By running Aleppo, Syrian rebels seek to show they are alternative to Assad

ALEPPO (Reuters) - A week after Islamist rebels seized Syria's second-largest city, in a surprise advance deep into government-held territory, Aleppo is slowly coming back to life. 

A night-time curfew has lifted. Bread has returned to bakery shelves. Traffic police wave cars through intersections and internet coverage has improved as a rebel-linked telecoms network has expanded its reach, according to half a dozen residents and Reuters footage.

These measures are part of an effort by the rebel alliance spearheaded by Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former Al-Qaeda affiliate formerly known as the Nusra Front, to show Syrians - and the West - that it is a viable alternative to President Bashar al-Assad, analysts say.

Islamist HTS, headed by Abu Mohammed al-Golani, is still designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., Turkey and the United Nations. It has spent years trying to soften its image.

"We expected the situation to be very bad, but the young men dealt with the city very well," said Mohammad Khalil, 52, a tourism company owner, referring to the rebel fighters, while noting that the water supply was patchy despite the return of some services.

The rebels have some experience of civilian affairs.

HTS, which broke from Al-Qaeda in 2016 and says it poses no threat to the West, already held swathes of the adjacent province of Idlib, where it established an affiliate civil administration called the Salvation Government that has governed close to 3 million people for much of the past five years.

There, it has elected cabinets of ministers, made the Turkish lira legal tender and even set up a mobile network called Syria Phone, now extended to Aleppo. It has also avoided more extreme interpretations of Sharia law, the International Crisis Group think tank has said.

But new challenges come with the rebels' expansion to Aleppo, where Assad drove a previous rebel coalition out of areas they controlled after years of siege and Russian-backed bombardment that left deep scars on the ancient city, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Both the city and the province of the same name are home to historic communities of minorities including Syrian Christians, Armenians, Kurds and Shi'ite Muslims, who like many other Syrian Muslims have feared throughout Syria's nearly 14-year war that Islamist rule would threaten their way of life. 

Seeking to reassure Aleppo residents including minorities, journalists and state employees, HTS has published statements via text message saying its control of the city would not put them at risk. It also promised it would keep basic services running.

So far, Christians have largely remained in the city, and on Sunday they held mass, which was attended by some rebels.

Unlike Idlib, where opposition rule was already established in much of the province as the Salvation Government installed its administration, the rebels are now expanding into government strongholds in a lightning advance, pressing their sweep past Aleppo another 130 km (80 miles) south into the city of Hama, and possibly beyond.

"The challenges are huge and HTS knows it," said Navvar Saban, an analyst at the Istanbul-based Harmoon Center, citing the growing population under rebel control that require functioning services.

TRANSITIONAL RULE

It has not all been plain sailing. Garbage has piled up in Aleppo's streets. And the Syrian pound had devalued the last week from 15,000 to roughly 22,000 to the U.S. dollar. With winter setting in, residents said they feared not having enough water or diesel to heat their homes.

But after fearing that security in the city would collapse after the rebel takeover, residents said they were glad to see life broadly continue as normal with markets, bakeries and petrol stations open - despite long queues and higher prices. 

Saeed Hannaya, a 42-year-old Aleppan who owns a minimarket, also said water was an issue but that "the bakeries were a little better, maybe because of (better) distribution and the aid that's coming in."

On Thursday, dozens of government fighters lined up after HTS opened centres staffed by masked rebels in black uniform encouraging the members of security forces to defect and receive a temporary card protecting them from possible retribution, Reuters video showed. A professionally printed banner listed the terms for receiving such a card.

It was a new measure for HTS, showing the lengths to which it is going to demonstrate that it aims for a smooth transition to its rule, without the bloodletting that has been a regular feature of Syria's war, Saban said. 

Another sign of intent was printed price lists at petrol stations in Syrian pounds as well as Turkish lira, and U.S. dollars. HTS had long banned the Syrian pound from being used in Idlib but was allowing both it and U.S. dollars to be used in Aleppo.

"HTS are betting on international acceptance of it based on the way it has run the battle and the civil affairs of the areas they've captured, especially the minorities," Saban said. 

The response of the West has been cautious. U.S. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller reiterated this week that HTS was a U.S.-designated terrorist organisation. He called for a political process to de-escalate and determine the country's leaders.

Unlike Idlib, HTS has said in statements it does not intend to run Aleppo through the Salvation Government. Dareen Khalifa, a researcher at the International Crisis Group in contact with al-Golani, said the declaration was to avoid "an impediment" to international aid coming in "because of the terrorist designation to HTS." 

"They are thinking through all of that," she told Reuters, while she has cautioned that many Syrians remained concerned about the implications for their personal and religious freedoms. 

Golani told Khalifa on Tuesday that the group intended to install a "transitional body" - not the Salvation Government - to run Aleppo and would direct its fighters to leave civilian areas "in the coming weeks", Khalifa wrote on X. 

Abdulrahman Mohammed, an Salvation Government spokesperson, said fighters had already begun to withdraw from the city. Mohammed said that the group had not yet "addressed the form of the upcoming political government."

Khalifa said that HTS was "still deliberating how they will be governing a much bigger and more diverse area like Aleppo and potentially Hama." 

Hama fell to the rebels on Thursday.



(Reporting by Karam al-Masri in Aleppo and Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)