Two weeks after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government, Syria is beginning the much less dramatic and much more difficult process of determining what replaces it. Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has emerged as the most powerful figure in Damascus and has spent the past week meeting diplomats, religious leaders and representatives of Syrian communities while attempting to present his movement as capable of governing a plural country rather than merely conquering one. Western and regional officials are cautiously opening channels with the new authorities, while the United States has removed the $10 million reward it had previously offered for information leading to al-Sharaa’s capture after American diplomats met him in Damascus. At the same time, Israel has continued striking former Syrian military assets and occupying positions inside the buffer zone near the Golan Heights, Turkey remains deeply involved in the north, Kurdish-led forces retain substantial territory and millions of displaced Syrians are watching to see whether returning home is actually safe. Assad’s removal answered the question of who no longer governs Syria. It has not yet answered the more important question of whether Syria will once again have a state stronger than the armed groups competing inside it.
The distinction between a regime and a state is central. Assad’s regime consisted of the ruling family, Ba’ath Party networks, intelligence organisations and security structures that maintained political control. The Syrian state is much larger: ministries, schools, electricity networks, hospitals, courts, municipal administrations, customs agencies and thousands of civil servants who perform functions any future government will still require. A successful transition therefore needs to dismantle the coercive structures responsible for repression without dismantling the administrative capacity required to govern. Iraq after 2003 provides the clearest warning. Extensive de-Ba’athification and the dissolution of the Iraqi army removed parts of Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian apparatus but also excluded enormous numbers of experienced officials and armed personnel from the new order. The resulting vacuum contributed to insurgency and institutional collapse. Syria needs de-Assadification without de-statification.
Early statements from al-Sharaa suggest he understands this problem. He has emphasised preserving institutions, protecting minorities and avoiding revenge. That rhetoric is encouraging but should not be confused with evidence of long-term political moderation. HTS originated in jihadist movements associated with al-Qaeda before breaking with the organisation and gradually adopting a more nationally focused Syrian strategy. Al-Sharaa has spent years transforming his public image from jihadist commander to political leader. The relevant question is not whether that transformation is sincere internally, something outsiders cannot know reliably, but whether institutional incentives make moderation durable even if individual intentions change. A political system is safer when minority rights depend on laws and independent institutions rather than the continued goodwill of one leader.
This is why Syria’s constitutional transition matters more than al-Sharaa’s interviews. A leader can promise Christians, Alawites, Druze and Kurds protection today. If the future executive controls the courts, security services and legislature simultaneously, those promises remain reversible. Durable pluralism requires distributing enough authority that political minorities do not need to trust whoever controls Damascus completely. Constitutional constraints convert promises into expectations.
Decentralisation may therefore become one of the most important questions in post-Assad Syria. The Assad state was extraordinarily centralised. The civil war subsequently produced regions with very different governing experiences. Kurdish-led authorities developed autonomous institutions in the northeast. Opposition administrations governed parts of the northwest. Different communities created local security and service structures because Damascus no longer controlled them. Attempting to reconstruct the pre-2011 centralised state immediately could therefore generate resistance from groups that have exercised substantial autonomy for more than a decade.
The Kurdish question is especially difficult because it combines domestic constitutional politics with Turkish national security. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control much of northeastern Syria and were the United States’ principal local partner against Islamic State. Turkey considers the dominant Kurdish armed organisations within the SDF closely linked to the PKK, which Ankara regards as a terrorist organisation, and Turkish-backed Syrian forces have continued fighting Kurdish groups. Damascus therefore needs to reconcile three objectives that do not fit together easily: Kurdish demands for meaningful autonomy, Turkey’s demand that Kurdish armed structures near its border be weakened and the new Syrian government’s desire to restore national territorial sovereignty.
A negotiated form of decentralised sovereignty may be the least bad solution. Kurdish regions could retain substantial local administration while heavy weapons and foreign-policy authority move gradually towards national institutions. Turkey could receive security guarantees around the border without requiring the destruction of Kurdish political autonomy. Damascus could recover formal sovereignty without needing to reconquer the northeast militarily. None of these actors would receive everything they want, which is precisely why the arrangement could become sustainable. Political settlements work when every side prefers the compromise to the expected cost of continuing conflict, not when everyone receives their ideal outcome.
The situation of Alawites may provide the most immediate test of whether Syria can escape collective punishment. Assad and many senior figures in the old security establishment came from the Alawite minority, but ordinary Alawite civilians cannot be treated as collectively responsible for regime crimes. If revenge killings or property seizures become widespread, Alawite communities will have strong incentives to organise armed self-defence, potentially producing another insurgency. Transitional justice therefore needs to be individualised. Investigate officials credibly implicated in torture, disappearance or killings. Preserve due process. Do not turn religious identity into evidence.
