New Kuwait Emir Sheikh Mishal pledges to be a ‘loyal citizen’ for nation, people

Update New Kuwait Emir Sheikh Mishal pledges to be a ‘loyal citizen’ for nation, people
Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah was sworn in before parliament as the 17th Emir of Kuwait. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 20 December 2023
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New Kuwait Emir Sheikh Mishal pledges to be a ‘loyal citizen’ for nation, people

New Kuwait Emir Sheikh Mishal pledges to be a ‘loyal citizen’ for nation, people
  • Saudi king, crown prince sent cables of congratulations to new emir of Kuwait
  • Kuwait's cabinet submits its resignation to Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad

KUWAIT:  Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah Wednesday pledged to be a “loyal citizen” for his nation and people, and underlined that executive and legislative authorities should cooperate to serve best interest of Kuwait.

“Today I have become head of the state and I pledge to the Kuwaiti people through you to be a loyal citizen for his nation and people, keen on the interest of the nation, keen on national unity,” as well as development, progress and prosperity, Sheikh Mishal said in a speech before the parliament, after being sworn in as the 17th ruler of Kuwait.

“The task is heavy and the oath is great,” he said, in a report from state news agency KUNA.

In his first speech after being sworn in as the new head of state, the emir said ‘it was necessary to review Kuwait’s current reality, especially in terms of security, economy and living conditions.’

“I have stressed in my previous speeches that there are national obligations that must be fulfilled. We have not noticed any change or correction” from parliament and cabinet, he added.
Instead, the two entities have “harmed the interests of the people and the country,” he said.

Sheikh Mishal pledged to temporarily halt promotions and new appointments, after already signing a decree on December 5 ordering a three-month pause in state hiring that is open to extension.

“We have warned on many occasions that crises, challenges and dangers surround us,” he said, underscoring “the necessity to reconsider our current reality in all its aspects”.

The new ruler earlier read: “I swear by Almighty Allah to respect the Constitution and the laws of the State, to defend the liberties, interests and properties of the people and to safeguard the independence and territorial integrity of the country,” as stated in article 60 of the Kuwaiti constitution.

Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah passed away on Saturday at the age of 86, the Amiri Diwan said in a broadcasted statement earlier, and then-Crown Prince Sheikh Mishal was declared the new Emir.

Saudi King Salman has sent a cable of congratulation to Sheikh Mishal on the occasion of his accession to power. 

“Congratulations to Your Highness on assuming the reins of power in the State of Kuwait to continue the path led by the dear late brother Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, affirming the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s support for the sisterly State of Kuwait.” 

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent a similar message, saying: “We are confident that your efforts will bear fruit with benefit and goodness.”

Kuwait’s cabinet submitted its resignation to the country’s new emir shortly after he was sworn in, state news agency KUNA reported.


Jordan to host Syria talks after Damascus erupts in celebration

Jordan to host Syria talks after Damascus erupts in celebration
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Jordan to host Syria talks after Damascus erupts in celebration

