February 1, 2025 - 12:15pm
In December 1993, the Independent ran the headline “Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace”, alongside a photo of an amicable-looking Osama bin Laden. The near-comical way this artefact of former public opinion has aged is a cautionary tale about the errors of assuming that the enemies of your enemies will always be your friends.
The ramifications of this misjudgement have of course not been forgotten. And so when, almost 31 years to the day after that headline was run, President Bashar al-Assad was chased out of Syria by a military coalition led by former jihadists, any joy surrounding the end of the old regime was tempered by trepidation about the new rulers, and what direction they would choose for the country.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the group — Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — which has since taken charge of the state, founded the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in 2013. After finding the project of global jihad not to his liking, he split with Al-Qaeda in 2016 and downgraded his group’s ideology to plain old Islamism. Sharaa was this week declared Syria’s new president at a closed conference, where the dissolution of Syria’s 2012 Ba’athist constitution and the Ba’ath Party was also announced.
While HTS governed Idlib province between 2017 and 2024 with a repressive Sharia state apparatus, this zealotry appears to have been abandoned since the group assumed power. There has been visible outreach to minority communities including Christians, Alawites and Druze to reassure them of their safety. The burning of a Christmas tree in December by rogue actors was condemned by a HTS spokesperson, and a subsequent protest by Christians went ahead unopposed by the authorities. Women are not being forcibly veiled. On New Year’s Eve, crowds of young men and women danced together at techno concerts in Damascus. Sharaa’s efforts to recast himself as a democrat may be met with warranted scepticism, but his outfit is a far cry from the Taliban.
However, even if Sharaa really has become a pragmatic statesman, there are still hardliners and unsavoury individuals within his governing coalition, including close allies. For instance, Shadi al-Waisi, the interim Minister of Justice, has been identified in videos from 2015 overseeing the public executions of two women accused of prostitution. HTS official spokesperson Obaida Arnaout, during a revealing interview in December with a Lebanese television channel on the role of women in post-war Syria, stated that “the woman has her biological and psychological nature and has her uniqueness and composition that must necessarily align with certain tasks.”
How far Sharaa will be able to balance the expectations of the international community and largely secular Syrian public with those of his Islamist allies remains to be seen. Concerns around the latter’s outsized influence emerged last month, after unilateral changes were made to school textbooks by the interim Ministry of Education, giving their content a more Islamic slant. While these changes are hardly surprising under an Islamist regime, they may be a harbinger of what is to come with the drafting of a new constitution, which Sharaa has indicated will be the responsibility of a legal committee. Syria’s vulnerability to theocracy will depend on the influence of hardliners within this process.
Before this happens, though, institutions must be built, refugees returned and stability maintained. The amnesty offered to former Ba’ath Party members and troops by HTS is encouraging. However, recent reports of executions of former regime soldiers by what appear to be rogue militias, as well as an ambush on Interior Ministry troops by Assad loyalists in December, cast doubt on the interim government’s ability to prevent a repeat of Iraq’s descent into post-dictatorship sectarian violence. The prevalence of guns, grievances and fear among the population makes this a serious possibility.
It is early days yet, and there are many things that could go wrong for a democratic transition in a sectarian landscape with a post-jihadist government. But so far in Syria, it seems like pragmatism is trumping puritanism — and even if the latter is closer than might be ideal, there are surely worse reasons to have hope.
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SubscribeA peaceful sectarian governlent will be a huge and welcome, if extremely unlikely, surprise
But pragmatism swings this way then that according to events. Theocracy always swings one way and continuous pressure over time will trump pragmatism.
Not necessarily.
If we substitute “woke Democrats” for “theocracy”, pragmatism has Trumped woke Dems. That’s unlikely to change, even in the medium-to-longer term, at least in the US.
Of course, we may be talking about a different order of mindset in a different political environment, but my point is simply that theocracy (or its authoritarian equivalents) does not always triumph.
I’ve not seen one article here or on other sites which mentions the very real possibility that theocrats, dismayed with pragmatism, either pressurise Sharaa to institute a theocracy or overthrow him.
I wonder what makes this situation different? The cycle of “strong ruler- sectarian violence-oligarchy ” is the natural state of humans. The “West” is in the oligarchy stage, moving towards the “strong man rule”. An easy prediction, Syria’s moving from the authoritarian rule to sectarian violence
Once they have been handsomely funded by western democracies things will begin to change.
That’s what Kissinger and Nixon thought about China.
You mean, the China that is the most successful capitalist country in the world, with a government the local population gives much less thought to than outsiders like you, so long as it continues to deliver? Kissinger and Nixon were right, only out in a few minor details around timing.
The headline states a choice between theocracy and democracy but the article sensibly does not. It will be theocracy and the issue is how tolerant it will be. Another important indicator is whether corruption takes hold.
But do we really care how tolerant it’ll be ? We should only care about stability and predictability of the new regime. Who’s measuring tolerance anyway?
Ahhh, youre writing about the terrorist formerly known as al-Julani.Seems like it would be an important addition to your story.
“Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa (born 29 October 1982), also known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, is aSyrian revolutionary, military commander and politician who has served as the president of Syria since 29 January 2025.”
Importantly an alternate spelling is al-Golani, as he was born on the Golan Heights.
His parents were born on the Golan.they left when Israel took over in 67. He was actually born in Damascus abd adopted his nom de guerre as a grown up.
I never fully understood the position of Christians as fodder for the circuses of Rome until the rise of Islamism. Any half educated nutter can wave a book and change the governance of a country if his equally low IQ followers are of the same belief. The Koran will always win over any constitution in the peculiarly savage place that is the Middle East. It may even happen eventually in Europe. The Romans saw the danger but were eventually overcome by the Bible, unable to match base belief. It is even happening in the USA with His Holiness Mr. Trump leading Christians again. Resistance is futile.
We’re such idiots. Wishful fools constantly unleashing uncontrollable enemies, only this time, backed with a real state. Watch and learn.
He’s committed to freedom of worship for Jews…all three of them. ethnic cleansing from the ultranationalis chauvanist, racist, apartheid Arab world…and genocidal threats non stop. but British celebrities are sensitive to the pleas of oppressed peoples which is why they take such a strong stance against China and Iran and call for isolation of these horrible regimes until they extend human rights and equality to all……the courage that the British celebrties, actors, singers , artists show is an example to us all and on the stage of the Oscars and the Grammys…the COURAGE that takes. ….keep up the good work at the guardian.