The Assad regime, founded by Hafez al-Assad and continued by his son Bashar, ruled Syria with an iron hand for 54 years but came tumbling down in a matter of days. Its armed forces melted away as rebels advanced, with many soldiers switching sides and others burning their uniforms as they deserted their posts. Its external backers – Russia, Iran and Hizbollah – withdrew or were unable to come to its aid. Bashar, his immediate family and other regime figures flew into exile. The Sunni Islamist group that led the rebel offensive is Hei’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (who has dropped his nom de guerre and now goes by Ahmad al-Sharaa) headed an al-Qaeda-linked faction before breaking with the global organisation in 2016. Together with HTS as a group, he remains designated as a terrorist by the UN and many governments. Thus far, HTS has instilled calm in areas its fighters have entered, including the capital Damascus and majority-Alawite towns along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. Al-Jolani has vowed to protect the country’s many minorities, but an array of armed groups is operating across Syria and reports of revenge killings have started to surface, especially in Hama province. It is clear that much could go wrong and that many challenges still lie ahead.
HTS, together with other rebels, now holds central power and has consolidated control of much of the country. It needs to act quickly to keep things together. One priority is to maintain order, notably preventing lawlessness, looting, reprisals against former officials and violence among former rebel factions. Absent alternatives, HTS and other fighters will have to play a role, but as soon as possible militants should leave residential areas, as some are already doing, and cede responsibility for public safety to a police force. In divided communities, HTS may have to deploy greater numbers of fighters for the time being to keep things quiet. Second is to set up an interim government and preserve civilian state institutions. HTS’s appointment of a loyalist, Mohammed al-Bashir, as caretaker prime minister should be temporary, as promised, and a more representative body should be set up, perhaps with UN support and after discussions across Syrian society. Civil servants should resume their functions under the new body’s authority. HTS should disband – thus helping Syria receive foreign funds it needs but which sanctions on the group hinder – and create a new structure that can absorb rebel fighters and potentially form part of a new army. Critical is that HTS continues to signal it will safeguard the rights of all Syrians, including minorities, and not monopolise power.
Few [foreign power] capitals look enthusiastically at Islamists dominant in Damascus, but for now no option exists but to work with the new authorities.
Foreign powers, whose meddling did so much to propel Syria’s long civil war, must avoid repeating the mistake. Few capitals look enthusiastically at Islamists dominant in Damascus, but for now no option exists but to work with the new authorities. Championing rivals would be a recipe for more chaos. Those governments with ties to HTS should urge it to bring as wide a range of voices as possible into government and to tread an inclusive line. Israel, which has destroyed much of what remained of Syria’s military assets, should cease its airstrikes in the country. A particularly grave risk lies in the north east, where the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) is advancing into areas held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), risking a wider escalation. The U.S. should use what leverage it has with Ankara and the SDF, which enjoys U.S. support, to de-escalate until a central government in Damascus can negotiate a way forward. Washington and other Western capitals should promptly look at how they can dismantle sanctions imposed on the Assad regime that amount to a near-full trade embargo on Syria. They should also lay out for al-Jolani what he needs to do to get the terrorism designation lifted. HTS’s lightning takeover of Damascus has rid the country of a parasitical dictatorship. Over the past decade, al-Jolani has acted with some pragmatism in the part of Syria’s north west that HTS has ruled for years. He must quickly show Syrians, particularly those who do not share his Islamist beliefs and the country’s minorities, as well as mistrustful neighbours and Western capitals, that his movement can work with others to steer the country toward a better future. The world, in turn, should give him space to do so.
Thirteen years after residents took to the streets in the southern city of Daraa, prompting an uprising throughout the country and then a savage crackdown that triggered the Syrian civil war, the Assad dynasty has fallen. Rebels marched into the capital unopposed, citizens tore down portraits and toppled statues of the ruler, and thousands emerged from jails in which they had languished for years or decades, often in horrific conditions. Overjoyed, together they celebrated the departure of a man with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Syrians on his hands. The first convoys of refugees started crossing the Lebanese and Turkish borders on the way home.
