Who is Mohammad al-Bashir, Syria’s caretaker Prime Minister

Mohammad al-Bashir, leader of Syria's "Salvation Government", transitions to national leadership in a war-torn country.

As leader of a “Salvation Government” in Syria’s Idlib, Mohammad al-Bashir tried to bring a degree of order to the last major bastion of armed opposition against longtime leader Bashar al-Assad.

Now, the engineering graduate in his early 40s will lead the national government, presiding over a country divided and battered by 13 years of war, and seek to unite it in the traditional seat of power, Damascus.

Syria civil war highlights

Bashir was born in 1983 in Jabal al-Zawiya in Idlib province, an area mostly run in recent years by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions with less influence.

He studied electrical and electronic engineering at Aleppo university, and Islamic and civil law at Idlib university, according to his biography, and once worked for Syria’s state gas company.

He had served as the head of the rebel administration’s self-styled “Salvation Government” since January, and previously held the role of its “development minister”.

The “Salvation Government”, with its own ministries, departments, judicial and security authorities, was set up in Idlib in 2017 to assist people in the rebel-held area cut off from government services.