Four months after Assad’s fall, the Military Operations Command of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham sent one of its envoys to the predominantly Druze province of Suwayda: Mustafa al-Bakour.

The career of Ahmad al-Sharaa, aka Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, raises questions and fascinations, and since he seized power by force, many would like to see him as a providential man, a repentant jihadist who has become a pragmatic statesman. Reexamining his career through the prism of the power struggles and relationships that shaped the Syrian civil war opens up the possibility of another, less mythological view of the man.

Between July 13 and 21, 2025, the Syrian province of Suwayda in southern Syria was subjected to military aggression by armed groups affiliated with the Syrian de facto authorities, resulting in the deaths of more than 930 civilians and 550 Druze and Christian fighters. While this operation was widely presented as an intervention aimed at restoring order following inter-communal clashes, an in-depth analysis of the causes and circumstances of these events reveals a very different reality and highlights the full responsibility of Ahmad al-Sharaa’s non-elected government in what must be considered a war crime.

Our final episode takes us to the Newroz celebrations in Qamislo, where we see Syrian musician Samih Choukeir perform. Once back in Montreal, Virginia talks to Khuzama and Cedric from the media project Fajawat about the importance of Choukeir’s performance and their perspectives on the changing climate in Syria. Newroz 2025 was openly celebrated in Damascus for the first time and the holiday has taken on new significance in the wake of Assad’s fall. However, as of October 2025, the transitional government in Damascus has decided to exclude Newroz from the list of official holidays in Syria. We end the episode with an update from Khuzama and Cedric that was recorded in late September 2025 and includes talk about the massacres that took place in Sweida in July.

Khuzama and Cedric from the Fajawat grassroots initiative return to STIR to talk to Leila about the July unrest in Sweida province, which included massacres against members of the Druze community. Our guests were in Sweida during the unrest, so share their moving first-hand testimony as well as provide analysis on implications for the future of Syria as a whole.

The history of the Yarmouk camp is a microcosm of the region’s history since the beginning of the Assad clan’s dictatorship. It provides a snapshot of the power relations and political loyalties that have led to the violent fracturing of Syrian and Palestinian societies

The fall of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024 was an undeniable liberation for millions of Syrians, who suddenly and unexpectedly emerged from fifty years of totalitarian barbarism that had transformed Syria into a field of ruins doubling as a concentration camp archipelago, since which several hundred thousand civilians have disappeared or been forced into exile. However, six months after this historic overthrow, all signs suggest that beyond the coup, the promise of a better future is rapidly fading.

Leila is joined by two Sweida-based activists, Khuzama and Ian from the Fajawat grassroots initiative, to talk about the recent unrest in Syria in which members of the Druze community were targeted. In the first part, they got into what happened, the fault lines, the role of Israel as well as the agreement that was reached. The second part, starting at roughly 23 minutes in, is a dive into Sweida and the Syrian revolution, the role of women and the situation since the fall of the Assad regime.

With the Assad regime having just fallen and the issue of disarming the Druze and Kurdish communities making headlines, it is worth recalling the highly political history of the Druze community in Syria and Lebanon. Here are a few key points.