U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Tuesday that Syria might be getting ready to a brand new civil conflict of “epic proportions,” urging assist for the transitional management.
“It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, are maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up,” Rubio advised a U.S. Senate listening to.
The prime U.S. diplomat spoke after a collection of bloody assaults on the Alawite and Druze minorities in Syria, the place anti-regime-led fighters in December toppled Bashar Assad in a lightning offensive after a brutal civil conflict that started in 2011.
U.S. President Donald Trump final week, on a go to to Saudi Arabia, introduced a lifting of Assad-era sanctions and met with the chief who’s now Syria’s transitional president, Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Al-Sharaa, clad in a swimsuit and complimented by Trump as a “young, attractive guy,” was till just lately on a U.S. wished checklist.
Rubio quipped: “The transitional authority figures, they didn’t pass their background check with the FBI.”
But he added: “If we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out. If we did not engage them, it was guaranteed to not work out.”
Rubio, who additionally met with Syria’s international minister in Türkiye on Thursday, blamed the renewed violence on the legacy of Assad, a largely secular chief who hailed from the Alawite sect.
“They are dealing with deep internal distrust in that country, because Assad deliberately pitted these groups against each other,” Rubio stated.
Assad, Syria’s dictator for practically 25 years, fled to Russia on Dec. 8, ending the Baath Party regime, which had been in energy since 1963.
Al-Sharaa, who led anti-regime forces to oust Assad, was declared president for a transitional interval in late January.
Source: www.dailysabah.com