ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The UN special envoy to Syria on Sunday arrived in Damascus, where he urged “increased” and “immediate” aid to Syrians while calling for an end to sanctions on the now-ruling Islamist-led rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as he met with the country’s new leadership.
"Syria has been through an enormous... humanitarian crisis… We need to make sure that Syria receives increased, immediate humanitarian assistance,” the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pederson told reporters.
Pederson added, "We can hopefully see a quick end to the sanctions so that we can see really a rallying around the building of Syria."
Following an 11-day lightning offensive spearheaded by HTS, the Assad family’s five decades of rule spectacularly came to an end a week ago.
Soon after the Damascus regime's downfall, opposition groups formed an interim government that would last until March 1 under Mohammed al-Bashir's leadership.
The HTS has been designated as a terrorist organization by the US, UK, the United Nations, and other Western nations. The group emerged as a dominant player after it toppled the Syrian regime.
The US government even in 2018 announced a $10 million bounty for its leader, Abu Muhammed al-Julani, who now uses his real name, Ahmed al-Shar’a.
A US government official on Wednesday told The New Region that they were yet to remove rebel group HTS from their designated terrorist list.
"We do not discuss deliberations, or potential deliberations, related to terrorist designations. So I don’t have any immediate actions to announce with respect to any of the sanctions that we have imposed, either the designation on HTS or other sanctions that we have imposed over the past decade-plus in Syria,” Matthew Miller, spokesperson of the US Department of State said.
Miller added that he had "heard some hopeful statements out of HTS. We have heard them saying the right things about inclusion and a political process forward. But ultimately, we’re going to judge them by their actions. And our policy response will be determined by the actions they take."
Pederson also called “justice and accountability” not “revenge” following the overthrow of Assad.
"We need to see of course justice and accountability for crimes,” the UN envoy said, adding that they "need to make sure that that goes through a credible justice system and that we don't see any revenge."
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