The Assad regime’s collapse owes partly to years of decay within the army, which ate away at its combat prowess. After first suffering setbacks at the armed opposition’s hands, by 2018, the regime had regained control of much of Syria’s territory with Russian and Iranian support. But it did little after that to strengthen its armed forces. Instead, trusting Russian airpower and Iran-backed militias to help it hold ground, it relied on forcibly conscripted soldiers and reservists who were poorly paid, lacking in cohesion and unmotivated to fight. Within the ranks, fragmentation was rife, with entire brigades operating autonomously, often competing with one another or regime-aligned militias over patches of turf. Many put profiteering – extortion at checkpoints and smuggling, across borders or inside Syria – over military preparedness. When the rebel offensive came, army defences proved weak or non-existent.
Its internal debility aside, the regime’s downfall was also the latest episode in a chain reaction set off by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. After a year of exchanges of fire between Israel and its enemies in the Iran-backed “axis of resistance”, Israel gained the upper hand, having decapitated and severely degraded Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon. The weakening of Hizbollah as the anchor of what Iran portrayed as its forward defence left Tehran on the back foot, exposed to Israeli attack. In the meantime, Russia, the Assad regime’s main ally, was preoccupied in Ukraine. As a result, HTS launched its offensive as the regime’s outside backers were distracted or drained. For years, HTS had built up forces in Idlib, a province in Syria’s north west, and its environs. It benefited from a Turkish army cordon around these areas, which, as part of a deal Ankara struck in 2019 with Moscow, served to deter a regime offensive that would have driven a wave of refugees into Türkiye, which is already hosting millions. Ankara also classifies HTS as a terrorist group, due to its roots in al-Qaeda. But given the group’s dominance in Idlib, the Turkish government saw little option but to reach a modus vivendi with HTS, seeing it as preferable to any apparent alternative. Turkish officials say they tried to warn HTS not to attack the regime’s lines, but, when the rebels did so anyway, Türkiye expected, like HTS itself, that the offensive would make only limited headway. The rebels’ stunning success has now given Ankara an opportunity to wield much greater influence in the Levant.
The Assad regime’s demise thus heralds a dramatic power shift not only in Syria but across the region. Assad’s backers, Russia and Iran, abandoned an ally both had propped up for over a decade, each for its own reasons. Russia intervened in 2015 because it wanted both to prevent what it saw as another Western-sponsored regime change and to safeguard its Soviet-era assets in Syria, particularly its warm-water port at Tartous on the Mediterranean. It has used its Hmeimim airbase in Latakia, which opened in 2015, to carry out strikes in Syria but also to transport troops and materiel to African war zones. As the rebel offensive progressed, both the port and the airbase looked to be in jeopardy. With no other way to protect them, Moscow seems over the past few days to have reached an understanding with HTS that would keep these sites in Russian hands, at least for now. As for Iran, it was using Syria as a transshipment corridor for getting arms to Hizbollah. Losing the regime is another devastating blow for Tehran, following Israel’s defanging of Hizbollah, another nail in the coffin of the “axis of resistance” as an effective mechanism for its own defence.
Israel … has moved aggressively to assert its interests in the new dispensation.
Israel, meanwhile, has moved aggressively to assert its interests in the new dispensation. Israel was no friend of Assad’s regime but knew its vulnerabilities, having infiltrated it long since. Fearing an Islamist government in Damascus and the general uncertainty about what may come next, Israel launched a sweeping bombing campaign as Assad fell, with hundreds of airstrikes taking out Syrian military assets, including the navy, fighter jets, tanks, air defence systems, missile and rocket batteries, and chemical weapons production facilities. Israeli troops moved into the demilitarised part of the Golan Heights, which lies outside the area of the Golan that has served as a buffer between the countries since 1974, and which Israel annexed in 1981, as well as Mount Hermon/Jabal al-Sheikh and other commanding heights on the Syrian side of the demilitarised zone. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the new positions are temporary and defensive, aimed at preventing the emergence of a significant threat from Syria. But others see the risk of another open-ended occupation. Other neighbours are wary of losing out after Assad’s ouster. To Syria’s east, Iraq is sceptical of al-Jolani’s intentions, his early messages of friendship notwithstanding. Baghdad is also worried about instability in eastern Syria, which could allow the small numbers of ISIS fighters there to resurge and make sorties across the Iraqi frontier. To the south, Jordan is nervous about the ascent of Islamists who it fears could come to menace the Hashemite monarchy, and about control of the border, which has been a sieve through which the Assad regime pushed drugs, especially an amphetamine called Captagon, into the rest of the Middle East. The regime may be gone, but the Captagon trade could well continue without checks by Syria’s new rulers, as the smuggling networks survive. Farther afield, the Gulf Arab states, particularly the United Arab Emirates, had long tried to entice Syria out of its Iranian embrace and back into the Arab fold. But they lacked the leverage such an effort required, so long as Iran and Russia were providing the Assad regime with protection and all the Gulf states could offer was money and trade, curtailed in any case by Western sanctions. That has changed. Still, Islamist rule in Damascus would be anathema to the UAE and looked at askance by Saudi Arabia. Both may try to exert influence over unfolding events in Syria in an attempt to dilute the new order’s Islamism.
