said. “When we have civilian meetings, we wear civilian clothes.”

He called for the terrorism label on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that evolved from an Al Qaeda affiliate, to be lifted. The U.S. government designated the group a terrorist organization and still has a $10 million bounty for information about the leader. But he played down having the terrorism designation imposed on him personally. “That is not very important to me,” he said.

The Biden administration has said it is watching the new Syrian government for signs that it is including minority groups, does not harbor terrorists and facilitates the flow of humanitarian aid.

Mr. al-Assad, the man Mr. al-Shara deposed, defended his record during the country’s brutal civil war in his statement on social media. He said he had not considered stepping down or seeking refuge as the rebels advanced, but wanted to remain in Damascus, “carrying out my duties.”

But on Dec. 8, when the rebels began to bear down on Damascus after overrunning other key cities like Aleppo, he moved “in coordination with our Russian allies” to the Syrian coastal city of Latakia and later arrived at Russia’s Hmeimim air base nearby, he said.

“As the field situation in the area continued to deteriorate, the Russian military base itself came under intensified attack by drone strikes,” Mr. al-Assad said in the post, which was published in English and in Arabic. “With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday Dec. 8.”

His account of his flight from Syria could not be independently confirmed.

In the statement, Mr. al-Assad defended his record in office, saying he had “refused to barter the salvation of his nation for personal gain.” At times referring to himself in the third person, he said his bond with Syria and its people remained “unshaken.”

Since his ouster, personal photos of Mr. al-Assad have flooded the internet, including images of the former president swimming, frolicking in the snow and posing shirtless. The candid photos, which are drawing ridicule from the Syrians who had lived in fear under his iron grip, could not be independently verified. News outlets said they had been taken from the Assad residences ransacked across the country.

Reporting was contributed by Vivian Yee, Euan Ward, Alex Pena, Neil Collier, Eve Sampson and Anton Troianovski.