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Weeping, Fairuz Shalish grasps the red earth at an unmarked grave in Syria that she believes may hold her son, one of tens of thousands of people who vanished under ousted president Bashar al-Assad.Thousands poured out of the country’s web of prisons in the final days of Assad’s rule and after Islamist-led rebels toppled him on December 8.But as the weeks go by, many families are still desperately searching for news of relatives who were detained or went missing during years of his iron-fisted rule.Shalish, 59, has not seen her 27-year-old son Mohammed since military security personnel stormed their home near Homs around dawn in early November, just weeks before Assad’s ouster.”I was screaming,” she said at the Tal al-Naser cemetery near Homs.”They shot him in the leg, he fell on the ground and two of them came and opened fire” repeatedly before taking him away, she said, a foul smell lingering in the crisp winter air.”He has four young children… he has a son who is two,” she told AFP.”I tell him that (his father) will be back tomorrow.”The fate of detainees and others who went missing remains one of the most harrowing legacies of Syria’s conflict, which started in 2011 when Assad’s forces brutally repressed anti-government protests.Arbitrary arrests, violence and torture were all part of a paranoid state killing machine that crushed any hint of dissent.”There were people who accused (Mohammed) of being in contact with revolutionaries in the north,” Shalish said.Her other son, detained at the same time, was later released, but she was told unofficially that Mohammed had died, without receiving any formal notification.- ‘Need to be certain’ -At the sprawling cemetery, pieces of construction blocks serve as makeshift headstones in the dirt where Shalish sits.At an earlier visit, she learnt that an individual buried there had the same date of death as her son.But she has been unable to obtain authorisation to exhume the body, which was identified only by a code.”If I have to go to the end of the Earth, I will go. I need to see if it’s my son or not,” she said.”I need to be certain, so my heart can be at rest.”Adnan Deeb, known as Abu Sham, who is in charge of burials at the Tal al-Naser cemetery, sorts through ledgers containing the names of people who are interred there, leafing through worn, handwritten pages of records, organised by date.He said that after the uprising started, authorities began bringing bodies from the military hospital to be buried at the cemetery.”Some had codes, while others were identified by name,” said the towering man in a long black robe, his head wrapped in a traditional keffiyeh.”Sometimes we’d get 10, sometimes five… They’d bring them in ambulances or in pick-ups or military vehicles,” he said, adding that some bore signs of torture.”It was an atrocious sight. Atrocious. But we had no choice but to do our job,” he added.- Still looking -Deeb estimated several thousand former detainees could be buried at the cemetery.He expressed hope that the military hospital’s computer systems would eventually reveal the names of the bodies identified only by codes.People need to “know where their children are buried”, Deeb said.The International Committee of the Red Cross has said determining the fate of the missing will be a massive task likely to take years.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, has said more than 100,000 people have died in detention from torture or dire health conditions across Syria since 2011.Rafic al-Mohbani, 46, from Homs, has been searching for answers for more than a decade.His eyes flash with rage as he recounts how his brother Raef and brother-in-law Hassan Hammadi disappeared on their way home from work in June 2013.”They told us they were at the military security branch in Homs. We went and asked, and they said they transferred them to Damascus. After that, we don’t know what happened,” he said.”We paid several sums of money to several people” secretly, he said.”We got a lawyer, and still couldn’t find out anything.”After prisoners began streaming out of Assad’s jails last month, “we posted the photos again, we’ve been looking at cemeteries and hospitals”, Mohbani said.He also visited Tal al-Naser cemetery, with no success.But the gaunt man, who works as a mechanic, said he still had hope of learning the two men’s fate.”God willing, justice will prevail for us and everyone in Syria.”

The emergence of the DeepSeek chatbot has sent Silicon Valley into a frenzy, with calls to go faster on advancing artificial intelligence and beat communist-led China before it is too late. California tech investors have usually kept their involvement in politics low key, generally supporting centrist politicians who don’t get in the way of their innovations …