This is not simply a moral argument. It is security policy. Collective punishment creates the constituency from which insurgencies recruit. A former regime supporter who believes they can live safely under the new order has incentives to demobilise. Someone who believes defeat means imprisonment, dispossession or death has incentives to acquire a weapon. Reconciliation therefore changes the expected payoff from rebellion.
The enormous Syrian diaspora creates another challenge and opportunity. More than six million Syrians became refugees abroad during the war, while millions more were internally displaced. Turkey alone hosts millions of Syrians, while substantial populations live in Lebanon, Jordan, Germany and elsewhere. Assad’s fall has immediately raised expectations that refugees can return, and neighbouring governments facing domestic pressure would strongly prefer large-scale repatriation. Yet political change does not automatically make return safe or economically viable. Homes have been destroyed, property records disputed, infrastructure damaged and employment scarce.
Refugee return should therefore be voluntary rather than treated as an automatic consequence of Assad’s disappearance. A family deciding whether to leave Germany or Turkey needs information about schools, electricity, housing, security and whether military or political authorities will recognise their property. Returning becomes an investment decision under enormous uncertainty.
The diaspora could eventually become one of Syria’s greatest reconstruction assets. Refugees include doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs and students who accumulated skills, capital and international networks abroad. Countries recovering from conflict often benefit enormously when diasporas return or invest. But human capital is mobile. Syrians who have established stable lives in Europe or the Gulf will not return merely from patriotism if institutions remain unpredictable.
This creates a powerful institutional dividend. Every improvement in property rights, security and governance increases the expected return to coming home. Good institutions therefore attract not only foreign investment but the country’s own people.
Sanctions policy will heavily influence that calculation. Western sanctions were constructed primarily to constrain Assad’s government and individuals associated with it. Keeping every restriction unchanged after Assad’s collapse could now inhibit reconstruction and unintentionally weaken the new political order. Removing everything immediately would surrender leverage before the authorities demonstrate that political moderation is real.
The appropriate strategy is therefore conditional and reversible sanctions relief. Release restrictions that obstruct ordinary trade, humanitarian finance and reconstruction when specific institutional benchmarks are met. Preserve targeted sanctions against individuals credibly implicated in major abuses. Make additional relief conditional on minority protection, inclusive government, counterterrorism cooperation and progress towards credible elections.
This converts sanctions from punishment into incentives.
The same approach should govern international recognition of HTS. The United States’ decision to remove the reward for al-Sharaa illustrates how rapidly political categories can change when behaviour changes. A person once treated principally as a terrorist commander is now the individual foreign governments need to speak with if they want influence over Syria. This may appear hypocritical, but diplomacy necessarily deals with actors possessing effective power. Refusing communication does not make them disappear.
The relevant distinction is between engagement and endorsement.
Diplomats can meet al-Sharaa without certifying his democratic credentials.
Governments can offer conditional sanctions relief without pretending HTS’s history is irrelevant.
Engagement creates information and leverage.
Recognition should remain tied to behaviour.
Israel’s actions complicate the transition because Israeli forces have moved into areas around the demilitarised buffer zone near the occupied Golan Heights and conducted extensive strikes against Syrian military facilities, aircraft, naval assets and weapons stockpiles after Assad’s collapse. Israel argues that it cannot allow advanced weapons to fall into the hands of hostile groups while Syria’s political future remains uncertain. The security logic is understandable: an abandoned missile system does not become safe simply because the government that owned it collapsed.
Yet preventive security can become territorial opportunism if temporary military measures acquire permanence. A weakened Syrian state cannot negotiate from equal strength, creating incentives for stronger neighbours to establish facts before Damascus regains capacity. Israel therefore needs to distinguish clearly between destroying immediate weapons threats and exploiting Syrian collapse to expand long-term territorial control.
Otherwise the new Syrian authorities receive an external adversary around which nationalist resistance can organise.
Again, military action can create the political demand for the threat it seeks to prevent.
Turkey faces the same responsibility from another direction. It possesses enormous influence over Syrian opposition groups and now has an opportunity to shape the post-Assad state. Ankara wants refugees to return, Kurdish armed groups weakened and a friendly government in Damascus. Those objectives can be pursued through political influence or through permanent proxy control of northern territory.
The first strengthens Syrian sovereignty.
The second fragments it.
If every neighbouring power keeps its preferred armed faction, Syria will remain a map rather than a functioning state.
This is why disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration will eventually become essential. Syria contains enormous numbers of armed men whose livelihoods and identities have been built around warfare. Simply ordering them to surrender weapons is unrealistic. Fighters need salaries, civilian employment or integration into legitimate national security institutions.
