Druze leader Walid Joumblatt with his son and successor Taymour, at a reception in the Chouf on Sept. 8, 2023. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Druze leader Walid Joumblatt said on Tuesday that the Syrian people were the winners from the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, and that relations between Lebanon and the "new Syrian power" could only be positive.
"Today, Kamal Joumblatt, the people and freedom in Lebanon and Syria have triumphed, as has the late journalist Samir Kassir, who was in contact with the free people in Syria," Joumblatt said during a special meeting of the General Assembly of the Druze Council in Verdun.
Joumblatt's father and predecessor Kamal Joumblatt was assassinated on March 16, 1977 in his car on a road in the Chouf region, the victim of an ambush set up just a few hundred meters from a Syrian roadblock, after opposing the Syrian army's entry into Lebanon. Journalist and essayist Samir Kassir, considered one of the thinkers behind the Cedar Revolution that led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops in April 2005, was also assassinated a few weeks later in a car bomb attack that rocked the Achrafieh district.
"We can only deal positively with the new Syrian regime," said Walid Joumblatt. "We want a democratic, pluralist and diverse Syria, whose people decide its future, and we will help from afar and up close if necessary." Joumblatt said that he was not afraid, "contrary to some in the media," of seeing "an Islamic fundamentalist regime" replace that of Bashar al-Assad, since he believes that "the Syrian people, who have freed themselves after 61 years of oppression, must be given the opportunity to emerge from 61 years of imprisonment" that followed the reign of the Baath Party, which began in 1963.
Joumblatt said it was "strange" that U.N. special envoy to Syria Geir Pederson called for an "inclusive and credible political transition, led and owned on the basis of the principles set out in Security Council Resolution 2254." Pederson's comments came on the tail of a meeting with Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Ahmad al-Sharaa (previously known as Abu Mohammad Jolani).
Adopted on December 18, 2015, Resolution 2254 calls for a cease-fire in Syria and a political solution to the conflict through negotiations with the forces involved as early as January 2016. Joumblatt viewed Pederson's stance as a call to "bring former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad" back to the negotiating table and "overthrow the current transitional government" appointed by HTS.
"I think this is heresy and that some foreigners want to achieve their own ends, which are sometimes suspect," he said. The Druze community in the Middle East is located between the Lebanese, Syrian and Israeli territories.
