Syria After Assad

More than a year has passed since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria on 8 December 2024. What assessment can be made today, in light of the progress achieved and the challenges that remain?

To answer this question, it is useful to briefly revisit Syria’s history under the Assad family’s rule, as well as the ethnic and confessional composition of this country, situated at the crossroads of Eastern and Western civilizations.

A long chapter in the history of Syria and the Middle East came to an end with the fall of the Assad dynasty. The tyrant’s flight on 8 December 2024 brought an end to more than half a century of familial power and to decades of authoritarian governance imposed by this clan.

Hafez al-Assad, the father of the deposed president Bashar al-Assad and a former general in the Syrian Air Force, came to power following his coup d’état of 16 October 1970. The Ba'ath Party, to which he belonged, had already governed Syria since 1963. In its origins, this party presented itself as a pan-Arab movement, socialist, nationalist, and secular, calling for the unity of Arab peoples beyond religious affiliations.

Once in power, however, Hafez al-Assad gradually diverted the Ba'ath Party to serve himself and his family, hollowing it out of its ideological substance. He ruled Syria with an iron fist, turning the country into a vast open-air prison, closed in on itself and subjected to constant repression of its population.

Upon his death in 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad, then 34 years old, assumed power. His arrival initially aroused a measure of hope among Syrians, sustained by promises of political reform and economic opening. This period of expectation and optimism was short-lived. Very quickly, the new president returned to the regime’s earlier authoritarian methods, intensifying repression and allowing systemic corruption to take root on an unprecedented scale.

The al-Assad family comes from the Alawite minority, which represents 8 to 10 percent of Syria’s population. This community is a branch of Shiite Islam, distinct from Twelver Shiism, and it resides mainly along the Mediterranean coast and in the west of the country, around the cities of Latakia, Tartus, Hama, and Homs.

According to the NGO Minority Rights Group International (MRG) and UNHCR, roughly 70 to 75 percent of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, including 10 to 12 percent who are Kurdish, meaning approximately 2 to 3 million Syrians, living primarily in the north of the country along the border with Turkey.^[1]

Christians, for their part, represent roughly 8 to 10 percent of the population and belong to various churches (Orthodox, Catholic, etc.). Other, smaller minorities also exist, such as the Druze (3 percent), concentrated mainly in the city of Suwayda in the south along the border with Jordan, and in Jaramana near Damascus; the Ismailis (1 to 1.5 percent), in the city of Salamiyah, between Homs and Hama, near the Lebanese border; and the Yazidis (1 to 1.5 percent), present mainly in the northeast of the country.^[2]

To this religious mosaic is added an ethnic diversity: Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Arameans, Assyrians, Circassians, Turkmen, etc. This ethno-religious diversity is one of the fundamental features of Syrian society. It has been at the center of power dynamics in Syria for decades. Hafez al-Assad knew how to manipulate it, even though he never needed to present himself as the guarantor of minorities in Syria in order to legitimize his power in the eyes of Western powers. In his era, the world was bipolar: on one side the communist bloc centered on the USSR, and on the other the imperialist capitalist bloc. Hafez al-Assad positioned himself as an anti-imperialist progressive. His regime, however, never regarded Syrians as a unified people, but rather as a set of ethnic and religious communities. Each community had specific laws, and it was necessary to identify within each community representatives loyal to the regime. He never envisioned Syrians as a people of citizens, but rather as a multitude of subjects (Raayieh) fragmented into religious and ethnic communities.^[3] Since the 1980s, his communist and left-wing opponents repeatedly denounced the regime as both pseudo-secular and pseudo-progressive.

For his part, Hafez's son Bashar faced the Syrians’ revolt against him in 2011 and sought to justify bloody repression, adopting two major strategies: portraying the regime as progressive and secular (his father’s legacy), and presenting himself as the sole guarantor of Syria’s minorities. If the first strategy was treated with greater caution by Western societies, the second, unfortunately, found receptive audiences, obscuring the fact that, under Assad’s totalitarian regime, Syrians were divided into two communities: the loyal and the disloyal. Thousands, from all confessions and ethnicities, perished in Assad’s prisons under torture. This supposedly minority-protecting regime did nothing more than hold those communities hostage by threatening them with the Islamist bogeyman.

After the Assads

In his cruel repression of the Syrian people who rose up against his regime, Bashar Al-Assad was supported politically and militarily by Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. After 7 October 2023, however, the balance of power shifted: Hezbollah and Iran were significantly weakened by their conflict with Israel. Russia, for its part, reduced its military presence in Syria due to its involvement in the invasion of Ukraine. All of these factors, together with the Syrian people’s revolt in 2011, contributed to severely weakening the Assad regime, leading to its collapse.

The question of minorities in Syria has taken on particular urgency since the start of the revolution in 2011. It has returned frequently to the international forefront since Bashar al-Assad’s fall, which followed a ten-day lightning offensive from 27 November to 8 December 2024, carried out by a coalition of Islamist rebel groups dominated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian National Army.

