UK ignores massacres and terrorism to deepen Syria relations

Last month, Keir Starmer’s special representative to Syria, Ann Snow, met defence minister Murhaf Abu Qasra in Damascus. This followed a meeting between Qasra and Britain’s chief military adviser in the Middle East, Vice Admiral Edward Ahlgren, in July.

The meetings indicate the UK is deepening relations with Syrian military forces that took power in Damascus in December last year, overthrowing the regime of Bashar Assad which had ruled since 2000.

Snow posted that her meeting with Qasra was “to exchange views on the Syrian army’s internal reform and restructuring and the evolving security situation including in the north east and Sweida”.

The southern province of Sweida is where Syrian defence and interior ministry forces intervened in July to halt fighting between local Druze-led and Bedouin armed groups.

But while the Syrian authorities claimed their deployment was to restore order, residents reported they engaged in looting, home burning, sectarian abuse, and summary executions, including of women and children.

Ahlgren’s meeting in Damascus was “to discuss defence, security and areas for future cooperation with the Chief of Defence”, the UK government told parliament.

This meeting followed even worse atrocities involving the Syrian defence ministry in March. The violence then was triggered by a wave of attacks by armed men whom the government described as loyalists of the former Assad regime. At least 200 government personnel were killed.

In response, government forces undertook a further wave of violence. Alawite communities in coastal and western central Syria were targeted in a progrom of murder, torture and widespread looting and burning of homes. This culminated in the massacre of over 1,400 people.

The UN Syria Commission, set up to investigate human rights abuses in the country, concluded that the violence, including by government forces, likely amounted to “war crimes”.

It noted the violence was “perpetrated by members of the interim government’s forces and private individuals operating alongside or in proximity to them, as well as by pro-former government fighters”.

It added: “Members of certain factions, recently incorporated into the interim government’s security forces, extrajudicially executed, tortured and ill-treated civilians in multiple Alawi majority villages and neighbourhoods in a manner that was both widespread and systematic.”

‘Centrally coordinated military operation’

Snow met Qasra two weeks after Human Rights Watch (HRW) also produced a report on the March killings.

This noted that “government forces, comprising Defense and Interior Ministry units, alongside government-aligned armed groups and armed volunteers swept through Alawi-majority neighborhoods, towns, and villages… leaving behind torched homes, piled bodies, mass graves, and broken communities”.

Indeed, HRW asserted this was “a centrally coordinated military operation overseen by the Ministry of Defense, which mobilized tens of thousands of fighters, assigned operational zones to different factions, and facilitated joint deployments”.

It added that fighters had been “formally or informally integrated into the Ministry of Defense” and “described receiving direct orders from the ministry, participating in shared operations rooms with other factions, and handing control over areas to General Security forces after sweeps”.

In addition to high-level violence which has attracted some Western media attention, local people are reporting a steady stream of violations committed by Syrian security forces against minorities, especially in the regions of Homs, Hama, and the Damascus countryside.

Avoiding the blame

Despite evidence of Syrian government complicity in violence, UK ministers have avoided placing the blame for killings on the Syrian government.

Foreign minister Hamish Falconer told parliament in March that the “reports” of civilians being killed were “horrific”. But he added only that “the interim authorities in Damascus must ensure the protection of all Syrians and set out a clear path to transitional justice”, rather than pinpointing them as partly responsible.

Falconer was asked in parliament last month about Syrian government involvement in killings by Syrian government forces in the northern city of Aleppo amid clashes with Kurdish forces. He replied that “both sides” should reach a sustainable political settlement.

Falconer said his visit to Damascus in August “demonstrates the UK’s ongoing commitment to developing our partnership with Syria” and was “supporting Syria’s transition to stability and accountability”. The UK has stepped up humanitarian aid to Syria and has lifted sanctions on the country imposed under Assad.

The month after Falconer’s visit, his colleague, foreign minister Baroness Chapman, said the government was “deeply concerned by the escalation of violence between Druze and Bedouin militias in southern Syria in July”.