The economic problem is severe because war created its own labour market.
Militias pay fighters.
Smuggling networks employ people.
Checkpoints generate rents.
Foreign sponsors provide financing.
Peace destroys parts of this wartime economy before a civilian economy exists to replace it.
That means peace itself creates short-term economic losers.
Those losers can become spoilers.
Reconstruction therefore needs to generate employment quickly enough that demobilisation becomes economically rational. Roads, housing, electricity and public infrastructure can provide labour-intensive employment while rebuilding productive capacity. International reconstruction finance therefore doubles as security policy.
Syria’s economic potential remains substantial. It possesses an educated population, agricultural land, geographic access between Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and the Mediterranean, and a diaspora capable of supplying capital and skills. None of those assets produce growth automatically.
The binding constraint is institutional risk.
Will contracts be enforced?
Will property be protected?
Will another militia seize the factory?
Will sanctions block payment?
Will the currency stabilise?
Investors price these questions before considering labour costs.
Political order therefore is an economic input.
The same applies to ordinary Syrians. A shopkeeper will invest in inventory only if they believe tomorrow’s authority will recognise today’s property. A refugee will rebuild a house only if ownership will not be contested next year. A farmer will plant crops only if they expect to harvest them.
Development begins with credible expectations about the future.
Assad produced stability through fear for long periods but ultimately failed this test because the state became inseparable from his regime. When the regime collapsed, national institutions collapsed with it across large areas.
The new authorities need to build the opposite relationship.
Governments should become replaceable while the state remains.
That means HTS cannot treat its battlefield victory as permanent ownership of Syria.
The organisation deserves influence because it played the central military role in defeating Assad.
It does not therefore possess an unlimited democratic mandate.
Most Syrians never voted for HTS.
Many lived outside its territory.
Others may support Assad’s removal while rejecting Islamist government.
The transition therefore needs to move from revolutionary legitimacy towards electoral legitimacy.
That cannot happen instantly. Elections held next month would probably reward whichever armed organisation currently possesses the strongest networks and exclude millions of displaced citizens. Institutions and electoral registers need reconstruction first.
But indefinite transition creates the opposite danger.
Temporary governments develop interests in remaining temporary forever.
Syria therefore needs a timetable containing measurable stages: national dialogue, constitutional arrangements, party registration, refugee participation, electoral administration and eventually competitive elections.
The process matters as much as the date.
A rushed election can legitimise whoever controls the state now.
An indefinitely postponed election can institutionalise them without legitimacy.
The optimal transition lies between.
The broader Middle Eastern significance of Assad’s fall remains enormous. Iran has lost a central ally and logistical corridor. Hezbollah’s strategic depth has been reduced. Russia’s regional influence has weakened. Turkey has gained leverage. Israel has gained greater freedom of military action but also faces uncertainty about what replaces Assad.
These changes create opportunities.
They also create incentives for every external actor to shape Syria before the new state becomes strong enough to resist them.
That may be the greatest danger of the next year.
A weak Syria is attractive to every neighbouring power tactically.
A permanently weak Syria is dangerous to all of them strategically.
It produces refugees.
Smuggling.
Jihadist organisations.
Cross-border violence.
Proxy competition.
The rational collective outcome is therefore a sovereign and relatively stable Syrian state.
The individually rational behaviour of neighbouring powers may prevent exactly that outcome.
This is a regional prisoner’s dilemma.
Turkey wants influence.
Israel wants strategic depth.
Iran wants networks restored.
Russia wants bases.
America wants Islamic State contained and Kurdish partners protected.
Each objective can justify retaining separate leverage.
Collectively they can keep Syria fragmented.
The international task should therefore be reducing the value of unilateral influence by making a stable central settlement more valuable to everyone.
That will be extraordinarily difficult.
But the alternative is familiar.
Syria already spent thirteen years demonstrating what happens when domestic fragmentation and external intervention reinforce one another.
Assad’s fall creates a rare opportunity to break that cycle.
The dramatic part has already happened.
Damascus fell.
Prisons opened.
Statues came down.
The regime disappeared.
Now comes the work that receives fewer photographs but determines whether any of that produces a better country.
Police stations need to function without torturing people.
Courts need to prosecute crimes without becoming instruments of revenge.
Minorities need protection without private armies.
Refugees need reasons to return voluntarily.
Fighters need reasons to put down weapons.
Foreign governments need reasons to withdraw rather than entrench.
And whoever governs Damascus needs to accept that winning the revolution does not mean owning the republic.
That is the difference between replacing Assad and replacing the political system that made Assad possible.
Syria has accomplished the first.
The success or failure of the revolution will ultimately be judged by the second.
