Mohammed Al-Bashir has been appointed Syria’s new interim prime minister until March 1, 2025 and he’ll be in charge of facilitating a political transition.
Al-Bashir, a former head of the rebel administration in the north-west, spoke to Al Jazeera after being tasked with governing by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies.
He chaired a meeting in Damascus on Tuesday attended by members of his new government and those of Assad’s former cabinet to discuss the transfer of portfolios and institutions.
Read also: Ousted Syrian President Assad, family land in Moscow
It came as the UN envoy for Syria said the rebels must transform their “good messages” into practice on the ground.
Before this week, Mohammed al-Bashir was little known, although he’s a trained electrical engineer and has worked at gas plants before the start of the civil war in 2011.
In January, Bashir was appointed prime minister of the Salvation Government (SG), which HTS established to run the territory under its control.
The SG functioned like a state, with ministries, local departments, judicial and security authorities, while maintaining a religious council guided by Islamic law.
Around four million people, many of them displaced from elsewhere in the country, lived under its rule.
When institutions stopped functioning in Aleppo after HTS and its allies captured the city earlier this month at the start of their lightning offensive, the SG stepped in to restore public services.
“It is true that Idlib is a small region lacking resources, but they [SG officials] have a very high-level of experience after starting with nothing,” HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani was heard telling Assad’s former prime minister, Mohammed al-Jalali, in a video of a meeting in Damascus on Monday.
“We will benefit from your experiences. We certainly won’t ignore you,” he added.
On Tuesday, Bashir was pictured chairing a meeting of former SG ministers and ministers who served under Jalali. He sat in front of the Syrian opposition and the HTS flags.
“[We] invited members from the old government and some directors from the administration in Idlib and its surrounding areas in order to facilitate all the necessary works for the next two months until we have a constitutional system to be able to serve the Syrian people,” Bashir told Al Jazeera afterwards.
“We had other meetings to restart the institutions to be able to serve our people in Syria,” he added.
Meanwhile, life appeared to be slowly returning to normal in the capital Damascus after two days of near-shutdown.
A Muslim cleric there told the BBC that Syrians were looking to the future and wanted a peaceful and united country.
“We want to establish a nation built on principles of nationalism, justice, and the rule of law, a technocratic state where institutions are respected, and equal opportunities are guaranteed for all,” Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Kouky said.
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