Jordan to host Syria talks after Damascus erupts in celebration
  • While Syrians celebrate the end of Assad’s brutal rule, they face a struggle for necessities in a country ravaged by war, sanctions and runaway inflation
Damascus: Jordan will host US, EU, Turkish and Arab diplomats on Saturday for high-level talks on Syria, a day after celebrations in Damascus and nationwide rejoicing at the ouster of president Bashar Assad.
Syrians celebrated the day they called the “Friday of victory” with fireworks heralding the fall of the Assad dynasty.
More than half a century of brutal rule by his clan came to a sudden end on Sunday, after a lightning rebel offensive swept across the country and took the capital.
Assad’s fall has also led to fast-moving diplomatic developments, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken among envoys set to discuss Syria on Saturday in the Jordanian city of Aqaba.
Turkiye, meanwhile, will reopen its embassy in Damascus, closed since 2012 amid calls by Ankara for Assad to step down.
A Qatari diplomat said a delegation from the Gulf emirate would visit Syria on Sunday to meet transitional government officials and discuss aid and the reopening of their embassy.
Unlike other Arab states, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011.
Assad has fled Syria, closing an era in which suspected dissidents were jailed or killed, and capping nearly 14 years of war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.
’Tears of joy’
Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani, head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) which spearheaded the offensive, had called on Syrians “to go to the streets to express their joy.”
Celebrations continued into the night on the first Friday — the Muslim day of rest and prayer — since Assad took flight.
Umayyad Square in Damascus was jammed with vehicles, people and waving flags as fireworks shot into the air, AFPTV live images showed.
Thousands flocked to the capital’s landmark Umayyad Mosque, some raising the three-star Syrian independence flag that none dared wave in the capital during Assad’s repressive rule.
Crowds also gathered in the squares and streets of other Syrian cities, including Homs, Hama and Idlib.
There was a festive and relaxed atmosphere as hundreds rallied in the main square of Syria’s second city Aleppo, a scene of fierce fighting during the country’s civil war, AFP correspondents said.
A huge billboard depicting Assad and his father Hafez was set on fire.
Ahmad Abd Al-Majed, 39, an engineer who returned to Aleppo from Turkiye, said that many shed “tears of joy and happiness.”
“Syrians deserve to be happy,” he said.
In the southern city of Sweida, the heartland of Syria’s Druze minority, Bayan Al-Hinnawi, 77, never believed he would live to see such a day.
“It’s a wonderful sight. Nobody could have imagined this could happen,” said Hinnawi, who spent 17 years in prison.
Tens of thousands missing
Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and designated a terrorist organization by many Western governments.
The group has sought to moderate its rhetoric, and the interim government insists the rights of all Syrians will be protected — as will the rule of law.
The European Union was seeking “to establish contacts” with the new rulers soon, an EU official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The UN refugee agency said the new government had sent “constructive” initial signals, including asking the organization to stay in the country.
Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) democratic countries, who met virtually on Friday, expressed hope for “a peaceful and orderly transition through the definition of an inclusive political process” in Syria.
Inside much of Syria, the focus is turning toward unraveling the secrets of Assad’s rule, particularly the network of detention centers and suspected torture sites.
Syrians have descended upon prisons, hospitals and morgues in search of long-disappeared loved ones.
“I turned the world upside down looking,” Abu Mohammed told AFP as he searched for news of three missing relatives at the Mazzeh air base in Damascus.
“We just want a hint of where they were.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it documented more than 35,000 disappearances during Assad’s rule, with the actual number likely far higher.
While Syrians celebrate the end of Assad’s brutal rule, they face a struggle for necessities in a country ravaged by war, sanctions and runaway inflation.
On Friday, the EU announced the launch of an “air bridge” operation to deliver an initial 50 tons of health supplies via neighboring Turkiye.
Israel ready to stay in buffer zone
Assad was propped up by Russia — where a senior Russian official told US media he has fled — as well as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told private NTV television that his country had urged Russia and Iran not to intervene militarily “to ensure minimum loss of life.”
The rebels launched their offensive on November 27, the same day a ceasefire took effect in the Israel-Hezbollah war, which saw Israel inflict staggering losses on Assad’s Lebanese ally.
Both Israel and Turkiye, which backs some of the rebels who ousted Assad, have since carried out strikes inside Syria.
Israel’s latest strikes hit military sites in the Eastern Qalamun region, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Saturday.
Israel has also sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, in a move the UN said violated a 1974 armistice.
The army has been ordered to “prepare to remain” there throughout the winter, Defense Minister Israel Katz’s office said Friday.

OIC condemns ‘horrific’ Israeli attack on Gaza’s Nuseirat camp that killed dozens

OIC condemns ‘horrific’ Israeli attack on Gaza’s Nuseirat camp that killed dozens
Updated 14 December 2024
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OIC condemns ‘horrific’ Israeli attack on Gaza’s Nuseirat camp that killed dozens

OIC condemns ‘horrific’ Israeli attack on Gaza’s Nuseirat camp that killed dozens

RIYADH: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Friday denounced the killing of 33 Palestinians in a crowded Gaza camp as Israel continued its attacks on the enclave.
“The act is considered an extension of organized terrorism and continuous genocide that has been ongoing for more than fourteen months against the Palestinian people,” the organization said in an Arabic statement.
The attack, which the OIC called “horrific,” was on a post office in Nuseirat and follows a long list of Israeli attacks which have killed civilians in dense makeshift camps in the Gaza Strip. Israel claims to be targeting Palestinian militants in the strikes.
Relatives of the deceased wept and read verses of the Qur’an as they gathered at Al-Awda Hospital before burying their loved ones on Friday.
“Every time things happen and we say there will be a truce and we will rest... After that, they change their minds, they change their minds, we don’t know why,” Mattar said.
“They have killed the hope and optimism,” said Suheil Mattar, whose grandchildren and daughter-in-law were killed.
Gaza health officials said Friday that at least 44,875 people had been killed in more than 14 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants. Over 105,454 people have been wounded during the same period, according to the enclave’s health ministry.

