Introduction<\/p>\n
The fall<\/a> of Bashar Al-Assad on Dec. 8, 2024 is perhaps the most consequential moment in Syria\u2019s modern history. After decades of repression, Syrians earned a long-awaited and rare opportunity to reckon with one another and build their nation. Days after Assad\u2019s fall, Rebecca Hamilton and I advocated<\/a> for an incremental, locally-led constitutionalism to overcome Syria\u2019s history of constitutional formalism and public distrust of authority. Fifteen months later, the caretaker authority has squandered much of that opportunity and continued down a path of exclusion and division. Analysts have extensively discussed and critiqued<\/a> the exclusionary nature of the Victory Conference<\/a> and subsequent National Dialogue Conference<\/a>, the hyper-presidential<\/a> system embedded in the Constitutional Declaration, and repeated outbreaks of sectarian violence.<\/p>\n It is important to first examine Syria\u2019s history of communal division and political exclusion, to contextualize the complicated legacy that inescapably affects Syria\u2019s transitional process, and must be accounted for within it. Thus far, the caretaker authority has complicated rather than addressed this legacy, and the viability of the path forward depends on prioritizing genuine reconciliation and engaging the public as authors rather than subjects of Syria\u2019s future. The caretaker authority must use whatever remaining leverage it has to bring about these changes. The question is whether it is willing to do so.<\/p>\n A Country with Unaddressed Grievances and Tradition of Political Exclusion<\/p>\n \u201cWe have lived together for millennia\u201d is an assurance<\/a> those of us from Syria<\/a> instinctively provide<\/a> to Western officials and critics who suggest there may be social, ethnic, or sectarian fractures in Syria. Ironically, the sentiment echoes the civic mythology<\/a> the Ba\u2019thists<\/a> spread in schools<\/a> for generations. The claim is not necessarily false, but it is incomplete. What it omits, intentionally or not, is something that could be too sensitive to ask: how, and on what terms, have various groups co-existed in Syria.<\/p>\n Syria is a deeply divided society with compounded and unprocessed grievances that have long been expressed through a sectarian lens. Those grievances have left open wounds, passed down across generations, without an official institution to arbitrate them. As a result, many communities have come to fear other groups as threats and invoke past victimization to justify that perception. Throughout history, from the Ottoman era dominated by a narrow group of urban Sunni notables<\/a>, through the minority Ba\u2019thists\u2019 takeover<\/a> of the state and subsequent Alawite monopoly<\/a> of power, the Arabist suppression<\/a> of the Kurds, to the hegemony<\/a> of crony neoliberals under Bashar Al-Assad, each epoch has been defined by one group capturing state power and economic wealth while largely subjugating the rest.<\/p>\n Essentially, Syria\u2019s default power-sharing arrangement has been exclusionary, as loss of political control is perceived as a risk of return to subjugation. Survival has depended on controlling the state apparatus, and maintaining that control requires the suppression of other groups who may otherwise themselves seek exclusive state power. Accordingly, the state has come to be perceived as a protectionary prize to be captured rather than a forum for settling political disagreements and for collective prosperity. Syria\u2019s history is replete with examples.<\/p>\n The Notables\u2019 Capture<\/p>\n For decades, the Ottomans relied upon an intermediary network of urban Sunnis who monopolized state apparatus, wealth, and access to education. Historians call this group \u201cthe landowning-bureaucrats\u201d or \u201cthe notables<\/a>.\u201d In contrast to this narrow landowning elite, the majority of Syrians were impoverished non-landowners, many of whom were from rural populations, minority communities, and artisans who lived in dire poverty with no meaningful path to social mobility. In the 1850s and 1860s, in response to European pressure, the Ottomans launched the Tanzimat<\/a> reforms to guarantee legal equality to non-Muslim subjects. In response, intercommunal violence erupted in Aleppo and Damascus, leaving thousands of Christians dead. For Muslims<\/a>, particularly the urban Sunni families, these reforms were generally perceived<\/a> as a threat to their position.<\/p>\n The gap between the notables and the majority of the population was staggering and long-lasting. John McHugo reports<\/a> that as of 1960, \u201ctwo thirds of the population over the age of ten \u2026 was illiterate.