Inside Syria, HTS is the clear winner, but it can build on its success only with the help of other Syrians, including minorities but also rivals among the Sunni Arab majority. During its swift offensive, it enjoyed the support of many Syrians who hated the regime more than they distrusted HTS. But HTS is a group that thrived in the confines of Idlib. After splitting from al-Qaeda, it cracked down on transnational militants in Idlib and showed some tolerance toward minorities. Still, it ruled hegemonically, brooking little dissent. Trying to replicate its Idlib model countrywide would be a disaster for Syria, stoking considerable resistance. Al-Jolani needs to convince other Syrians that he supports a new Syria that is more just, inclusive and participatory, one in which all citizens’ rights will be respected. Syria is a mosaic in ethnic and religious terms. Violent minority rule under the Assad dynasty severely damaged society; comparably heavy-handed majority rule could perpetuate that state of affairs.
People [from the country’s majority-Alawite areas] seem to be heeding HTS’s call not to take revenge on regime elements or harm members of ethnic and religious minorities.
Early indications from the country’s majority-Alawite areas are encouraging, as people seem to be heeding HTS’s call not to take revenge on regime elements or harm members of ethnic and religious minorities. Yet in northern Hama, Sunni armed groups unaffiliated with HTS have started taking advantage of the local power vacuum in the wake of the rebel victory to kill or kidnap minority individuals and loot their properties. While a degree of instability is to be expected during this transitional period, such actions risk deepening the social rifts that emerged throughout Syria during the civil war. They also threaten the fragile trust that minorities have reluctantly extended to HTS, reinforcing fears that the group is either unwilling or unable to protect everyone equally. If it wants to stabilise Syria overall, HTS needs to demonstrate the ability to maintain order and curb such violence, especially in areas such as northern Hama, but also in towns in Homs and Latakia provinces.
HTS has collaborated tactically with other insurgent groups, whether it be the Turkish-backed SNA operating in other parts of northern Syria or rebel groups in Daraa and al-Suweida in the south. The question is whether HTS can ensure that these groups do not prey on people in areas they control, all the while retaining their support for whatever order emerges, even if outside powers seek to wield influence through them.
An immediate threat lies in Syria’s north east, which is under the control of the Kurdish-led SDF. The SDF emerged from a Syrian spinoff of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a decades-old insurgent force in Türkiye branded terrorist by much of the world. A beleaguered Assad regime abandoned the north east during the civil war, essentially handing it over to the Kurdish militants known as the People’s Protection Units, which later became the SDF’s backbone. The SDF then expanded its de facto domain while fighting ISIS, with U.S. military support, seizing a large swathe of north-eastern Syria, an area rich in wheat and dotted with oil fields. It found itself wedged between the Assad regime and Ankara, which saw in the SDF little but a PKK front. The SNA has made inroads into SDF-held areas in the days since the HTS offensive began, capturing Manbij, a town in northern Syria long contested between them, and marching toward Kobani, farther east.
An attempt by Türkiye, through the SNA, to defeat the SDF or at least expel it from the north east would bode ill for the prospect that a peaceful country may emerge after Assad’s fall. Already, the SDF has asked for U.S. airstrikes to protect its positions. A continued assault in the north east would drive many people from their homes and halt positive steps recently taken by Ankara and the PKK toward a rapprochement. Moreover, the SDF holds thousands of so-called ISIS families, the wives and children of ISIS fighters, as well as some fighters themselves, in detention camps. The U.S., which retains some 900 troops in eastern Syria, carried out 75 strikes on ISIS targets in central Syria on 8 December to help ensure the group would not try a breakout from al-Hol, one of the camps, while the SDF was distracted by the fight in Manbij. An escalation in the north east could cause a security nightmare if these detainees escape and refill the ranks of ISIS. ISIS, whose activity had largely been limited to occasional raids from Syrian desert hideouts, appears to have seized additional areas as regime forces dissolved.