— with input from Reuters


Who was in ousted Syrian President Assad’s inner circle and where are they now?

Who was in ousted Syrian President Assad’s inner circle and where are they now?
Updated 14 December 2024
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Who was in ousted Syrian President Assad’s inner circle and where are they now?

Who was in ousted Syrian President Assad’s inner circle and where are they now?
  • Some 8,000 Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing in recent days, according to two Lebanese security officials & a judicial official, and about 5,000 have left the neighboring country through Beirut’s international airport

BEIRUT: After insurgents toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad this month, many senior officials and members of his dreaded intelligence and security services appear to have melted away. Activists say some of them have managed to flee the country while others went to hide in their hometowns.
For more than five decades, the Assad family has ruled Syria with an iron grip, locking up those who dared question their power in the country’s notorious prisons, where rights groups say inmates were regularly tortured or killed.
The leader of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham insurgent group — which led anti-government fighters who forced Assad from power — has vowed to bring those who carried out such abuses to justice.
“We will go after them in our country,” said HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who was previously known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani. He added that the group will also ask foreign countries to hand over any suspects.
But finding those responsible for abuses could prove difficult.
Some 8,000 Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing in recent days, according to two Lebanese security officials and a judicial official, and about 5,000 have left the neighboring country through Beirut’s international airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Most of those are presumed to be regular people, and Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said earlier this week that no Syrian official entered Lebanon through a legal border crossing.
In an apparent effort to prevent members of Assad’s government from escaping, the security officials said a Lebanese officer who was in charge of Masnaa was ordered to go on vacation because of his links to Assad’s brother.
But Rami Abdurrhaman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says several senior officers have nonetheless made it to neighboring Lebanon using travel documents with fake names.
Here’s a look at Assad and some of the officials in his inner circle.
Bashar Assad
The Western-educated ophthalmologist initially raised hopes that he would be unlike his strongman father, Hafez, when he took power in 2000, including freeing political prisoners and allowing for a more open discourse.
But when protests of his rule erupted in March 2011, Assad turned to brutal tactics to crush dissent. As the uprising became an outright civil war, he unleashed his military to blast opposition-held cities, with support from allies Iran and Russia.
He has fled to Moscow, according to Russian state media.
Maher Assad
The younger brother of the ousted president was the commander of the 4th Armored Division, which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centers. He is under US and European sanctions. He disappeared over the weekend, and Abdurrhaman said he made it to Russia.
Last year, French authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Maher Assad, along with his brother and two army generals, for alleged complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity, including in a 2013 chemical attack on rebel-held Damascus suburbs.
Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk
Mamlouk was a security adviser to Assad and former head of the intelligence services. He is wanted in Lebanon for two explosions in the northern city of Tripoli in 2012 that killed and wounded dozens.
Mamlouk is also wanted in France after a court convicted him and others in absentia of complicity in war crimes and sentenced them to life in prison. The trial focused on the officials’ role in the 2013 arrest in Damascus of a Franco-Syrian man and his son and their subsequent torture and killing.
Abdurrahman said Mamlouk fled to Lebanon, and it is not clear if he is still in the country under the protection of Hezbollah.
Brig. Gen. Suheil Al-Hassan
Al-Hassan was the commander of the 25th Special Missions Forces Division and later became the head of the Syrian Special Forces, which were key to many of the government’s battlefield victories in the long-running civil war, including in Aleppo and the eastern suburbs of Damascus that long held off Assad’s troops.
Al-Hassan is known to have close ties to Russia and was praised by Russian President Vladimir Putin during one of his visits to Syria. Al-Hassan’s whereabouts are not known.
Maj. Gen. Hussam Luka
Luka, head of the General Security Directorate intelligence service, is not well known among the wider public but has played a major role in the crackdown against the opposition, mainly in the central city of Homs that was dubbed the “capital of the Syrian revolt.”
Luka has been sanctioned by the US and Britain for his role in the crackdown. It’s not clear where he is.
Maj. Gen. Qahtan Khalil
Khalil, whose whereabouts are also unknown, was head of the Air Force Intelligence service and is widely known as the “Butcher of Daraya” for allegedly leading a 2012 attack on a Damascus suburb of the same name that killed hundreds of people.
Other officials
— Retired Maj. Gen. Jamil Hassan, former head of the Air Force Intelligence service, is also suspected of bearing responsibility for the attack in Daraya. Hassan was among those convicted in France this year along with Mamlouk.
— Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ali Abbas and Maj. Gen. Bassam Merhej Al-Hassan, head of Bashar Assad’s office and the man in charge of his security, are accused of human rights violations.