\u201d But even being among the literate third did not necessarily mean attending the formal education system available to the notables; it merely meant being fortunate to learn to read and write, informally. Ultimately, even the eventual anti-Ottoman movement that espoused Pan-Arabism and later produced the ruling class in Syria emerged<\/a> from within the notables. In short, from the late Ottoman period through the French Mandate that ended in 1946, and into the post-independence era, the so-called notables monopolized Syria\u2019s politics and wealth.<\/p>\n The Rural and Minority Capture and the Alawites\u2019 Monopoly<\/p>\n The French Mandate<\/a> laid the groundwork for restructuring Syria\u2019s political power dynamic by largely recruiting its local security forces from rural and minority communities (often referred to as the \u201cpeasant\u201d class, a term that still today holds a derogatory connotation amongst some Syrians). These groups seized that rare opportunity for social mobility to become intertwined with the state apparatus, constituting a powerful part of the future Syrian army that would, eventually, end the notables\u2019 monopoly on power.<\/p>\n Between 1949 and 1963, Syria underwent an intense period of political upheaval; several military coups and a short-lived union with Egypt paved the way for the Ba\u2019thists to capture the state in a military coup<\/a> in 1963. Ba\u2019thist pioneers included prominent urban, Sunni figures, but the military wing was largely from rural<\/a> and minority populations who later consolidated power through the coups of 1966<\/a> and 1970<\/a>. These new leaders promised to rectify<\/a> decades of deprivation under the so-called notables. They expropriated lands and nationalized factories owned by urban merchants and notables, seemingly motivated by power<\/a> consolidation rather than retribution. The new leaders expanded<\/a> the state apparatus and filled it with rural bureaucrats, thereby encouraging migration from the countryside to urban peripheries. These new bureaucrats constructed housing in unregulated zones, towards which the Ba\u2019thist regime turned a blind eye. The message was clear; the rural officers had come to rule, and to rule alone.<\/p>\n Alawites emerged as the greatest beneficiaries of this reordering, particularly after Hafez Al-Assad\u2019s consolidation of power in the 1970<\/a> coup. Between 1976 and 1982, the Fighting Vanguard and the Muslim Brotherhood led a rebellion<\/a> against Al-Assad\u2019s government that sharpened the upheaval\u2019s sectarian edge. The uprising drew on the genuine rage of dispossessed Sunni families, but channeled it through a religious idiom, framing the struggle as resistance to Alawite minority rule. Aware of his own vulnerability as a member of a minority sect, Al-Assad responded by packing<\/a> the security apparatus with Alawites to insulate his rule, while cosmetically cultivating alliances<\/a> with Sunni merchant elites and selected religious scholars to maintain a veneer of cross-sectarian legitimacy. Eventually, a group of closely connected Alawite families came to fully capture the state under Hafez Al-Assad\u2019s leadership. Al-Assad ruled with an iron fist and ruthless policies that tolerated no opposition and allowed no participation. Over three decades, he shaped Syria\u2019s new order. But what he designed was not a state with a shared identity, but a \u201ckingdom of silence<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Al-Assad and His Nouveaux Riches<\/p>\n In 2000, Bashar Al-Assad, Hafez Al-Assad\u2019s son, succeeded his deceased father as president of Syria. The constitution was hastily resized<\/a>, lowering the minimum age for the Presidential candidate from 40 to 34, to fit the heir. A Western-educated ophthalmologist, Bashar Al-Assad was initially regarded as a hope for political reforms and economic liberalization, but he disappointed<\/a> on both fronts. His promises of political reform, such as greater freedom and democracy<\/a>, proved short-lived. After a brief period of tolerance in which he released<\/a> prisoners and allowed political activities such as the \u201cDamascus Spring<\/a>,\u201d he reverted to his father\u2019s authoritarian policies by suppressing<\/a> political opponents. On the economic front, Al-Assad implemented selective liberalization to enrich a narrow circle of\u00a0nouveaux riches; most notoriously, his cousin Rami Makhlouf gained significant<\/a> influence over Syria\u2019s economy. The last straw was Al-Assad\u2019s cut<\/a> of subsidies and abandonment of the rural population, the very base that had supported the Ba\u2019thists and his father. Al-Assad significantly narrowed the circle of beneficiaries of his administration, ruling the country with the support of his economic partners; however, the ultimate word was always his, and his alone.