Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara appoints brother as chief of staff

Syria's interim President Ahmad Al Shara has appointed his elder brother to oversee his office, maintaining the practice of placing close associates in senior posts as he seeks to expand the new government's control over the country.

Mr Al Shara, whose Hayat Tahrir Al Sham group was formerly linked with Al Qaeda, replaced Bashar Al Assad as President in January, after leading a militia sweep of former regime strongholds in December that ended five decades of dynastic Assad rule over Syria.

However, the appointment of Maher Al Shara as Secretary General of the Presidency, a position akin to chief of staff, has drawn criticism that it mimics the nepotistic rule of Mr Al Assad, whose brother Maher Al Assad was for a long time the second powerful man in the country.

Mr Al Shara last month formed a new government whose ranks, especially the top security positions, are drawn mostly from HTS members or people who conform to group allegiance.

“Al Shara believes that the situation is critical and that only his confidants can hold the important positions,” an HTS member told The National.

Maher Al Shara, an obstetrician born in 1973, is 11 years older than Mr Al Shara. Until the downfall of Mr Al Assad, he worked at a government hospital in Damascus and stayed away from politics. He was appointed health minister in the first cabinet Mr Al Shara formed hastily after toppling Mr Al Assad.

His new position at the presidency is similar to a US chief of staff, responsible for planning Mr Shara's schedule and meetings, as well as briefing him.

The HTS source said Mr Al Shara had “wanted to remove his brother from the spotlight, while keeping him high up in the system”.

Osama Aba Zeid, an independent Syrian human rights lawyer, said even if Mr Al Shara did not intend to repeat the authoritarian practices of the Assad regime, his appointments should still be subject to recognised standards of merit to prevent accusations of patronage and nepotism.

Mr Aba Zeid said Maher Al Shara's appointment flew in the face of the ethos of the 2011 Syrian protests, which was “not just an insurgency” against Mr Al Assad but also the system of corruption and exclusion that he led.

“It was against the logic of only [one] person, only one family and only one sect running the state,” he said. “Reproducing all of this violates the core change that Syrians paid dearly for. We cannot allow family rule to return.”

Syria's regional neighbours and western powers have largely backed the new leadership but have also called for a more inclusive administration that represents and protects the country's ethnic and religious minorities, including the Alawite sect to which Mr Al Assad, who fled to Russia after being deposed, belongs.

Over the past two months, Mr Al Shara has posted Sunni troops and militias to subdue Alawite coastal areas that formed the heartland of support for his predecessor. Attacks by Assad loyalists early last month led to sectarian bloodshed in the region that left at least 1,300 people dead, mostly Alawite civilians.