Interim president named

The leader of the former rebel group that toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad was named on Wednesday the country’s interim president, following a meeting of the former insurgent factions.

The spokesperson for Syria's new, de facto government’s military operations sector, Col. Hassan Abdul Ghani announced the appointment of Ahmad al-Sharaa as the country’s president “in the transitional phase,” the state-run SANA news agency said.

He also announced the dissolution armed factions in the country, which he said would be absorbed into state institutions, and said al-Sharaa would be authorized to form a temporary legislative Council until a new constitution is drafted.

Al-Sharaa is the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist former insurgent group that led the lightning offensive that toppled Assad last month. Since Assad’s fall, HTS has become the de facto ruling party and has set up an interim government largely composed of officials from the local government it previously ran in rebel-held Idlib province.

As the former Syrian army collapsed with Assad’s downfall, al-Sharaa has called for creation of a new unified national army and security forces, but questions have loomed over how the interim administration can bring together a patchwork of former rebel groups, each with their own leaders and ideology.