The first priority has to be preventing lawlessness, looting and factional fighting. For the most part, public order appears to have held, though there are reports of properties being ransacked. HTS has enacted a curfew in the cities where unrest was greatest, set up checkpoints, ordered armed factions to keep away from government buildings and seized weapons from civilians. It also appears to be pulling fighters out of some urban areas, which it and other factions should continue to do, except in particularly divided areas, like northern Hama, where minority groups predominate adjacent to majority-Sunni areas. Those fighters have an initial role to play but, security permitting, day-to-day responsibility should shift to a local police force, where viable, and if not then to HTS’s own police. Crucial, too, is protecting senior government officials and military officers from reprisals, including the former Syrian prime minister, who was taken into custody by southern rebels.
Establishing an interim civilian authority and preserving civilian state institutions are other priorities. On 9 December, HTS named Bashir, head of the HTS-backed Salvation Government in Idlib, as transitional prime minister. As an initial step, given the imperative of maintaining order and keeping services running, his nomination might be justified. But many see in it a move to dominate. HTS subsequently clarified the temporary nature of al-Bashir’s mandate. It should similarly set a finite timeframe on other appointments. It should also announce its commitment to forming a more inclusive interim authority, potentially facilitated or supported by the UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen. That would allow Syrians from across the country’s political spectrum to join with former rebel leaders in laying out reforms necessary for effective, participatory and internationally backed rule. Until his designation as a terrorist by the UN and many capitals is lifted, al-Jolani should eschew a formal role in the interim authority (in Idlib, he held no position in the local government, despite often appearing in public alongside officials), so as not to further complicate what looks set to be an uphill struggle getting aid and investment into Syria.
As for state institutions, though hollowed out by corruption, sanctions and regime predation, they remain essential for ensuring as smooth a transition as possible. Immediate efforts should focus on retaining existing staff. The interim government could invite all bureaucrats to resume their jobs under its umbrella.
Much of the former Syrian military and security apparatus has disappeared, for the time being at least, and its long-term future is probably best decided by a more inclusive transitional government. HTS has already issued an amnesty for conscripts, which makes sense. HTS itself should consider disbanding as a rebel group and creating instead a military structure, possibly within a new defence ministry, that might act as the core of a new national army. It could then absorb former rebels, on a voluntary basis, as well as other forces including appropriately vetted soldiers and officers from the Assad-era army. This course of action might help it escape the terrorism designation bestowed upon it by the U.S., the EU, Türkiye and other countries, which would facilitate the external support as well as investment to rebuild the country that Syria needs.
Building trust among Syria’s diverse people will be essential for placing the nation on a firmer footing. So far, HTS has sought to reassure minorities, including Alawites – the core support base for Assad – through statements promising to safeguard their rights, avoid harassment and refrain from imposing religious dress codes. In areas with significant minority populations, HTS has acted with consideration, showing awareness of the sensitivity surrounding its deployment. It should follow through on its pledges to respect the distinct social and cultural norms of the whole country. Any new authority should reassure all Syrians, including minorities and those who aligned themselves with the former government. They should enhance security and deliver services in all areas, including minority-dominated areas, to assuage fears. Certainly, minorities should have a role in policing the areas where they live, particularly along the coast.
Addressing the conflict between Turkish-backed SNA and the SDF in the north east is a particularly urgent challenge. HTS should initiate talks with the SDF to stop the fighting, potentially finding a role for the Kurdish-led administration in the central government that would be tolerable for Ankara. Eventually, whatever process is set in motion to determine a new constitution or ruling framework for Syria will need to determine the status of the north east within the state. In parallel, the U.S. should encourage talks between Ankara and the SDF about border security and related matters, many of which have been the subject of discussion for years. Türkiye should restrain the SNA until a new arrangement can take shape. For now, Washington should not take steps to pull U.S. forces out of Syria. Despite their small numbers, U.S. troops still serve to counter ISIS and, by extension, offer some deterrence against an all-out struggle for the north east.