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Syria’s new authorities announced Wednesday that Ahmed al-Sharaa, who took the helm after Bashar al-Assad’s ouster last month, has been appointed interim president and tasked with forming a transitional legislature, state media reported.A rebel alliance led by Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ousted Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, ending five decades of his family’s iron-fisted rule, with a transitional government previously installed to steer the country until March 1.Sharaa was appointed “as the country’s president in the transitional phase”, state news agency SANA reported, quoting military official Hassan Abdel Ghani, without specifying a timeframe, adding that he would also represent the country “in international forums”.Sharaa was tasked with forming “a temporary legislative council… until a permanent constitution for the country is decided”, SANA said, adding that the Assad-era parliament had been dissolved and the 2012 constitution suspended.The announcements came during a conference on “the victory of the Syrian revolution” that was also attended by Sharaa, Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and the heads of armed factions.Abdel Ghani also announced the dissolution of all armed groups involved in Assad’s ouster, as well as the former government’s army and security agencies.”All military factions and political and civil revolutionary bodies are dissolved and integrated into state institutions”, SANA reported Abdel Ghani as saying.- ‘Civil peace’ -He also announced “the dissolution of the defunct regime’s army”, security agencies “and all the militias it established, and the formation of a new security apparatus that preserves citizens’ security” and the “reconstruction of the Syrian army”.The Syrian army has effectively collapsed, along with the other instruments of Assad’s rule.The Baath party which ruled Syria for decades was also dissolved, SANA reported.In a speech at the event, Sharaa set out Syria’s priorities as “filling the power vacuum, preserving civil peace, rebuilding state institutions and working to construct a development-oriented economy”, SANA said.”The mission of the victorious is heavy, and their responsibility is immense,” Sharaa added.Last month, he said it could take four years before elections could be held, and up to three years to rewrite the country’s constitution.Authorities had previously spoken of a national dialogue conference that would bring together Syrians of all political stripes, but SANA made no mention of any such conference on Wednesday.Civil war broke out in Syria after Assad suppressed peaceful anti-government protests in 2011. The conflict has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions more.HTS, rooted in Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch, is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by many governments including the United States, though it has recently sought to moderate its rhetoric and vowed to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.Since Assad’s ouster, a succession of Western diplomats have visited Syria to call for an inclusive transition.bur-tgg-kam-lk/lg/kir

US aid experts on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s claim that the United States had spent $50 million to fund condoms for the war-battered Gaza Strip, which the president has sought to make a poster child for wasteful spending.”We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas,” Trump told reporters, referring to the militant group that has ruled the Palestinian territory for nearly two decades.”And do you know what’s happened to them? They’ve used them as a method of making bombs.”Trump offered no evidence to back his claim, which prompted both vehement rejections and ridicule from relief agencies and experts.The United States sent no condoms to any part of the Middle East since 2019, according to a detailed report last year from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).Its only family planning contribution to the region was a small shipment of injectable and oral contraceptives worth $45,680 that was sent to Jordan in 2023, the report said.International Medical Corps, a humanitarian aid organization, said it received about $68 million from USAID for its Gaza operations since October 7, 2023 — the day Hamas launched a major attack on Israel –- which paid for two field hospitals providing lifesaving care.”No US government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms,” the organization said in a statement.- ‘Dangerous’ -On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the $50 million expenditure was discovered in Trump’s first week by the budget office and the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by tech billionaire Elon Musk.She called it a “preposterous waste of taxpayer money.””The White House claim that DOGE uncovered $50 million in funding for condoms in Gaza is quite obviously untrue,” Matthew Kavanagh, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Policy and Politics, told AFP.”It does not even make sense.”A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests $50 million would buy over a billion condoms for Gaza’s adult population.”What’s going is here is NOT a billion condoms for Gaza,” Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, wrote on X, the Musk-owned site formerly called Twitter.”What’s going on is that the bros at DOGE apparently can’t read (government) spreadsheets.”Jesse Watters, host of a conservative-leaning talk show on Fox News, said that Hamas were using the non-existent US shipments to make “condom bombs,” floating explosives-laden balloons into Israel — a claim echoed by Trump.Soon after returning to office for a second term on January 20, Trump ordered a 90-day freeze in foreign assistance.He has vowed a review to ensure that aid conforms with policies of his administration, which opposes abortion, transgender rights and diversity programs.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a memo that the United States was freezing nearly all aid disbursement except for emergency food and military aid to Egypt and Israel. “What seems clear is the administration is taking a large grant to support healthcare infrastructure in Gaza and mischaracterizing it in order to justify the dangerous halt to lifesaving aid programs around the world,” Kavanagh said.

