• Hundreds protest after Christmas tree burned
• 25,000 return home from Turkiye
• US believes missing journalist Austin Tice is alive

DAMASCUS: Syria’s new leaders announced on Tuesday that they had reached an agreement with the country’s rebel groups on their dissolution and integration under the defence ministry.

Absent from the meeting were representatives of the US-backed, Kurdish-led forces that control swathes of Syria’s northeast.

Moreover, Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus to protest the burning of a Christmas tree near Hama in central Syria, agency journalists witnessed.

“We demand the rights of Christians,” protesters chanted as they marched through the Syrian capital towards the headquarters of the Orthodox Patriarchate in the Bab Sharqi neighbourhood.

Journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, is still alive, US group Hostage Aid Worldwide said on Tuesday though it did not offer concrete information on his whereabouts.

“We have data that Austin is alive till January 2024, but the president of the US said in August that he is alive, and we are sure that he is alive today,” Hostage Aid Worldwide’s Nizar Zakka said.

“We are trying to be as transparent as possible and to share as much information as possible.”

At a press conference in Damascus, Zakka showed an image he said indicated the locations where Tice had been held from Nov 2017 to Feb 2024.

Dissolution of fighters groups

The meeting between the rebel groups and Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa “ended in an agreement on the dissolution of all the groups and their integration under the supervision of the ministry of defence”, said a statement carried by the SANA news agency and the authorities’ Telegram account.

The announcement comes just over two weeks after president Bashar al-Assad fled Syria, following a lightning offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group.

On Sunday Sharaa, long known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, had said the new authorities would “absolutely not allow there to be weapons in the country outside state control”. That also applied to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), he said.

SDF spokesman Farhad Shami said the question of his group’s integration into the national armed forces “should be discussed directly”.

He did not dismiss the possibility, saying that doing so would strengthen “the whole of Syria”. Shami added that his forces prefer “dialogue with Damascus to resolve all questions”.

Protests in Christian-majority town

Tuesday’s protests come a little more than two weeks after an armed coalition led by fighter group toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad.

A demonstrator who gave his name as Georges said he was protesting “injustice against Christians”. “If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don’t belong here anymore,” he said.

The protests erupted after a video spread on social media showing hooded fighters setting fire to a Christmas tree in the Christian-majority town of Suqaylabiyah, near Hama.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the fighters were foreigners from the religious group Ansar al-Tawhid.

In another video posted to social media, a religious leader from Syria’s victorious Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) addressed residents, claiming those who torched the tree were “not Syrian” and promising they would be punished.

“The tree will be restored and lit up by tomorrow morning”, he said.

25,000 Syrians return home

More than 25,000 Syrians have returned home from Turkiye since Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by Islamist-led HTS rebels, Turkiye’s interior minister said on Tuesday.

“The number of people returning to Syria in the last 15 days has exceeded 25,000,” Ali Yerlikaya told the official Anadolu news agency.

Ankara is in close touch with Syria’s new leaders and now focussing on the voluntary return of Syrian refugees, hoping the shift in power in Damascus will allow many of them to return home.

Yerlikaya said a migration office would be established in the Turkish embassy and consulate in Damascus and Aleppo so that the records of returning Syrians could be kept.

Yerlikaya said one person from each family will be given the right to enter and exit three times from January 1 to July 2025 under regulations to be drafted upon Erdogan’s instructions. Syrians returning to their country will be able to take their belongings and cars with them, he added.

American journalist

Hostage Aid Worldwide says it is working with Tice’s family and the US authorities. Tice, 43, was working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS and other media outlets in Syria.

He went missing near Damascus in August 2012. The authorities under ousted president Bashar al-Assad never said they had him in custody. Tice’s mother Debra said earlier this month that she had information that her son was alive, while Syria’s new leadership said it was searching for him.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2024