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US, Regional Diplomats Urge ‘Inclusive and Representative Govt’ in Syria after Assad

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas hold a press conference after meeting with other Arab foreign ministers and the US secretary of state to discuss developments in Syria after fighters of the ruling Syrian body ousted Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in Aqaba, Jordan December 14, 2024. (Reuters)
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas hold a press conference after meeting with other Arab foreign ministers and the US secretary of state to discuss developments in Syria after fighters of the ruling Syrian body ousted Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in Aqaba, Jordan December 14, 2024. (Reuters)
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US, Regional Diplomats Urge ‘Inclusive and Representative Govt’ in Syria after Assad

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas hold a press conference after meeting with other Arab foreign ministers and the US secretary of state to discuss developments in Syria after fighters of the ruling Syrian body ousted Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in Aqaba, Jordan December 14, 2024. (Reuters)
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas hold a press conference after meeting with other Arab foreign ministers and the US secretary of state to discuss developments in Syria after fighters of the ruling Syrian body ousted Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in Aqaba, Jordan December 14, 2024. (Reuters)

Top diplomats from the United States, Türkiye, the European Union and Arab nations have agreed that a new government in Syria should respect minority rights, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday following talks in Jordan and direct contacts with the opposition factions who ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

The meetings occurred as regional and global powers scrambled for influence over whatever government replaces Assad, forced to flee a week ago.

Blinken said at a news conference that the group had agreed a joint communique that also calls for an inclusive and representative government that respects the rights of minorities and does not offer "a base for terrorist groups".

"Today's agreement sends a unified message to the new interim authority and parties in Syria on the principles crucial to securing much needed support and recognition," Blinken said.

Blinken also said US officials had now had "direct contact" with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and had urged them and other opposition groups to assist with locating US journalist Austin Tice, who was detained in Syria in 2012.  

The US has also shared with actors in Syria what it wants to see from the country's transition, he added.

Syria's neighbor Jordan was hosting Saturday's gathering in Aqaba. Russia and Iran, who were Assad's key supporters, were not invited.

Blinken, UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pederson and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, Fidan and foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar met around a circular table at a Jordanian government guesthouse. There was no Syrian representative at the table.

The Arab diplomats earlier met separately and issued a statement calling for a peaceful and inclusive political transition that leads towards elections and a new constitution.

Arab diplomats attending the talks told Reuters they were seeking assurances from Türkiye that it supported this, as well as preventing the partition of Syria on sectarian lines. Türkiye and the United States, both NATO members, have conflicting interests when it comes to some of the opposition. Turkish-backed fighters in northern Syria have clashed with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The SDF, which controls some of Syria's largest oil fields, is the main ally in a US coalition against ISIS militants. It is spearheaded by the YPG militia, a group that Ankara sees as an extension of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants who have fought the Turkish state for 40 years and who it outlaws.

Blinken told Turkish officials during a visit to Ankara on Thursday and Friday that ISIS must not be able to regroup, and the SDF must not be distracted from its role of securing camps holding ISIS fighters, according to a US official. Turkish leaders agreed, the official with the US delegation said.

Fidan told Turkish TV later on Friday that the elimination of the YPG was Türkiye's "strategic target" and urged the group's commanders to leave Syria. 

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Arab World

As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
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As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)

Long-horned cattle wade through flooded lands and climb a slope along a canal that has become a refuge for displaced families in South Sudan. Smoke from burning dung rises near homes of mud and grass where thousands of people now live after floods swept away their village.
“Too much suffering,” said Bichiok Hoth Chuiny, a woman in her 70s. She supported herself with a stick as she walked in the newly established community of Pajiek in Jonglei state north of the capital, Juba, The Associated Press said.
For the first time in decades, the flooding had forced her to flee. Her efforts to protect her home by building dykes failed. Her former village of Gorwai is now a swamp.
“I had to be dragged in a canoe up to here,” Chuiny said. An AP journalist was the first to visit the community.
Such flooding is becoming a yearly disaster in South Sudan, which the World Bank has described as “the world’s most vulnerable country to climate change and also the one most lacking in coping capacity."
More than 379,000 people have been displaced by flooding this year, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
Seasonal flooding has long been part of the lifestyle of pastoral communities around the Sudd, the largest wetlands in Africa, in the Nile River floodplain. But since the 1960s the swamp has kept growing, submerging villages, ruining farmland and killing livestock.
“The Dinka, Nuer and Murle communities of Jonglei are losing the ability to keep cattle and do farming in that region the way they used to,” said Daniel Akech Thiong, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
South Sudan is poorly equipped to adjust. Independent since 2011, the country plunged into civil war in 2013. Despite a peace deal in 2018, the government has failed to address numerous crises. Some 2.4 million people remain internally displaced by conflict and flooding.
The latest overflowing of the Nile has been blamed on factors including the opening of dams upstream in Uganda after Lake Victoria rose to its highest levels in five years.
The century-old Jonglei Canal, which was never completed, has become a refuge for many.
“We don’t know up to where this flooding would have pushed us if the canal was not there,” said Peter Kuach Gatchang, the paramount chief of Pajiek. He was already raising a small garden of pumpkins and eggplants in his new home.
The 340-kilometer (211-mile) Jonglei Canal was first imagined in the early 1900s by Anglo-Egyptian colonial authorities to increase the Nile’s outflow towards Egypt in the north. But its development was interrupted by the long fight of southern Sudanese against the Sudanese regime in Khartoum that eventually led to the creation of a separate country.
Gatchang said the new community in Pajiek is neglected: "We have no school and no clinic here, and if you stay for a few days, you will see us carrying our patients on stretchers up to Ayod town.”
Ayod, the county headquarters, is reached by a six-hour walk through the waist-high water.
Pajiek also has no mobile network and no government presence. The area is under the control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, founded by President Salva Kiir’s rival turned Vice President Riek Machar.
Villagers rely on aid. On a recent day, hundreds of women lined up in a nearby field to receive some from the World Food Program.
Nyabuot Reat Kuor walked home with a 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag of sorghum balanced on her head.
“This flooding has destroyed our farm, killed our livestock and displaced us for good," the mother of eight said. “Our old village of Gorwai has become a river.”
When food assistance runs out, she said, they will survive on wild leaves and water lilies from the swamp. Already in recent years, food aid rations have been cut in half as international funding for such crises drops.
More than 69,000 people who have migrated to the Jonglei Canal in Ayod county are registered for food assistance, according to WFP.
“There are no passable roads at this time of the year, and the canal is too low to support boats carrying a lot of food,” said John Kimemia, a WFP airdrop coordinator.
In the neighboring Paguong village that is surrounded by flooded lands, the health center has few supplies. Medics haven’t been paid since June due to an economic crisis that has seen civil servants nationwide go unpaid for more than a year.
South Sudan’s economic woes have deepened with the disruption of oil exports after a major pipeline was damaged in Sudan during that country's ongoing civil war.
“The last time we got drugs was in September. We mobilized the women to carry them on foot from Ayod town,” said Juong Dok Tut, a clinical officer.
Patients, mostly women and children, sat on the ground as they waited to see the doctor. Panic rippled through the group when a thin green snake passed among them. It wasn't poisonous, but many others in the area are. People who venture into the water to fish or collect water lilies are at risk.
Four life-threatening snake bites cases occurred in October, Tut said. “We managed these cases with the antivenom treatments we had, but now they’re over, so we don’t know what to do if it happens again.”