HTS army recruitment blitz aims to cement control of new Syria

Dust and dirt fly off a black Jeep as it speeds over broken pavement in Eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus. Inside, Hayat Tahrir Al Sham operative Abu Amro, seated in the front passenger seat, is in a hurry.

His mission is clear: recruit as many young men as possible for HTS, which overthrew the regime of former president Bashar Al Assad in December with just 20,000 fighters.

HTS, once linked with Al Qaeda and Al Nusra Front, is now in control of parts of Syria. After relocating from Damascus to Idlib, it has become a key player in managing the region.

The group urgently needs manpower, particularly in the more remote areas.

The Jeep pulls up at a public square in Ain Tarma, a district that once belonged to the rebels. Vegetable sellers with the new Syrian flag plastered over their vehicles pause to watch the gaunt man with an immaculately trimmed black beard step into a municipal building.

“Do you know suitable people to join us?” Abu Amro asks an Ain Tarma notable. He leaves a phone number and heads to a former regime barracks in the area where new HTS recruits will undergo three weeks of training.

The influx of new recruits will help HTS increase its control over Syria. In Ghouta and elsewhere over the last month, the group has been superimposing its own security structures on local governments it already runs, according to members of the organisation and other people working with it.

However, this tightening control risks undermining the hopes many Syrians had for an open society after HTS ended five decades of Assad family dictatorship. Under Bashar Al Assad and his father, Hafez, the states's pervasive security apparatus meant no decision could be made without the approval of the secret police.

While there have been no widespread crackdowns on dissent or secret detentions seen under the previous regime, HTS leader Ahmad Al Shara, now president of the country, has made no clear commitment to a democratic transformation.

Since the regime fell, thousands have joined HTS, Abu Amro says, with hundreds more expected soon at the barracks in Ghouta. There, he greets school-aged children who have volunteered to clean the compound.

They tear down posters of Mr Al Assad and throw away piles of deteriorating uniforms, broken helmets and other worn-out military gear – tangible signs of the former regime's decay.

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Abu Amro gives instructions to repair the toilets and showers in the barracks. Any other problems, even broken beds, are minor because the recruits will not be staying there for long, he tells the volunteers.

The area’s largely rural, poor and religiously conservative population plays to HTS's favour. Ghouta, once called the Gardens of Damascus, became a poverty-stricken belt around the capital as a result of economic and environmental decline.

Regime bombing obliterated vast areas of Ghouta. The Barada River, once a source of life, now flows as a foul-smelling stream through what is mostly barren farmland.

Still, local neighbourhood and clan allegiances remain strong.

Many former rebel fighters who have been bussed to north-west Syria under surrender deals in 2018, are now returning. These agreements followed a brutal three-year siege waged by the regime and its allies Russia and Iran.

Several days ago, hundreds of these fighters took to the streets of the Chabaa district, protesting against the arrest of one of their own by HTS personnel..

The situation was de-escalated after assurances that the man was only taken in for questioning about a drug case. However, he was not released, a clear sign of the new control HTS exerts in an area that once resisted the Assad regime.

“The HTS does not yet have the numbers to subdue Ghouta, but the people do not want a clash,” says Abu Tareq, a member of a newly formed local council in Ghouta who serves as a liaison with HTS.

Although Abu Tareq is wary of HTS's hardline religious ideology -- more extreme than the interpretations of Islam common in Damascus -- he acknowledges that any improvements to living conditions could win support for the group.

Even small changes, like doubling the power supply from one hour a day to two, would help endear HTS to the local population.

Abu Tareq was a fighter with Failaq Al Rahman, one of two main rebel brigades in Ghouta, whose members were deported to Idlib in 2018.

He now holds his position after securing local consensus and receiving approval from HTS commander Abu Ahmad Al Hilwani, known as the Emir of Ghouta.

HTS has maintained the Assad regime's eight-district administrative divisions, covering Ghouta and the rest of the countryside of Damascus, which continue to report to the Ministry of Interior.

However, the “emir” has appointed a local security chief in each district, called the mousaed al amni, or security assistant, who effectively “runs the show”, said Abu Tareq.

These local security heads are responsible to a parallel HTS command structure in each district, known as Amn Al Hayat, typically housed in one of the towering security compounds left behind by the regime.

Last week, in one of these compounds, people were lining up to register the cars they had seized after regime operatives abandoned them on December 8, the day the Assad regime was ousted.

“They told me that for now, I am allowed to keep it,” said a former Failaq Al Rahman fighter, sitting in a Hyundai SUV.

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