On the first day of the year 2025, the Syrian transitional government made its first diplomatic outing abroad, visiting the Saudi government and then its neighbors Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. HTS thus sent a clear and strong message to the whole world, making Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in addition to Turkey, its priority partners in the reconstruction of the country. The resources needed to rebuild Syria are estimated at almost 400 billion dollars. In the days that followed, Saudi Arabia sent several truckloads of humanitarian aid by air to Damascus, then a convoy of 60 aid trucks entered via the Jordanian border on January the 5th, while Qatar and Turkey sent two “powerships” to the Syrian coast (floating power plants) to supply Syria with 800 MW of electricity (+50%). Jordan is also ready to supply energy to its neighbor. The lack of electricity and its rationing by the Assad regime was one of the major problems facing Syrian society.
After announcing Syria’s reconnection to the market economy, we can expect the transitional government to apply ultra-liberal measures aimed at reducing the new state’s spending as much as possible and favoring private investment. This may explain the unannounced dismissal of hundreds of public-sector hospital workers in Tartous and Aleppo, as well as a state-owned shoe factory in Suwayda in recent days, leading to spontaneous angry demonstrations in all three provinces.
Suffice it to say that the period ahead promises to be a tense one, especially as the security operations launched in Tartous, Homs and Rural Damascus over the past week have not been as consensual and peaceful as might have been expected. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has gathered extensive evidence and testimonies of violence committed by HTS forces during their sweep operations to arrest officers and agents of the deposed regime: aggressive raids, bullying and physical violence against hundreds of residents, as well as those arrested. For the operation in Homs, which lasted five days, HTS arrested 1,450 people, without knowing the reality of the charges brought against them. Above all, these operations gave self-proclaimed rebel groups or groups affiliated to HTS carte blanche to persecute and murder civilians. SOHR has counted 214 murders since December 8, including that of three farmers in Jableh (Latakia), which led to a demonstration of several thousand people demanding the expulsion of foreign fighters (in this case, Chechens and Pakistanis).
Syrian society urgently needs the implementation of transitional justice, accompanied by solid reconciliation processes. Fourteen mass graves have been discovered, with 1,582 bodies identified to date, and measures have finally been taken to guard Assad’s prisons and preserve their archives, at the insistence of the families of the disappeared. But these families are now joined by hundreds of others, who demonstrated in large numbers in Damascus on January 6 to demand information on the fate of almost 9,000 soldiers of the former regime arrested since its fall, including 2,000 sent back to Syria by the Iraqi authorities after fleeing. While several thousand Assad soldiers have passed through “reconciliation centers” over the past three weeks to hand in their weapons and be registered for possible prosecution, before being reincorporated into civilian society (under Assad, soldiers had their civilian identity cards confiscated and replaced by military identity cards), many are still being held without the transitional government being willing to give their names and places of detention. Finally, and this is perhaps the greatest irony of all, families in the Idleb region are also demonstrating to demand the release of their loved ones, imprisoned by HTS before the fall of the regime for their membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Salafist group criticizing Joulani for abandoning the Islamic caliphate project (sic).
Other events are shaking up Syria’s new political life, particularly in the two southern regions of Syria. In Deraa the leader of the 8th Brigade, created by Russia from the region’s rebel groups under surrender agreements signed in 2018, refuses to disarm his men and join the new Syrian army. In Suwayda two of the main local factions have allied and also refused, through the province’s spiritual sheikh, to give up their weapons and join the new Syrian army without guarantees of a real democratic and secular transition at the end of the transition period. While this decision may come as a surprise to the Sunni-majority factions in Deraa, it is far less of a surprise to the Druze minority in Suwayda, whose survival has always depended on its means of self-defense and its ties of solidarity with the Druze of Mount Hermon (occupied by Israel since December 8) and Mount Lebanon (the Lebanese have been banned from entering Syria since January 3). The Druze cannot jeopardize their security in the face of a military apparatus entirely in the hands of former (not so former) jihadists[1]. Their defiance is therefore totally legitimate.
Still in the south of the country, Israel has seized new villages, as well as the important Mantara dam in the province of Quneitra, not hesitating to destroy houses and infrastructure, while exercising violence against residents. A French journalist, Sylvain Mercadier, and his Syrian fixer were arrested on January 8 and beaten while in custody, before being released. Israel claims it intends to hold out until the end of 2025, but there is ample evidence that it intends to occupy the territory permanently and wage a “water war” against the Syrians as well. At the time of writing, we have also learned of the detention of five Palestinian refugees by the Syrian branch of Fatah in Damascus as they took part in a demonstration in front of the Palestinian embassy to protest against the ongoing siege in Jenin. Not content with collaborating with the Assad regime, Palestinian political factions seem to enjoy impunity, aided by HTS’s silence on Israel.
The other obstacle to HTS’s hegemonic ambitions is represented by the Syrian Democratic Forces and their autonomous Kurdish allies in Rojava. The main reason for their non-allegiance is that the war continues between them and the pro-Turkish jihadist mercenaries of the SNA, supported by Turkish aircraft, artillery and drones. Since the end of December, the front line has crystallized around the Tishrin dam on the Euphrates, and the fighting has claimed the lives of 56 SDF fighters and 199 SNA members. Not to mention the many civilian casualties in jihadist-controlled areas, where persecution and arbitrary executions are commonplace, but also on the other side of the Euphrates due to daily bombardments. Beyond the fierce resistance of the SDF, the truly decisive factor is and will remain the position of the United States in the conflict. The US army has already reinforced its contingent in Kobane, and there is some talk of demilitarizing the area under agreements with France, involving the securing of the Turkish border by a Franco-American force. But it is clear that this will not be enough to put an end to the conflict as long as the regions north of Aleppo remain under the control of the SNA fanatics. On the HTS side, negotiations are still underway for a possible conciliation, as the autonomous administration of northeastern Syria has reaffirmed its desire to integrate into a unified national state.
Given these balances of power, as well as the diversity and regional specificities that characterize Syrian society, only a decentralized model of governance allowing greater local participation in decision-making can guarantee social peace. But only if HTS’s foreign sponsors accept this…
[1] Recall that Al-Nosra jihadists had fought the Free Syrian Army’s Druse Battalion in 2014, while those of DAESH had massacred 258 residents of Suwayda in 2018.