Bashar Assad is finished but Syria’s fight for democracy is just beginning

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. He covered the Syrian civil war from 2012 to 2017 for Voice of America and the Daily Beast.

“Most European governments can’t wait to get rid of their Syrian migrants,” says Lina Chawaf, who was a prominent TV personality in Damascus until she fled in 2011 after siding with the popular revolt against now-ousted strongman Bashar Assad.

Indeed the Europeans seem all too eager to see the back of the Syrian asylum-seekers they initially welcomed. Austria hardly waited for the contrails to disperse from the aircraft that flew Assad to Moscow to announce it was already drafting deportation plans for its 100,000 Syrians. In the meantime, Chancellor Karl Nehammer is nudging their departure, offering €1,000 to any who decide voluntarily to leave.

Other EU governments are being more circumspect mainly for reasons of seemliness, but several swiftly halted consideration of Syrian asylum applications. “We need to wait a few more days to see where Syria is heading,” said Nancy Faeser, interior minister of Germany, which is among those deploying a more considered tone.

Like most Syrians, Chawaf, currently a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University, oscillates between hopefulness and anxiety about Syria’s prospects. Since 2013, Chawaf has been overseeing the independent, pro-democracy Syrian radio station Rozana, which focuses on human rights reporting and has been broadcasting from studios in Paris and Gaziantep, Turkey. The outfit has around 25 correspondents based outside Syria and an intrepid two dozen inside, who’ve braved barrel bombs and jihadists.

She’s hardly slept a wink since Assad’s toppling and is planning to visit Damascus soon, and to relocate most of Rozana’s staff to Syria. But she’s under no illusions about what might lie in store for her war-tortured country, and fears Europe might be a little too quick in thinking it will soon be rid of Syrian migrants.

In fact, if things go awry, the continent could even see another refugee influx.

And there are key questions to ask. Will Syria become a more normal country and transition from the violence and oppression of the Assad regime, or is it being offered just a respite and will soon be faced with Islamist repression imposed by the main insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose origins lie with al Qaeda and the Islamic State group? Will the militants be inclusive and accept a secular, democratic state? Can Syria’s new rulers — whoever they may be — overcome the religious and ethnic fractures, worsened by the 13-year-long civil war, that divide the country between the Sunni majority, Alawites, Druze, Kurds and Christians?

If the past is anything to go by, the omens aren’t good. Look back at the outcome of the Arab Spring which saw the ousting of dictators amid high hopes. Despots replaced despots. And in Libya, a much more cohesive society than Syria, there was just a brief period of transitional peace before bullets replaced ballots.

For now much of the focus in Syria is on the joy at Assad’s departure; on the opening up of the regime’s jails, with tens of thousands of prisoners blinking their thankfulness to the sunlight and being reunited with families who’d long given up hope for them. As ever with the fall of an autocracy we’re given a glimpse of the bling left behind in their marble-floored mansions by the fleeing overlords — a garage of luxury cars, including Aston Martins, a Lamborghini, a black Lexus and rare Ferrari F50; racks of high-end clothing; Louis Vuitton suitcases and Hermès bags.

Of course, the cost of all that bling grabbed by kleptocrats has been to further traumatize a country that’s never enjoyed stable democracy since securing its independence in 1946. All modern Syria has known is coups, military revolts and uprisings. And since 1963 a vicious autocracy. Not a great track record; not one that inspires confidence.

Noticeably, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken didn’t even dare utter the word democracy on his arrival last week in neighboring Jordan to discuss Syria’s transition. He mentioned it was important to make sure “the Syrian people have the opportunity to choose their path forward,” but how that will be achieved without free and fair elections is anyone’s guess.

Blinken did outline some principles a transitional Syria needs to observe from Washington’s perspective. “It should be inclusive, non-sectarian. It’s got to uphold and protect the rights of all Syrians, including minorities,” he said. And he emphasized the new Syria should not be used “as a base for terrorism, extremism and pose a threat to its neighbors or ally with groups like ISIS,” he added.

America’s top diplomat also avoided mentioning the name of Syria’s top rebel commander, Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a (who has seemingly dropped his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani) or of HTS, which is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the U.K. As well he might. For all of its recent makeover and toleration of religious minorities in the Idlib enclave HTS has been running for the past eight years, and for all of its leader’s courting of the West, there’s much to prompt anxiety of Syrians like Chawaf, who don’t want to see Syria controlled by Islamists or Salafi jihadists.

It is only six years ago that masked HTS gunmen in the city of Kafranbel ambushed and assassinated the well-known Syrian activist Raed al-Fares and his colleague Hamoud Jneed. Fares founded Radio Fresh, the first station to broadcast in areas liberated from Assad. Shar’a has blamed such instances on the excesses of a few individuals. But HTS didn’t punish the excesses. And worryingly the whole ideological underpinning of HTS is hardcore Islamist, despite its apparent breach from al Qaeda in 2016.

That break was more about tactics and a decision by Shar’a that he and his fighters should be focused on Assad’s ouster and not on transnational jihad. HTS ideologues and clerics like the Egyptian Abu al-Fatah al-Farghali, a sharia law and military judge in Idlib, have worked out some basic governance principles, which were observed by the Syrian Salvation Government HTS set up in Idlib. Those principles include a total rejection of democracy and secularism and the embrace of Islamic governance.

Under HTS rule Idlib has not held any elections. Ministers were approved by the shura, a consultative council. Sharia law was observed. No women were appointed to the government. The transitional government Shar’a has established for Syria is packed with HTS loyalists.

Writing back in 2021, Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a British-Iraqi researcher, compared HTS to Afghanistan’s Taliban. “This is not to say that the two movements are exactly alike, but HTS mirrors the Taliban in being a militant Islamic movement that wants to be taken seriously by international actors, giving supposed assurances to them that its territories will not be used as a launchpad for “external operations, and having as the first ideal goal the establishment of an Islamic government,” he concluded.

Despite Shar’a’s talk of elections, Chawaf remains skeptical. “They don’t believe in freedom and democracy,” she says of HTS and nearly a dozen affiliated groups, many comprising foreign fighters who have fought in Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Levant. “At least Assad has gone. At least the regime has gone. But now we will have to continue the struggle for freedom, for democracy,” she says.

While she remains committed to the idea of Syria being able to transition to an open and democratic society, Western powers seem less so. They just want Syria to be stable, for Syrian migrants to return home and for there to be no more migrant flows. And so pragmatism will likely trump principle and Western governments — while holding their noses — will engage with HTS.