Equity markets were mixed Wednesday as attention turned away from tech stocks to the outlook for monetary policy, with the Federal Reserve holding steady on interest rates ahead of an ECB decision.Major US indices spent most of the session in the red before closing moderately lower. The S&P 500 shed 0.5 percent.In Europe, London and …

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In less than two months, Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa has risen from rebel leader to interim president, after his Islamist group led a lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad.Sharaa was appointed Wednesday to lead Syria for an unspecified transitional period, and has been tasked with forming an interim legislature after the dissolution of the Assad era parliament and the suspension of the 2012 constitution.The former jihadist has abandoned his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, trimmed his beard and donned a suit and tie to receive foreign dignitaries since ousting Assad from power on December 8.The tall, sharp-eyed Sharaa has held a succession of interviews with foreign journalists, presenting himself as a patriot who wants to rebuild and reunite Syria, devastated and divided after almost 14 years of civil war.Syria’s new authorities also announced Wednesday the dissolution of armed factions, including Sharaa’s own Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda. Since breaking ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016, Sharaa has sought to portray himself as a more moderate leader, and HTS has toned down its rhetoric, vowing to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.But Sharaa has yet to calm misgivings among some analysts and Western governments that still class HTS as a terrorist organisation.- ‘Pragmatic’ -“He is a pragmatic radical,” Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam, told AFP.”In 2014, he was at the height of his radicalism,” Pierret said, referring to the period of the war when he sought to compete with the jihadist Islamic State group.”Since then, he has moderated his rhetoric.”Born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia, Sharaa is from a well-to-do Syrian family and was raised in Mazzeh, an upscale district of Damascus. In 2021, he told US broadcaster PBS that his nom de guerre was a reference to his family’s roots in the Golan Heights. He said his grandfather was among those forced to flee the territory after its capture by Israel in 1967.According to the Middle East Eye news website, it was after the September 11, 2001 attacks that he was first drawn to jihadist thinking.”It was as a result of this admiration for the 9/11 attackers that the first signs of jihadism began to surface in Jolani’s life, as he began attending secretive sermons and panel discussions in marginalised suburbs of Damascus,” the website said.Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he left Syria to take part in the fight.He joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and was subsequently detained for five years, preventing him from rising through the ranks of the jihadist organisation.- Realist or opportunist? -In March 2011, when the revolt against Assad’s rule erupted in Syria, he returned home and founded Al-Nusra Front, Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda.In 2013, he refused to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who would go on to become the emir of the Islamic State group, and instead pledged his loyalty to Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri.A realist in his partisans’ eyes, an opportunist to his adversaries, Sharaa said in May 2015 that he, unlike IS, had no intention of launching attacks against the West.He also proclaimed that should Assad be defeated, there would be no revenge attacks against the Alawite minority that the president’s clan stems from.He cut ties with Al-Qaeda, claiming to do so in order to deprive the West of reasons to attack his organisation.According to Pierret, he has since sought to chart a path towards becoming a credible statesman.In January 2017, Sharaa imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwestern Syria, thereby taking control of swathes of Idlib province that had been cleared of government troops.In areas under its grip, HTS developed a civil administration and established a semblance of a state in Idlib province, while crushing its rebel rivals.Throughout this process, HTS faced accusations from residents and human rights groups of brutal abuses against those who dared dissent, which the United Nations has classed as war crimes. 

Syria’s new authorities announced Wednesday that Ahmed al-Sharaa, who took the helm after Bashar al-Assad’s ouster last month, has been appointed interim president and tasked with forming a transitional legislature, state media reported.Sharaa was appointed “as the country’s president in the transitional phase”, state news agency SANA reported, quoting military official Hassan Abdel Ghani, without specifying a timeframe.A rebel alliance led by Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ousted Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, ending five decades of his family’s iron-fisted rule.The rebels installed a transitional government headed by Mohammad al-Bashir to steer the country until March 1.Sharaa was tasked with forming “a temporary legislative council… until a permanent constitution for the country is decided”, SANA said, adding that the Assad-era parliament had been dissolved and the 2012 constitution suspended.Abdel Ghani also announced the dissolution of all armed groups involved in Assad’s ouster, as well as the former government’s army and security agencies.”All military factions are dissolved… and integrated into state institutions,” alongside “the dissolution of the defunct regime’s army” and security agencies, Abdel Ghani told SANA.  They would be replaced by the “reconstruction of the Syrian army” and the formation of “a new security apparatus that preserves citizen’s security”.The Syrian army has effectively collapsed, along with the other instruments of Assad’s rule.The Baath party which ruled Syria for decades was also dissolved, SANA reported.bur-tgg-kam-lk/lg/kir