Syria has detained a prominent former military officer accused of corruption and wartime abuses under the Assad regime, marking the first financial crimes arrest in Damascus's widening accountability campaign.
I said in my first comment that I figured applying justice to their own guys is not their priority right now? The former SNA which is quite low discipline and has been rather war-crimey was despite those ill qualities way WAY bigger than the former HTS forces. So if they go around arresting many of the bad guys who were in the SNA then a bunch of those guys would probably see the writing on the wall and rebel to avoid jail, which would be a big problem if they’re back to fragmenting their security forces into small pieces fighting with each other while there are still giant gaping security issues for Syria. So, for the meantime the Syrian government is punishing a relatively small number of unsympathetic offenders from the forces on board wiith them to signal that their behavior is undesired but not get people worrying so much about their future that they do something drastic that could impact national stability. It’s much easier to punish criminal Assadists as that’s not only very popular with most of Syria but also there’s not any substantial factions in their military that would be losing sleep over that. Still, as the former SNA component of the military is being gradually diluted over time with the training of new people and retirement of the old, the passage of time makes it easier to revisit the topic later on if Syrian leaders want to consolidate the factions in government later and/or please the Alawites as necessary.
I said in my first comment that I figured applying justice to their own guys is not their priority right now? The former SNA which is quite low discipline and has been rather war-crimey was despite those ill qualities way WAY bigger than the former HTS forces. So if they go around arresting many of the bad guys who were in the SNA then a bunch of those guys would probably see the writing on the wall and rebel to avoid jail, which would be a big problem if they’re back to fragmenting their security forces into small pieces fighting with each other while there are still giant gaping security issues for Syria. So, for the meantime the Syrian government is punishing a relatively small number of unsympathetic offenders from the forces on board wiith them to signal that their behavior is undesired but not get people worrying so much about their future that they do something drastic that could impact national stability. It’s much easier to punish criminal Assadists as that’s not only very popular with most of Syria but also there’s not any substantial factions in their military that would be losing sleep over that. Still, as the former SNA component of the military is being gradually diluted over time with the training of new people and retirement of the old, the passage of time makes it easier to revisit the topic later on if Syrian leaders want to consolidate the factions in government later and/or please the Alawites as necessary.