Syrian Commanders Name Al-Sharaa Interim President |
Armed factions that ousted Bashar al-Assad from Syria declared former rebel commander Ahmad al-Sharaa the country’s interim president at a closed meeting yesterday, a spokesperson said. He also announced the cancellation of Syria’s 2012 constitution and the dissolution of its legislature, army, security agencies, and rebel groups. Al-Sharaa said he aimed to fill the country’s governance vacuum “in a legitimate and legal way,” but did not announce a timeline for appointing a new legislature—leaving open questions about how differences between the country’s many factions will be handled.
Yesterday’s meeting comes as the Syrian rebel government has announced a string of steps to try to formalize its relations with the international community. Al-Sharaa ran Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the flash offensive that toppled the Assad government. HTS remains on a U.S. terrorism list, though the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence officials cooperated with Syria’s rebel government to thwart a planned attack by the self-declared Islamic State earlier this month. Meanwhile, well over 81,000 Syrians have voluntarily returned to the country from Turkey since Assad’s fall, Ankara said yesterday. (AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, Anadolu)
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“Too many of the Syrians who should be rebuilding their country for the better are distracted by poverty and shut out of power. If they cannot participate in governance, a golden opportunity to build a new Syria—and to break a dispiriting historical pattern—will be lost,” the London School of Economics’ Fawaz A. Gerges writes for Foreign Affairs.
“The most significant threat to countries in the region and beyond rests in the prisons in northeast Syria that hold ISIS detainees,” CFR Adjunct Senior Fellow Henri J. Barkey writes. “Not only is Assad gone, but the transitional HTS regime has much distance to cover before the situation is truly stabilized.”
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Pentagon to Launch Investigation After Plane, Helicopter Crash Into Potomac |
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The midair collision last night over Washington, D.C. was the first major commercial air crash in the United States since 2009. Search and rescue teams worked overnight at the crash site; more than sixty people were on the American Airlines passenger plane and three troops were on the military Black Hawk helicopter. Responders did not find survivors, the city’s fire chief said this morning. (Bloomberg, WSJ)
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Philippine President Talks U.S. Priorities, Typhon Missile |
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will aim to see how he can influence U.S. immigration policymaking when he meets with President Donald Trump at an unannounced date, he told reporters. He added that he planned to address the U.S. foreign aid freeze and said that Manila would give a Typhon missile system back to Washington if Beijing stopped its “aggressive and coercive behavior.” (Reuters, Rappler)
U.S./China: Following the closely watched release of an artificial intelligence model by China’s DeepSeek just over a week ago, Chinese firm Alibaba released a model that it said surpassed DeepSeek. The U.S. National Security Council plans to study potential national security implications of DeepSeek’s launch, the White House press secretary said. (WSJ)
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Myanmar Junta’s Plan for Vote Raises Concerns |
The junta intends to hold an election later this year but only plans to set up voting in 160–170 of the country’s 330 townships, an unnamed source told Reuters. Several opposition groups are banned from the ballot already, leading critics to preemptively call the vote a sham. The junta did not comment. It has been under international pressure to hold a vote since taking over in 2021, but ongoing hostilities against rebels has led international partners to caution that peace should come first. (Reuters)
India: A new $1.9 billion government effort will define twenty-four vital minerals and fund domestic and overseas mining, local processing, and recycling. India currently gets most of its energy transition minerals such as cobalt, nickel, and lithium from sources abroad, especially China. (Bloomberg)
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Middle East and North Africa |
Latest Round of Hostage, Prisoner Releases Begin in Gaza, Israel |
Hamas released three Israelis and five Thai nationals this morning in the day’s scheduled trade of hostages for 110 Palestinian prisoners. Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is in Israel to oversee the latest phase of the deal and made a rare visit to Gaza yesterday. The second, complex phase of the deal will confront questions over Gaza’s political outlook and the Palestinian Authority’s role. (Times of Israel, CNN, WaPo)
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Junta-Led States Make ECOWAS Exit Official |
Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) yesterday. They exited after ECOWAS members lodged diplomatic objections—and some financial sanctions—against their military rule. The bloc is not immediately pulling permission for visa-free travel from the three departed countries, however, and some ECOWAS members such as Nigeria have cautioned against severing ties completely. (BBC, The Guardian)
DRC: Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi last night pledged a “vigorous” campaign to recover territory lost to Rwanda-backed rebel fighters in the country’s east. Tshisekedi skipped a regional summit convened by Kenya to address the conflict earlier that day, which Rwandan President Paul Kagame attended. (BBC)
CFR’s Mariel Ferragamo and James McBride trace the decades of conflict in DRC to today.
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Russia Captures Donetsk Town of Velyka Novosilka |
Satellite images analyzed by conflict monitors showed Russian troops now hold the town. It is smaller than other recently seized Ukrainian towns in the Donbas region but marks continued Russian advances in eastern Ukraine. (NYT) In this YouTube Short, CFR expert Paul B. Stares explains why he thinks Russia would be willing to negotiate an end to the war.
Brussels: The European Union (EU) will streamline regulations in an effort to reduce administrative burdens by 25 percent for all companies and at least 35 percent by smaller firms, a document released yesterday by its leadership said. Those changes are necessary for EU goods to compete with those of the United States and China, EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen said. (European Commission, WSJ)
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Trump Announces Plan to Hold Thirty Thousand Migrants at Guantánamo Bay |
Trump instructed officials to prepare a site for housing thirty thousand undocumented migrants deemed “criminal” at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The base houses a migrant detention facility that is separate from its high-security prison for terrorism suspects. The president did not offer details about how the plan would take shape. (NYT, Reuters)
CFR’s Jonathan Masters looks at the years of Guantánamo Bay controversy.
Chile: Lawmakers approved a long-contentious overhaul of the country’s private pension system that would increase employer contributions and minimum payments. (Reuters)
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