To reassure Syrian minorities and an international community worried about their fate, the new leaders in Damascus, Ahmed al-Charaa, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and his allies among Turkey-affiliated factions, announced that they would adopt a discourse of tolerance and openness toward ethnic and religious minorities, while guaranteeing their security. Al-Charaa told CNN on 5 December, three days before Assad’s fall: “These communities have coexisted in this region for hundreds of years, and no one has the right to eliminate them.”^[4] His prime minister in charge of the transition in Damascus, Mohammed al-Bachir, promised on 11 December, the day after his appointment to lead the transitional government: “We will guarantee the rights of everyone,” adding in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera: “It is precisely because we are Muslims that we will guarantee the rights of everyone… and of all confessions in Syria.”^[5]

Clear instructions had been given to fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian National Army to refrain from extrajudicial violence and to respect cultural and religious diversity. Nevertheless, clashes took place from time to time between different rebel factions and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by Kurdish forces, in Aleppo and in the northeast of the country. Yet from the outset of the rebel factions’ offensive against the Assad regime on 27 November 2024, the SDF leader Mazloum Abdi and the Democratic Autonomous Administration issued several calls to negotiate with the rebels, and the Democratic Peoples Council decided to raise the Syrian revolutionary flag over all institutions and facilities affiliated with the autonomous administration in the northeast of the country. This flag, a symbol of independence, with its three colors (green, white, and black) and its three red stars, embodies the Syrian people’s aspirations for freedom, dignity, and national unity.

On 10 March 2025, under U.S. mediation, an agreement was reached between Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Charaa and the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, aiming to integrate the Kurdish autonomous institutions of the northeast into the state.^[6] This agreement, which has stalled since that time, has not prevented occasional clashes between Kurdish democratic forces (SDF) and government forces. The most recent occurred on the evening of 22 December 2025, leaving two civilians dead and at least eight injured.

On 8 December 2025, Syria marked the first anniversary of the end of more than fifty years of rule by the Assad family, a tyrannical regime among the bloodiest one can imagine. Most Syrians expressed their joy and are savoring their regained freedom after fourteen years of a peaceful revolution transformed into a civil war that caused approximately 528,500 deaths,^[7] 125,000 missing persons,^[8] and 13 million displaced people, including 7.4 million displaced within the country and 6 million refugees in neighboring countries and Europe.^[9]

Whether one likes it or not, Ahmed al-Charaa, a former senior figure within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has become Syria’s interim president and benefits from an image as a liberator. Even though he concentrates power heavily in his own hands, his political intentions remain unclear, despite certain advances.

Indeed, despite several initiatives such as a national dialogue, a constitutional declaration, and indirect elections, former Hayat Tahrir al-Sham cadres continue to occupy key posts. The absence of a genuine democratic process has prevented broad Syrian participation in economic and political decision-making. This situation has produced deep disappointment among many opponents, particularly within left-wing currents, liberals, and secular actors in general.

On the diplomatic front, Syria is gradually emerging from isolation thanks to Turkish and Saudi mediation. Al-Charaa has increased foreign travel and secured the gradual lifting of international sanctions, opening the way for major reconstruction projects. Despite numerous promises and investment announcements, concrete results on the ground remain limited. Ninety percent of the population still lives in poverty.^[10] The regime has adopted a neoliberal economic policy centered on austerity, rising energy prices, and weakly redistributive taxation. This strategy, aimed at rapid investment (finance, real estate, tourism), risks further increasing inequality and poverty.

Despite diplomatic advances, Syria remains unstable. Israeli bombardments and interference have never ceased, and intercommunal violence (Druze, Sunnis, Alawites) has caused thousands of deaths. The new authorities, in fact, face difficulties in controlling all armed groups that make up the general security forces attached to the army.

This situation led to two major massacres: the first targeted Alawite civilians on the Syrian coast between 6 and 10 March 2025, and the second affected Druze civilians in the Suwayda region between 12 and 15 July. Tensions inherited from the Assad regime remain extremely strong, and Syrian national identity remains very fragile in the face of tribal, confessional, ethnic identities.^[11]

Certain regions still escape the control of the transitional government, such as the Golan Heights and certain border areas occupied by the colonialist state of Israel, the city of Suwayda controlled by Druze militias, and the northeast of the country under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

On 3 and 4 January 2025, meetings took place in Damascus between Mazloum Abdi, head of the SDF, and officials from al-Charaa’s central government in order to discuss implementation of the 10 March 2025 agreements, which provide for integrating the SDF into the Syrian army. According to Abdi, however, these meetings produced no results.^[12]

The Alawite Revolt

The Alawite community is accused, rightly or wrongly, of having been the pillar of the Assad regime. In a country where confessionalism has become deeply entrenched after thirteen years of civil war, part of public opinion holds it responsible for the regime’s crimes.

Yet this community was not spared repression during the Assad era. Thousands of its young people, men and women, were arrested and imprisoned in the 1980s for opposing the regime. A significant portion of the community also took part in the Syrian revolution.