 


Turkiye says told Russia, Iran not to intervene militarily in Syria rebel push

Turkiye says told Russia, Iran not to intervene militarily in Syria rebel push
Updated 14 December 2024
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Turkiye says told Russia, Iran not to intervene militarily in Syria rebel push

Turkiye says told Russia, Iran not to intervene militarily in Syria rebel push
  • Turkiye’s aim was to “hold focused talks with the two important power players to ensure minimum loss of life,” Fidan said

ANKARA: Turkiye said Friday it had urged Russia and Iran not to intervene militarily to support Bashar Assad’s forces as Islamist-led rebels mounted their lightning advance on Damascus that ended with the Syrian strongman’s ouster.
“The most important thing was to talk to the Russians and Iranians to ensure that they didn’t enter the equation militarily. We had meetings with (them) and they understood,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Turkiye’s private NTV television.
He said if Moscow and Tehran, both key Assad allies since the start of the civil war in 2011, had come to the Syrian president’s aid, the rebels could still have won but the outcome could have been far more violent.

In this image from video provided by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Defense Minister Ali Abbas gives a televised statement about the fall of Bashar Assad’s government, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024. (AP)

“If Assad had received support, the opposition could have achieved victory with their determination, but it would have taken a long time and could have been bloody,” he said.
Turkiye’s aim was to “hold focused talks with the two important power players to ensure minimum loss of life,” Fidan said.
When the Islamist-led HTS rebel alliance first began its offensive on November 27, Moscow and Tehran initially offered Assad military support to hold off the rebels.
But the scale of the collapse of Assad’s forces took them by surprise.
And it came at a time when both nations were caught up with problems of their own: Russia mired in the war with Ukraine, and Iran’s proxies including Lebanon’s Hezbollah taking a major battering from Israel.
They quickly realized the game was up, that Assad “was no longer someone to invest in” and “there was no point anymore,” the Turkish minister added.
Turkiye expressed support for the rebels with experts saying it even gave its green light for the offensive by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), without being directly involved.
Many nations, especially in the region, have expressed concern about HTS, which is rooted in Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch and proscribed by many Western governments as a terror organization.
But Fidan said it was “perfectly normal” to have such concerns about HTS, which would “need to be resolved.”
“No one knows them as well as we do, we want a Syria without terrorism, not posing a threat to the countries in the region.”
Since 2016, Turkiye has held considerable sway over northwestern Syria, maintaining a working relationship with HTS which ran most of the Idlib area, which was Syria’s last bastion of opposition.
With open lines of communication with HTS, Turkiye was relaying such concerns directly to them, he said.
“We reflect our friends’ concerns to them and ensure they take steps. They have made many announcements and people see they are on the right track,” he said.
The message that Ankara was sending to the new administration in Damascus was: “This is what Turkiye — which has stood by you for years — expects. And this is what the world expects,” he said.

 


Turkiye to reopen its embassy in Syria for the first time since 2012 in wake of Assad’s fall

Turkiye to reopen its embassy in Syria for the first time since 2012 in wake of Assad’s fall
Updated 13 December 2024
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Turkiye to reopen its embassy in Syria for the first time since 2012 in wake of Assad’s fall

Turkiye to reopen its embassy in Syria for the first time since 2012 in wake of Assad’s fall
  • “It will be operational as of tomorrow,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan

ANKARA: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says that Türkiye’s Embassy in Syria’s capital of Damascus will reopen on Saturday, for the first time since 2012.
In an interview with Türkiye’s NTV television Fidan said a newly appointed interim charge d’affaires had left for Damascus on Friday together with his delegation.
“It will be operational as of tomorrow,” he said.
The Embassy in Damascus had suspended operations in 2012 due to the escalating security conditions during the Syrian civil war. All embassy staff and their families were recalled to Türkiye.