Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa acknowledged that protesters in his country have a legitimate cause. The admission came after large demonstrations in Syria earlier this week. Al-Sharaa called for unity, a call that came almost a year after his group toppled the regime of then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, AFP reported.
Thousands of people protested on Tuesday in several coastal cities in Syria to express their outrage at recent violence against the Alawite minority. They were the largest protests since Assad was ousted from power in December last year. Assad himself is an Alawite.
The protests followed a wave of violence in the city of Homs, in central Syria. Homs is home to a diverse mix of faiths and branches of Islam. The wave of violence there followed the killing of a Sunni Bedouin couple on Sunday. The crime was blamed on Alawites because of religious graffiti found at the scene. The wave of violence sparked the protests.
"In the last two days, we have seen many legitimate reasons for the people, although some of them are politically motivated," said Ash-Sharaa during a telephone conversation with the governor of the Alawite city of Latakia.
"National unity is a fundamental and necessary pillar. "It is time to end the divisions that have been in the minds of Syrians for over 60 years," the president said, referring to the period of rule by the Assad dynasty.
In March, violence on the Syrian coast, a bastion of the Alawites, killed more than 1,700 people, mostly Alawites. The violence then followed clashes between the new security forces and Assad supporters.
“The Syrian coast is one of the government's priorities, but it cannot be governed by an independent authority isolated from the rest of the regions, because without access to the sea, Syria will lose a fundamental part of its strategic and economic power,“ said Ash-Sharaa today.
The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and lasted until 2024, has caused great damage to Syria's infrastructure. Now the new authorities are looking for funds to rebuild the country. The cost of this reconstruction will exceed $216 billion, according to the World Bank.
At the same time, in a televised address to Syrians, Ash Shaaraa called on them to take to the streets of Syrian cities today to express their joy that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was overthrown a year ago, DPA reported.
Ash Shaaraa congratulated Syrians on the first anniversary of the start of the battle to liberate all of Syria and recalled that this battle had defeated "a criminal regime in all its forms" and Syrians should express their joy at this.