She added that foreign secretary David Lammy spoke with his Syrian counterpart, Asaad al-Shaibani, on 18 July “to raise our concerns about events in Suwayda [Sweida] and to press the Syrian Government to conduct a full investigation into the crimes committed”.

Syria’s government has promised accountability for the March violence but according to HRW “has provided little transparency on whether its investigation has examined the role of senior military or civilian leaders, or what steps it will take to hold those with command authority to account”.

Suicide bombings

In their attempt to enhance relations with Syria, British officials are not only dealing with ministers involved in recent possible war crimes but also with former prominent members of terrorist groups.

Much has been written in the media about the terrorist past of president Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who founded and led Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, Jabhat Al-Nusra, to fight against the Assad regime.

Sharaa has appointed leading ministers who have long been close allies in his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militant group which was only de-proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government last month.

Defence minister Qasra, also known by his aliases Abu Hassan al-Hamawi and Abu Hassan 600, led the military wing of HTS, spearheading operations in northern Syria.

HTS formally emerged out of Al-Nusra in 2017 by merging several armed groups, and claimed to distance itself from Al-Qaeda.

Sharaa’s Al-Nusra had conducted numerous suicide bombings and in 2013 the US State Department condemned these since they had “killed innocent Syrian civilians”.

After 2017, with Qasra as its military chief, HTS continued to conduct hundreds of military operations against Syrian regime targets, including numerous suicide bombings. In 2020, HTS claimed to have renounced the use of booby-trapped car bomb attacks.

But suicide bombings continued to be employed by HTS in the run-up to its takeover of Damascus in December 2024 which was masterminded by Qasra.

In a video released in 2020, Qasra – using his al-Hamawi alias – is seen interviewed following a suicide bomber, and says his forces had by then conducted 32 suicide operations. The implication is that these were against regime targets.

Welcome to London

Syrian foreign minister Shaibani is a former spokesperson for Al-Nusra and head of its media office, and has been described as a “veteran Al-Qaeda member in Syria”.

This didn’t stop Chatham House, the Foreign Office’s unofficial meeting place, inviting him to speak, “to describe the hopes and ambition for a new Syria’s role in the region and the world”.

A founding member of Al-Nusra with Sharaa in 2011, Shaibani operated under several noms de guerres such as Abu Ammar al-Shami and Zaid al-Attar.

Shaibani was in charge of foreign relations when Al-Nusra transitioned into HTS in 2017 and, by the following year, had become head of HTS’s political office.

He wrote on the Telegram channel in 2018: “Our weaponry is our pride and honour, as well as the safety valve to this blessed jihad; it is rather the only guarantee to the realization of the revolution’s aims of attaining dignity and freedom, for our enemy knows no other language but force.”

In January this year, Lammy met al-Shaibani in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia “where he discussed the importance of an inclusive political transition and regional security”, the government said.

By then, senior Foreign Office officials had travelled to Damascus in December “to meet with the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham [Sharaa] and the interim Minister for Foreign Affairs [Shaibani]”.

Supporting the new government

The UK reestablished diplomatic relations with Syria in July this year and Lammy visited Damascus that month “to renew UK-Syria relations and reiterate UK support to the new Syrian Government as it seeks to rebuild the economy and deliver an inclusive political transition”.

Lammy was the first UK minister to visit Syria since the country’s civil war began in 2011 and met Sharaa and Shaibani.

The government described its objectives: “A stable Syria is in the UK’s interests, reducing the risk of irregular migration, ensuring the destruction of chemical weapons, tackling the threat of terrorism and delivering the government’s Plan for Change”.

Ann Snow has been doing the rounds in Damascus, speaking to various Syrian ministers. She recently met interior minister Anas Khattab, a co-founder of Al-Nusra and previously on the UN Security Council’s list of terrorists.

Snow posted: “We exchanged views on challenges and the importance of coordinated approaches to address cross-border threats and discussed the importance of holding to account the perpetrators of violations in the coastal areas and Sweida.”

Britain’s NATO ally, Turkey, has already begun training Syrian soldiers. Perhaps it won’t be too long before Britain does the same, and starts supplying arms to forces it regarded as terrorists until only recently.

Additional research was undertaken by Lindsey Snell.