<\/p>\n This (necessarily brief) account helps explain some reasons why the 2011 uprising was long overdue. Millions of Syrians took to the streets to protest decades of exclusion<\/a>, suppression<\/a>, and economic deterioration. The movement was a response to a convergence of compounded grievances, which Al-Assad\u2019s violent<\/a> response<\/a> deepened and intensified. International reports detailing<\/a> atrocities<\/a> committed, primarily by Al-Assad but also by other factions, are ample<\/a>.<\/p>\n Importantly, Syria\u2019s divisions, while primarily expressed through a sectarian lens, have multifaceted roots. The notable class was not exclusively Arab Sunni; it included Kurdish, Turkmen, and Circassian families as well as tribal leaders who leveraged Ottoman patronage networks. Some Christians, thanks in part to Western consular<\/a> protection, enjoyed preferential economic treatment under late Ottoman rule. The Ba\u2019athists were not only Alawites but rural communities of diverse backgrounds who had endured generations of deprivation. Bashar Al-Assad\u2019s neoliberal partners were not only Alawites but Sunnis from various social backgrounds. More importantly, the Sunnis, Alawites, and Christians are themselves neither monolithic nor exclusively Arab. The reality is far more complex with significant regional and international involvement, rather than the reductionist sectarian frame suggests. Nevertheless, the sectarian frame persists.<\/p>\n It is against this background that Al-Assad\u2019s escape to Moscow following his December 2024 fall, despite justice unserved, represented a significant and perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unpack these legacies.<\/p>\n \u00a0Deepening Division and Exclusion<\/p>\n After decades of compounded grievances and rotating political exclusion, Syrians have ultimately earned the rare opportunity to address their differences and chart a new path. However, the caretaker authority has thus far squandered much of this opportunity by persisting along a path of exclusion and deepening societal divisions.<\/p>\n On December 9, one day after Bashar Al-Assad\u2019s escape, a video<\/a> circulated on social media showing Ahmad Al-Sharaa (then Abu Mohammad Al-Joulani), the leader of Hay\u2019at Tahrir Al-Sham, meeting with Syria\u2019s outgoing prime minister to arrange a transfer of power. The meeting was something of a theatrical performance of constitutional continuity because the 2012 Syrian Constitution<\/a> provides no mechanism for such a transfer. The deeper message was political. Al-Sharaa and his group positioned themselves, in coordination with foreign countries rather than domestic constituencies, as the leaders of the transition. What many initially perceived as a pragmatic necessity has proved over time to be a modus operandi. Al-Sharaa effectively captured the state and moved to impose the terms of the transition without adequate representation from Syria\u2019s diverse factions.<\/p>\n Al-Sharaa was uniquely well-positioned to succeed. His journey<\/a> makes him relatable: a young Sunni dropout who joined al-Qaeda to defend Muslims against the American invasion of Iraq, then returned to Syria to fight what his group used to frame<\/a> as Alawite apostasy<\/a> (including during the time when he used the name Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, while leading the al Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front). The United States\u2019 ten-million-dollar bounty<\/a> on his head made open association with him risky but signaled credibility among those who had long perceived America as waging a crusade against Islam. In other words, Al-Sharaa needed no public relations campaign. In a society historically fractured along class, tribal, and sectarian lines, with no single identity to mobilize broad support, shared grievance was the only available currency. Sunni victimization, which the revolution had made salient, became a singularly mobilizing force, and Al-Sharaa became its symbol.