The leader of Syria’s rebel government said that producing a new constitution and holding elections for public office may take years.
“Drafting a new constitution or making amendments will take experts a long time, maybe two or three years. God knows,” Ahmad al-Sharaa, leader of the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, told Saudi Arabian outlet Al Arabiya in a Sunday interview.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham took control of the country at the beginning of December, overthrowing President Bashar Assad in a devastating campaign that easily marched through the country and into Damascus.
Assad escaped to Moscow with his family through the last-minute assistance of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Now, the United Nations has put pressure on Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham to make good on its promises to remake Syria into a modern nation that respects human rights for all ethnic and religious groups.
“There is a lot of hope that we can now see the beginning of a new Syria,” U.N. special envoy Geir Pedersen said last week. “A new Syria that … will adopt a new constitution … and that we will have free and fair elections when that time comes, after a transitional period.”
Sharaa has promised to dissolve the terrorist militia and transition power from military officers to political bureaucrats. But this process, he now warns, could take years.
“We are now in the re-foundation of the country and not just managing the country […] There is a lot of destruction in the country because of a regime that ruled for more than 50 years,” Sharaa said.
“The opportunity that was given to us today doesn’t present itself every four or five years,” he continued. “The constitution must regulate society so that the previous experience does not repeat itself and Syria heads to the same direction it was in for the past 60 years.”
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Whether or not the nation will be governed under an Islamist ideology remains the most pressing concern among minority communities.
Assad, while widely seen as an oppressive dictator and accused of using chemical weapons against his own people, was championed as a protector of Shiite Muslim sects, Christian communities, and other religious groups.
