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President Joe Biden he said that Syria and beyond The Middle East faced a “historic chance” for peace and establishment the new Syrian state with the fall of Bashar Al-AssadGovernment on Sunday.
The American president spoke from the White House and called this moment a positive development of the situation, warning that it is important to ensure an “independent” Syrian government that “serves all Syrians.”
“After 13 years of civil war in Syria, more than half a century of brutal authoritarian rule by Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, rebel forces forced Assad to resign from office, flee the country,” the president said in his address.
“Finally, the Assad regime has fallen,” Biden said on Sunday. “This is a moment of historic opportunity for the suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country.”
He added that while it was unclear where exactly Bashar Al-Assad and the dictator’s closest advisers were at this time, they appeared to have fled to Moscow. Russian state media, according to Reuters, made similar claims.
Speaking to reporters after the president finished his remarks, a senior US official added that a stockpile of chemical weapons known to have been in the Assad regime’s possession before his fall was being closely monitored.
“We have good faith in this kind of thing,” they said. “I just want to assure you that we are doing everything we can to prudently ensure that these materials are either not available to anyone or that they are taken care of.”
A White House official said the US would look for further signs of positive leadership from the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as well as the Turkish-backed coalition of groups known as the Syrian National Army, which now claim large swaths of the country.
Parts of HTS itself were once officially affiliated with Al Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, although its leader now claims its ideologies have evolved.
The fall of the Syrian government this week was sudden and came in the face of a widespread rebel offensive that swept through the cities of Homs and Aleppo in the days immediately preceding the fall.
It is the end of Syria’s decade-long civil war, which began during the region-wide “Arab Spring” phenomenon under the Obama administration and quickly became a shockingly brutal and bloody conflict as Bashar al-Assad, backed by Iran-backed militias, including Hezbollah as as well as Russia, beat the rebel forces and occupied the areas, pushing them away from the capital.
US officials have publicly called for Assad to step down for years, though those calls have weakened since Obama left office.
This is breaking news. More to come…