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Senior US officials are in Syria making the first face-to-face contact with rebel groups took over the country in a blitzkrieg earlier this month, its mission was to search kidnapped American journalist Austin Tice and other missing Americans.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, Senior Middle East Adviser Daniel Rubinstein and US Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens are in the region, although a news conference in Damascus was canceled on Friday due to security concerns, a US official announced.
They are the first US diplomats to visit Syria since Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. fled from Damascus at the beginning of this month, in the middle of a takeover of the country led by the US-designated terrorist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, known as HTS.
A State Department spokesman told The Hill that U.S. officials hope to uncover information about the fate of Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012 while reporting on the civil war.
They are also looking for information Then Kamalmaza psychologist who traveled to Syria in 2017 and disappeared a day after his arrival. He was detained at a Syrian government checkpoint in Mezzeh, a suburb of Damascus, and has not been seen or heard from since, according to an FBI alert.
The spokesman said U.S. officials are seeking information about other Americans who disappeared under the Assad regime but he did not name them. Amid the rebel takeover, opposition forces liberated Assad’s notoriously hellish prisons, freeing those wrongfully detained, including a missing American, Travis Timmermanand who was recently returned in the USA
A State Department spokesman told The Hill that US officials are meeting with HTS representatives to discuss their government transition plans.
The United States, along with Arab, European and United Nations partners, released a set of “principles” last week exhibiting a peaceful transition to a Syrian-led civilian government, protection of minorities and responsible destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons, as necessary to normalize relations.
The United States has sanctions against HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, also known as Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, for terrorism. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration is watching the group’s actions moving forward as it considers whether to lift any sanctions.
“What we have heard them say is positive. The question is: What are they really going to do?” he said in an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday.
The United States and its partners have called on al-Golani and all groups exercising control in Syria to ensure the protection of minorities and women and to transition to a “Syrian-led and Syrian-owned” government and that includes the political participation of minorities. and women
US officials also met with Syrian civil society groups and the Syrian Civil Defense, known as the White Helmets, who shared a photo of them together in a publication on social platform X.
“We emphasized the need for regional actors to commit to a coordinated plan to support political transition and reconstruction,” the group wrote alongside the photo.
“The discussions also sought to address the challenges in northeastern Syria while safeguarding the unity and sovereignty of Syria, guaranteeing equal citizenship rights for all components of the Syrian people, and paving the way for to a just and inclusive future,” they continued. “We also presented the White Helmets’ response to the evolving context through our emergency, resilience and justice programs.”
