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00:00It also showed in the past days that this was a Syrian-led chain of events.
00:07No foreign power liberated the Syrians here.
00:09It was the Syrians themselves.
00:11And it's in Syrians' hands to determine how their future looks like, also how tolerant
00:16their future looks like when it comes to societal issues.
00:20And the process in Geneva of the UN is also called in the UN resolution a Syrian-led process.
00:26The Syrian-led component had fallen by the wayside in the past years.
00:30It was all a bargaining of different regional powers.
00:35Now the Syrians have got it back in their hands, and the way they will deal with it
00:41and the responsibility they will show to shape their own future will be, might be an example
00:47even for other Arab countries.
00:49And I'm sure that some dictators in the region might look to Syria also fearfully.
00:55The Assad regime was internally rotten, mafia-like corrupt, and there was very little real loyalty.
01:07So this whole system was kept together by fear.
01:10And it was a predatory arrangement of different gangs and groups, ideologically rotten, economically
01:19bad.
01:21And then Assad, he was gone for days, you know.
01:23So he was not the leader, if you compare it to Zelensky, who stayed out, who was holding
01:29out and people were looking up to him.
01:32No, not at all.
01:33So that was the internal weakness of Assad's regime.
01:37And it showed also, like in the years before, that he could only survive, he was only able
01:42to survive by the help of Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia in the end.
01:47And then we have, of course, Russia.
01:49And the news were also kind of very surprising in the past days, that Russia is taking out
01:56its ships from its military base in Tartus.
02:00Also personnel, high-ranking personnel, Iran has taken out, brought to security, a kind
02:05of safety, their leaders of the Revolutionary Guard.
02:09So everybody was not investing into Assad anymore.
02:13And that's, that's the new thing that has never happened in the years before.
02:17And of course, Hezbollah, and that's the third reason, was very weakened and had withdrawn
02:23from several positions also around Aleppo because of its war with Israel, following
02:29the 7th of October aggression against Israel and Israel's kind of warfare in Lebanon.
02:36So all this is kind of connected.
02:39And this led to a sudden weakening of Assad.
02:43It is, of course, a huge success for Gholani to have managed this transition so far in
02:51a, in a quite peaceful manner.
02:54If you compare it to hundreds of thousands of deaths that Assad caused with his slaughtering
03:02and suppressing the initially peaceful upheaval in 2012, bombing hospitals, torturing people
03:12massively, I think this is a quite different story.
03:17And hopefully this will remain a relatively pragmatic and peaceful story so far.
03:23So now we will probably see negotiations.
03:26Now, I think it's crucial now to understand Syria is a society that is maybe two thirds
03:32or a bit more Sunni and the rest are minorities.
03:37And here we have a mosaic of different groups that traditionally for centuries have lived
03:43together peacefully.
03:45This revolution 13 years ago became militarized through the violence of the Assad regime against
03:53initially peaceful citizens who went to the street and calling for freedom.
03:59And therefore it's now crucial that HDS, which has an Islamist background, is transforming
04:05itself with deeds and not only with words, and we have seen some deeds in the past days,
04:10into a force that can integrate also the other minorities.
04:16I think this parallel to the Taliban is a mismatch because we have seen years ago, it
04:22was still called a Nusra Front, which is now HDS, has left Al-Qaeda on the one hand.
04:30And not only this, HDS has been a year-long enemy of the Islamic State.
04:37They have fought against the Islamic State in Syria and they have expelled them from Idlib.
04:43In Idlib, I'm not saying that HDS is a liberal democratic force at all, but in Idlib, when
04:49you compare it to Afghanistan, women can work, women are part of societal life.
04:56It is far from what's going on in Afghanistan.
04:59And now, of course, HDS has left this little pocket of Idlib and is about to govern and
05:05has to kind of balance powers within Syria.
05:08Well, we have seen actually that many Arab states were also worried.
05:15They are also worried if there is an Islamist Sunni force in Syria.
05:20Israel has been kind of on the waiting, on the fence, saying actually we are not allied
05:28with either one.
05:30They, however, can see that Iran has been significantly weakened.
05:39I think that the weakening of Iran and Hezbollah and now Syria in other hands is a major shift
05:48where one could find some common ground between Arab states, including Syria, a regional solution
05:56to the problems.
05:58But that also needs, of course, a government in Israel that plays along also with human
06:03rights, etc.
06:05But there is a new chance to reorder the Middle East now in a regional solution and not only
06:10focus on different countries.