<\/p>\n A lifelong expert in capitalizing on these themes of victimization, Al-Sharaa proceeded without accountability for his past actions while in Al-Qaeda, and without checks on his new role as Syria\u2019s President. On Jan. 29, 2025, various military factions hastily<\/a> convened at the Syrian Revolution Victory Conference, one day before the visit of the Qatari<\/a> head of state. The conference was exclusive to select military factions, excluding some military leaders as well as prominent officials in the interim government, effectively attributing Al-Assad\u2019s defeat to a single military campaign led by Al-Sharaa. Even the Syrian civil society organizations that had spent a decade documenting Al-Assad\u2019s atrocities and representing Syria internationally were not invited. At the conference, the participating military factions dissolved<\/a> a wide sweep of pre-existing Syrian institutions (including the legislative People\u2019s Assembly), abolished the 2012 Syrian Constitution, and appointed Al-Sharaa as interim president. With no governmental institutions and no formal role for civil society, the only remaining power was al-Sharaa\u2019s.<\/p>\n The theatrical process continued without any substantive improvement. Less than a month later, Al-Sharaa initiated the Syrian National Dialogue Conference<\/a> and appointed a committee to select attendees. The conference appeared formalistic, and offered little to no transparency; there were no public selection criteria for either the organizing committee or the attendees, and the agenda was not consultative. Six hundred invitees were divided into eight working groups over two days, a format that made any meaningful contribution practically unworkable. On March 2, Al-Sharaa appointed seven members to draft a constitutional declaration, and eleven days later, he received and signed<\/a> their draft. The brief period permitted no consultation, deliberation, or public discussion. The declaration was problematic for many reasons, but most consequentially, it entrenched hyper-presidentialism<\/a> by empowering<\/a> Al-Sharaa to directly appoint one-third of the People\u2019s Assembly (the national legislative body) and to select the committee that would choose the remaining two-thirds. This step conferred upon his essentially unilateral executive power the veneer of constitutional legitimacy, while doing very little to address the constitutional fault-lines that helped paved the way for abuses under the Al-Assad government.<\/p>\n Throughout the process, Al-Sharaa has remained largely free from checks. His close circle of social media influencers<\/a> and TikTokers silenced online critiques and spread sectarian narratives, deepening these sectarian divides in Syria\u2019s digital space. Al-Sharaa has taken no meaningful steps to restrain or discipline his affiliated online network. Criticizing al-Sharaa has evolved into the equivalent of denying Sunni victimization, and participation in public life increasingly requires catering to that narrative.<\/p>\n In this environment, many critics of al-Sharaa have withdrawn, and arguably sectarianism has only intensified. Atrocities against Alawites<\/a> were overshadowed by retribution-style arguments about provocation and proportionality. The term fulul<\/a>\u2014originally used to describe remaining armed loyalists of Al-Assad who continued targeting caretaker government forces\u2014has come to colloquially describe, in many circles, the Alawite population at large. Similarly, the massacre against the Druze in Suwayda<\/a> became mired in disputes over whether government or tribal forces bore more responsibility, and whether the attack was provoked by Druze forces. Al-Sharaa formed investigative committees, but their findings were criticized<\/a> by activists as inadequate and lacking<\/a> credibility.<\/p>\n This necessarily brief account does not deny the myriad economic, social, or political challenges faced by the caretaker authority. Nor is it intended to minimize the Al-Assad atrocities that predated it. But it does refuse to ignore the caretaker authority\u2019s failures and to bury past and recent violations of its members under disingenuous realism, or to justify their occurrence by appealing to the inferior normative benchmark of Al-Assad. Al-Sharaa himself does not deny his preoccupation with control, which he often justifies on the grounds of administrative efficiency. His vision of an apolitical citizenry is perhaps best illustrated by an interview<\/a> with Syria TV in which he selectively invoked the Qur\u2019anic verse<\/a> \u201cwho has fed them against hunger, and made them safe from fear,\u201d which describes God\u2019s benevolence towards the Quraysh tribe, to articulate the state\u2019s obligation to its people: food and security. Participation does not appear in his articulated political lexicon.<\/p>\n Whether Al-Sharaa truly considers himself as the Sunnis\u2019 representative remains an open question. What is clear is that Al-Sharaa, along with his two siblings<\/a> and close associates<\/a>, has effectively taken control over the state. He has selectively crafted accountability mechanisms for past atrocities and granted quasi-amnesty to Al-Assad\u2019s nouveaux riches<\/a> who paid their dues. These policies are likely driven by pragmatism rather than ideology. Yet, they are carefully framed for the public, often indirectly, as necessities, thereby preserving an ideological image that Al-Sharaa seems unable or unwilling to abandon.