Neither Israel nor HTS is likely to seek a rapprochement with the other. Yet each could take steps that would reduce tensions and serve the other’s security interests.
Neither Israel nor HTS is likely to seek a rapprochement with the other. Yet each could take steps that would reduce tensions and serve the other’s security interests. Al-Jolani, presumably with a Western audience in mind, has thus far chosen not to publicly criticise Israel’s heavy bombardment, though he faces increasing pressure from Syrians furious about the strikes to do so. He has already said he does not want more war, but he could clarify again that HTS poses no threat to any of Syria’s neighbours, which would also ease the path to sanctions relief. HTS claims to have secured all the ousted regime’s arms depots and production facilities, including and especially those involving chemical weapons. It should immediately allow an Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons team, including personnel from Western countries, to inspect and dismantle the latter facilities.
From its side, Israel should withdraw its forces from the demilitarised zone on the Golan Heights and return to the positions agreed upon in the 1974 disengagement agreement. From Israel’s perspective, wanting to take out Syria’s heavy weaponry is understandable, given the uncertainty that prevails in Syria, but continued airstrikes threaten to tip an already delicate transition into disarray. Israel should also stop bombing border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, as Hizbollah appears to have fully withdrawn from Syria, and these crossings are overflowing with Syrian refugees hoping to return home. As the U.S. mediates between Ankara and the SDF, it should keep Baghdad abreast of possible changes in control of areas along the Iraqi frontier. HTS should also reassure Amman that local groups distinct from HTS will guard the Syria-Jordan border. Once a caretaker government forms in Damascus, it should open talks with both Baghdad and Amman about border security, especially concerning illicit trade.
For Western governments, a priority should be to make sure that sanctions do not choke the economic recovery essential for a successful transition. The U.S. has been the driving force behind many bilateral and multilateral sanctions on Syria, which are some of the world’s most onerous. Washington designated Syria a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1979, tightened restrictions in the early 2000s and ratcheted them up further amid the Assad regime’s civil war atrocities. The U.S. and EU have also imposed sanctions on whole sectors of Syria’s economy, including the energy sector, as well as targeted sanctions on Assad-era figures, including through the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act. The U.S. designation of HTS as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) has had an especially chilling effect on aid and financial flows into areas the group controls, because of the steep penalties for non-compliance and the lack of a licensing mechanism. HTS is also designated by the UN, the EU, the U.S., the UK, Russia, Türkiye and others.
It will take time for sanctioning governments to unravel these regimes, and many will understandably be reluctant to move fast. But governments can take three immediate steps that would provide Syria a boost at this transitional moment – starting with the issuance of broad licences to facilitate economic activity. The EU, the U.S., the UN and others already have licences in place permitting humanitarian support, but these do not apply to the commercial activity that is needed to keep the Syrian economy from spiralling downward. The U.S. government’s General License 20 for Afghanistan, issued after the sanctioned Taliban’s takeover, is a model.
Secondly, the countries that list HTS as a terrorist group should re-evaluate this designation, in light of current facts, and quickly consider what steps they would need to see for delisting. The group’s formal break with al-Qaeda in 2016 should help, but a number of foreign militants are still in the HTS ranks, which may give sanctioning governments pause. Those governments should make concerns known to HTS and test what assurances it can credibly give to allay them. Washington and other Western capitals are also likely to weigh HTS’s commitment to inclusive governance, chemical and biological weapons controls, protecting minority rights, and preventing Syria from being used as a launchpad for terrorist attacks or threatening its neighbours. Though these matters are not technically linked to rescission, they are the criteria that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced will determine whether Washington recognises a future Syrian government. The present administration could signal that it leans toward lifting the FTO designation, ideally coordinating with the incoming team of President-elect Donald Trump, to blunt the measure’s impact on aid and investment. Officials can quickly reimpose the designation if they deem it necessary. The U.S. should also lift the $10 million bounty it has offered for al-Jolani’s capture.
Thirdly, Western governments should set out a roadmap for unravelling the web of sanctions that would either be premature to lift immediately or will require more involved (in some cases legislative) action. Setting clear, realistic benchmarks will be key to the success of any such scheme.