The principal party responsible for this confessional drift remains the Assad regime itself. From the earliest days of the 2011 uprising, it portrayed the popular revolt as an international conspiracy led by Salafist Islamists targeting the progressive, secular regime and religious minorities. From 2012 onward, however, part of the opposition fed this confessional logic, accusing the Alawite minority of supporting the regime and of participating in hundreds of massacres, notably against Sunni populations.

After Assad’s fall, all minorities were spared acts of revenge, but the Alawite community was repeatedly humiliated. In March 2025, an attack carried out by supporters of the Assad clan against security forces and their allies killed several dozen people and triggered deadly violence against Alawite civilians. Government-affiliated militias then carried out retaliatory massacres, causing nearly 1,500 victims, mostly civilians including women and children.^[13]

On the Syrian coast, an Alawite stronghold, fear had already been building: arrests, a sense of abandonment, absence of protection. On Friday 26 December 2024, an attack on an Alawite mosque in Homs, in the center of the country, killed eight people.

Al-Charaa’s transitional regime firmly condemned the attack, claimed by a small Sunni extremist group. The dignitary Ghazal Ghazal, president of the Alawite Islamic Council in Syria and abroad, called for demonstrations on Sunday 28 December to “show the world that the Alawite community cannot be humiliated or marginalized.”

Thousands of Alawites answered the call and took to the streets. In Latakia, clashes broke out between demonstrators and security forces, leaving four dead, including one member of the security forces, sixty injured, and several hundred arrests.^[14]

Where Now?

Nothing is certain in Syria today. Peace remains extremely fragile, both between Syrian populations and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and among the various armed groups within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham itself and among the rebels. Fragility also characterizes relations with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and with the Druze militias controlling the city of Suwayda. For the moment, Damascus’s new leaders have presented no clear vision for what power will look like after the transition period. Will Syria be a secular state, a semi-secular state, or neither? Will minorities continue to be treated as mere subjects rather than full citizens, as was the case under Bashar al-Assad?

Syrians, in general, are now divided between two opposing visions of the country’s future. The first defends a strongly centralized state, promoted by Ahmed al-Charaa’s transitional government and its supporters. For them, a centralized state is the only guarantor of threatened national unity. The second vision advocates a federal state, or at minimum a decentralized one, demanded by a majority of Kurds in the north, Druze in Suwayda, and Alawites on the country’s western coast. Unlike proponents of centralism, supporters of decentralization argue that without this model Syria risks falling back into authoritarianism, regardless of the appearance of moderation displayed by the new leadership on the international stage.

Perhaps a last chance remains for Ahmed al-Charaa’s transitional government and for Syrians in general to avoid a second civil war and the country’s total disintegration. To seize this opportunity, the transitional government must first establish laws that prohibit and criminalize confessional and ethnic hate speech, now widespread on social media and, at times, in official media. Next, it must call for a genuine national dialogue congress that brings together all components of the Syrian people, and the full range of political and non-political forces, without exclusion. Finally, the current authorities and their supporters must renounce a victor’s mindset, accept pluralism and power-sharing, and recognize the legitimacy of decentralization.

In light of current fractures, decentralization seems better suited to the country’s realities. It should, however, rest on geographic and administrative bases rather than ethnic or religious criteria. It should also be accompanied by clear guarantees: maintaining the monopoly of arms in the hands of the national army, managing borders and diplomatic relations at the national level, and supervising natural resources through the central state. Such a structured and coherent vision of decentralization could reassure those who fear Syria’s breakup, reduce communal tensions, and encourage more inclusive governance.

Despite all the difficulties Syria has faced since 8 December 2024, that day remains one of the most memorable and symbolic for Syrians, especially for those who lost loved ones over the fifty-four years of this regime. The date embodies a symbol of regained freedom and hope for the future. The same is true for some Lebanese and Palestinians, also victims of this bloody regime, for whom that day evokes both profound relief and the memory of the struggles endured.

The road to peace, freedom, and stability remains long for Syrians. The fall of the tyrant is only an important stage, not the last. There is still much to build. Perhaps the most essential task is to rebuild Syrian identity itself.

Beyond institutional and confessional fractures, popular mobilization is key for the future of Syria. Decades of authoritarianism have destroyed autonomous organizations and demonized political action for parties and collectives alike. Syrian society has been deprived of the tools needed to speak and impose itself on national decisions.

Without such organization no stable transition is possible. The reconstruction of Syria demands the emergence of social movements, civil society, and political parties capable of taking up popular demands and develop active grassroots forces. Recent history shows that the Syrian people is not passive. The challenge is to transform dispersed energy into structured, collective action able to push with all its strength—present and future—to construct a pluralist political order grounded on popular sovereignty, accountable to the Syrian people.

To do so, Syrians must combine realism and will, or, as Gramsci puts it, “we must combine the pessimism of the intellect with the optimism of will.”