Britain’s influence spreads through new Syria as security chief meets post-Assad leaders

The UK’s National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell recently held a low-key meeting with the new Syrian administration, sources have disclosed, boosting suggestions he will play a leading role in relations.

Mr Powell, who served as chief of staff during Tony Blair’s tenure as prime minister, was appointed to the role of UK National Security Adviser by the Labour government in November, only weeks before the toppling of Bashar Al Assad.

Two sources confirmed a recent meeting between Mr Powell and the post-Assad regime, which built on his historic contacts in the country. His office would not comment.

Britain's relations with the Syrian administration are understood to be good, despite no ministerial visit. Unlike ministers from Germany and France, the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy has yet to visit Damascus since the toppling of dictator Mr Al Assad. France also hosted an international conference on Syria in December.

Instead, the UK is wielding considerable influence in post-Assad Syria, through a combination of political connections, charity operations and a well-networked returning diaspora, The National can reveal.

British Syrians in Damascus are now hoping for the lifting of sanctions to allow for rebuilding and investment after 14 years of civil war.

There has been disappointment from the British-Syrian community about the UK's "low profile" on the issue. But Britain’s long-standing support for the opposition in Syria, plus envoy Ann Snow’s recent engagement with the new administration, has placed UK relations on par with Germany and France, a former diplomat for the traditional Syrian opposition told The National.

"The UK supported change since 2011 and they supported the opposition in many ways. The relationship and contact is there, and there is mutual understanding,” said Walid Saffour, who was exiled to the UK more than 40 years ago and represented the Syrian National Coalition in the UK in 2012, but is not involved in the new Syrian administration.

Meanwhile, a new generation of British Syrians are advising the new administration, although this is not connected to any UK government initiative. Syrians from civil society, political and legal support groups established by diaspora communities in the past 14 years are helping to shape the course of policy.

Their expertise covers law, governance and preservation of civil freedom. The sharp increase in the number of well-attended conferences and workshops taking place in Syria since December indicates that those inside the country are hungry for political participation, paths to justice for victims of past crimes, and knowledge about how their country can be reshaped after more than five decades of one-family rule.

Diaspora links

Some Syrians who have returned are directly participating in the government. Among them is Razan Saffour, Mr Saffour’s daughter, who became a prominent voice of the opposition during the civil war. She travelled with Syria’s interim leader Ahmad Al Shara during his first official state visit to Saudi Arabia and sat in on the meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. She also accompanied Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shibani to the Munich Security Conference last week.

Ms Saffour was born and raised in London, where she studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She travelled to Damascus for the first time in January with her father, and his partially destroyed childhood home in Homs was one of their first stops.

Oxford-educated barrister Ibrahim Al Olabi was appointed as an adviser for human rights to the new administration. Mr Al Olabi practises at law firm Guernica 37 and is the founder of the UK-based NGO Syrian Legal Development Programme.

He is widely regarded as being concerned with achieving justice for Syrians, having worked for years advising European governments and police forces on crimes related to Syria. He was part of the legal team advising the Netherlands on actions to bring the former Syrian regime to account for crimes involving torture.

Powell role

Mr Powell's knowledge of Syria pre-dates the civil war. His brother, Lord Charles Powell, is a trustee of the Said Foundation, set up by British-Syrian businessman and philanthropist Wafic Said. Mr Said met Mr Al Shara in mid-January at the presidential palace in Damascus.

This personal connection and the work done by the Said Foundation has given Mr Powell a long-standing and extensive knowledge of the country and the issues it faces, according to those who know him. As well as the recent meeting is also thought he had established back-channel contact with Hayat Tahrir Al Sham before it took power via Inter Mediate, the negotiation and diplomacy charity he co-founded with Martin Griffiths, the founder and former director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva.

In 2021 it was claimed that Mr Powell had even met Mr Al Shara, although that was denied by the Syrian group.

Mr Powell – who was the chief negotiator in Northern Ireland peace talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement – is an advocate of engagement with terrorist groups and has said that the lessons from the Troubles can be applied to other conflicts.

Britain’s Foreign Office has for several years used paid contractors to help displaced Syrians return home, address community tension between Arabs and Kurds and report back to London on the situation in north-east Syria. Aims of UK-funded projects also included challenging Russian narratives and “amplifying truth and the views of moderate Syrians”, according to government documents.

Taking the appropriate tone with the new regime will be key, according to former British Army officer Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who has written extensively on Syria and has been in the country this month. He acknowledged the new government in Damascus “does not need us to tell them what to do”, but instead requires “advice and resources” to ensure they can achieve their plans.

Writing in The National, Mr de Bretton-Gordon said: “It was ostensibly the British Syrian diaspora from the Syrian British Medical Society (SBMS) and Union of Syrian Medical Charities who kept the medical facilities in Idlib running, giving the residents some hope and the will to carry on.”

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He visited the new Health Ministry and said it would like to replicate what SBMS did across the whole of Syria. “Also, in the same vein they have asked the White Helmets, the civil emergency teams … to run the emergency services now country-wide,” he said.

“The revolution which toppled the old guard in Damascus grew out of north-west Syria, and the interim President … appears to be a viable leader. The Syrians I know, some very close to the new team, tell me they are the real deal.

“Britain is uniquely placed through the British-Syrian diaspora to make a real difference, and opening the British Embassy in Damascus cannot happen soon enough.”

British Syrians hope developments will lead swiftly to a lifting of sanctions. Ghaith Armanazi, a British-Syrian diplomat and former ambassador to the Arab League in London, said members of the community had met City firms keen on investing in Syria.

“An idea is being developed at the moment with members of the Syrian community promoting the idea of an international conference that would look into bringing investment into Syria,” Mr Armanazi told The National. "All areas of Syria need help: education, finance, energy and tourism. These areas are ripe for development and recovery from all these years of conflict."

He also suggested that the UK could open offshoots of its schools and universities in Syria. “One of the messages the new administration is projecting is how open they are and different from the socialist model of the [Assad regime],” Mr Armanazi said.

The UK will debate easing restrictions applying to energy, transport and finance sectors, Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty said last week.

But more radical measures were needed, said Mr Saffour. “In the long term we have to lift sanctions altogether otherwise the situation in Syria will stay as it is. Refugees will not be able to go back. It is a country without services,” he said.

The diaspora’s input may also ensure that the desires and demands of a broad range of Syrian views are represented in building new institutions, policy planning, and the writing of a new constitution, potentially tempering the positions of more hardline, conservative officials who have joined Ahmad Al Shara’s new administration in Damascus from HTS's former Syrian Salvation Government in Idlib.

At the end of last month, 48 Syrian civil society organisations that had worked in opposition-held areas of the country and abroad held a meeting attended by Judge Khitam Haddad, caretaker Deputy Minister of Justice for Legal Affairs and Studies, at Damascus’s Cham Palace hotel. The meeting proposed specific and urgent recommendations to the new authorities on initiating legal accountability and transitional justice processes, which, the groups said, were “essential to prevent the country descending into civil conflict".