Syria is free of its dictator. The rebels’ biggest challenge now is learning how to govern

The sound of celebratory gunfire filled the streets of Damascus in the hours following the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

But the jubilant scenes at the weekend that greeted the end of half a century of tyranny could not mask the scale of the challenge facing the victorious Islamist rebels whose lightning advance on the Syrian capital captured the world’s attention.

Those rebels – led by the group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) – must now try to unite a country cleaved apart by more than a decade of civil war, one in which dozens of heavily armed militias and remnants of the old regime linger.

The chaos that followed in the hours after the capital’s fall gave a stark reminder of the enormity of that task.

At least 28 people were killed by that celebratory gunfire, the Syrian health minister told Al-Arabiya news channel. Meanwhile, civilians broke into Assad’s palaces, looted shops and stole bags of cash from the central bank – prompting the rebels to declare a 13-hour curfew.

By nightfall, other than the occasional stray bullet, the silence was punctuated only by the sound of airstrikes. Israel has since said it struck “strategic weapons systems, residual chemical weapons capabilities and long-ranging rockets” that belonged to Assad’s army.

The rebels had dreamt of this day for years, but even they appear to have been surprised by the speed and ease of their advance.

Now their rush is to keep the lid on Syria’s Pandora’s box, avoid a power vacuum and prevent the sort of chaos that almost inevitably arises when a 50-year regime topples in a matter of days.

Assad planned to ‘abandon the government’

For now, it is not even entirely clear what form the next government will take.

After the capture of Damascus, the rebels instructed Assad’s Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali to continue his duties alongside his cabinet until a transitional team is assigned.

But Jalali had few answers on the future of the city’s governance when he spoke to Sky News Arabia.

His colleagues seemed equally unsure.

The vacuum facing the rebels could even be seen as a parting gift from Assad.

Assad, who has not issued any public statements since the rebel advance began two weeks ago, appeared to have planned to “abandon his government, his people and his country and leave it in chaos” if the situation deteriorated, his prime minister said. “Perhaps to send a message to the people that ‘it is either me, or chaos’.”

Jalali said he had spoken to Assad hours before the president fled to Moscow, to express concern about the rebels’ movements, but the president was indifferent.

“When I told him the situation is critical, people are fleeing Homs toward the coast and the armed forces have collapsed… his response was ‘we’ll attend to it tomorrow,’” the prime minister said. “I was surprised.”

From Al Qaeda to a statesman

For now, the answers to the country’s immediate future appear to lie with the leader of the HTS rebel coalition, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (real name, Ahmad Al Sharaa), who met Jalali, the outgoing prime minister, on Monday morning.

Jolani’s arrival in Damascus Saturday marked his first return to the city where he was raised since leaving two decades ago to join Al Qaeda’s fight against US forces in Iraq. For four years, he had led Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the Al-Nusra Front but he eventually split from it, declared war on its rival ISIS, and orchestrated the killing of its leader.

The group he leads is among the more organized of the many rebel factions who took part in the offensive, having spent the past few years governing 4 million people in Idlib through a semi-technocratic body called the National Salvation Government. It has already mobilized its politicians to govern the major cities – including Syria’s second-largest, Aleppo – that it captured last week, and has deployed its own police forces to secure the streets of Damascus.

“Keep in mind that Idlib is small with no resources, we were able to do a lot in the past,” Al-Jolani told the prime minister in a briefing on the incoming transitional team.

Still, the Islamist group has never ruled over a large territory with diverse religious and ethnic minorities, numerous armed rebel factions, and scarce resources.

“Idlib is a much smaller territory to govern, and three-fourths of the population are displaced people so there’s a lot of UN and NGO assistance in providing aid,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. “HTS only had to focus on a quarter of the population.”

Even in Idlib, Jolani spent years trying to eliminate political threats, while those he governed protested over living conditions and unfair detentions.

He now seeks to create a transitional governing body for 25 million Syrians, and an additional 6 million refugees who fled the country during the civil war.

As if that were not enough, he must at the same time deal with dozens of Turkey-backed militant groups who might refuse to be sidelined in the transitional period, and a powerful armed Kurdish group that controls large territories in northeast Syria.

Then there are the powerful Iran-backed militias in neighboring Iraq to consider.

‘Anyone is better than Assad’

For instance, minority religious groups like Alawites, Ismailis, Druze and Christians, will have to reckon with the potential application of a strict interpretation of Sharia law, which the rebels have said they will seek to implement.

Human rights groups are also concerned, with some having accused HTS and other anti-regime groups of torturing and abusing dissidents in areas under their control – including in the northwestern Idlib, western Homs, and Aleppo governorates.

Even so, there are many in Damascus who like Ranim, a 45-year-old mother-of-two, are cautiously optimistic, saying “anyone is better than Assad.”

Life had not yet returned to normal, Ranim conceded, but she was willing to wait and see.

“There are people worried about Islamic rule and the rebel factions, but in my opinion if we’ve waited through 50 years of Assad’s rule, why not give a chance to those who gave their lives and exerted effort to liberate us,” she said.