Al-Sharaa’s visit to Idlib is believed to be part of a tour of Syria’s regions [Getty]
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa visited his former stronghold of Idlib province in northwestern Syria on Saturday.
This was his first trip to the area since a rebel assault spearheaded by his Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group overthrew the regime of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad on 8 December last year.
Al-Sharaa visited Idlib city and several IDP camps in the province, which hosts hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Assad regime, according to the Syrian news agency SANA.
He later continued to neighbouring Aleppo province, meeting with Aleppo’s governor and provincial officials.
Local sources told The New Arab’s sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the visit to Idlib had not been announced beforehand and came as a surprise, but it is believed to be the beginning of a tour of several areas of the country.
Even though Al-Sharaa was based in Idlib throughout the Syrian conflict, his visit to the province, which has long been marginalised, was the first by a sitting Syrian president since the 1970s.
In that decade, Bashar al-Assad’s father and predecessor Hafez visited Idlib city but was reportedly met with angry protests. He allegedly took vengeance on the area by depriving it of investment and services.
Idlib emerged as a key stronghold of the Syrian opposition during the uprising against the Assad regime and the conflict which followed in 2011.
It was the only area of Syria to remain in the hands of anti-Assad rebels when the Assad regime captured other opposition strongholds with Russian help between 2016 and 2018.
HTS-led rebels launched an operation known as “Deterring Aggression” against regime forces from Idlib in November 2024, taking all the country’s major cities and overthrowing Assad in a matter of days.
A key factor in the rebels’ success was unwillingness by Assad’s allies Russia and Iran, both of whom are engaged in other conflicts, to support him.