<\/p>\n In short, the caretaker authority has thus far continued the tradition of treating the state as a prize to be captured, and limiting access to or even directly targeting those deemed to be \u201cthreats.\u201d This time, the justification is Sunni victimization under the previous government.<\/p>\n The Way Forward: Breaking the Cycle <\/p>\n The frame of sectarianism in Syria has proven remarkably durable, at least domestically, and the cycle of division it reinforces must be broken. A constitutional process that does not grapple with this complexity will only reinforce it.<\/p>\n Syria is not an anomaly, and divided societies need not be destined to live in a cycle of domination, subjugation, and polarization. Syrians deserve more than a formalistic constitution and theatrical transitional politics. Syrians deserve to heal and convert past division into a success story, and more importantly, replace the dogma of \u201cwe have lived together for millennia\u201d with something new, such as \u201cthis is how we overcome our differences.\u201d The way forward is known but uneasy: undertaking a genuine reconciliation process and opening a channel for public participation.<\/p>\n Specifically, political scientists and constitutional scholars have long emphasized the role of constitutionalism in accommodating division. Arend Lijphart\u2019s consociational<\/a> framework, Donald Horowitz\u2019s integrative<\/a> approach, and the power-sharing models<\/a> developed by John McGarry and Brendan O\u2019Leary all offer relevant tools for breaking the current cycle of division.\u00a0 However, theories are only useful if there is political will to apply them. The following five recommendations are neither exhaustive nor a substitute for the deeper structural work outlined in this article. They only offer concrete and initial steps to begin reverse course. Nonetheless, they are worth of consideration.<\/p>\n 1. Launch a nation-wide truth and reconciliation process led by independent experts with relevant academic and professional expertise, drawn from Syria\u2019s diverse communities, with a mandate to document grievances, establish a shared historical record, and recommend pathways to acknowledgment and redress.<\/p>\n 2. End preferential treatment of social media influencers who propagate sectarianism and spread Sunni domination rhetoric, and establish official channels through which the caretaker authority addresses the public on a regular basis (and is held to account in the public eye for its statements).<\/p>\n 3. Form a new constitutional committee of independent experts tasked with developing multiple constitutional designs that prioritize incrementalism and accommodation of division as core design principles.<\/p>\n 4. Create immediate checks on executive power through one of two mechanisms: either an executive representative council endowed with veto authority over specific presidential and ministerial decrees over specific thematic domains, or a permanent panel of judges to serve as an active constitutional court with the authority to review presidential and ministerial decrees until a new constitution is enacted.<\/p>\n 5. Integrate civil society organizations into the transitional period by granting them formal access to the state institutions and enabling them to serve as grassroots liaisons between the caretaker authority and the Syrian population.<\/p>\n These steps are not sufficient, but they represent what is still possible. Al-Sharaa has the authority to take them. The question is whether he has the will. He implores Syrians to trust him, but does he trust them?<\/p>\n FEATURED IMAGE: Thousands of people wave Syrian flags as they gather in a square during an anniversary rally in Idlib, Syria, on December 8, 2025. (Photo by Omar Albaw \/ Middle East Images \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Introduction The fall of Bashar Al-Assad on Dec. 8, 2024 is perhaps the most consequential moment in Syria\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[278,10346,12205,598,26086,95,15323],"class_list":{"0":"post-70142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-syria","8":"tag-arab-spring","9":"tag-armed-conflicts","10":"tag-constitution","11":"tag-islam","12":"tag-islamic-law","13":"tag-syria","14":"tag-syria-in-transition"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116420129743584420","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}