Syria uneasily celebrates a year of liberation

THE Crackle of explosions echoes across the Damascus sky. A year ago such blasts were the soundtrack to rebel forces bearing down on the capital. Today they come from celebratory fireworks. Syrians are preparing for the first anniversary of their liberation from the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s blood-soaked dictator who fled on December 8th 2024. Billboards celebrating their freedom plaster the city. Syrians have travelled to the capital from all over the country in anticipation of the celebrations.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda leader who is now Syria’s interim president, has got plenty right over the past year. He has ended Syria’s decades of diplomatic isolation with startling speed. He is a fixture at conferences around the world. At the White House in November Donald Trump sprayed him with aftershave while inquiring how many wives he had—another moment in his unlikely bromance with the American president.

Many of the sanctions that brought Syria to its knees under Mr Assad have been waived. Congress is expected to repeal the most punishing—the Caesar Act—by early 2026. International firms are exploring deals. In December executives from Chevron, an oil giant, visited Damascus. dp World, an Emirati firm, has signed a hefty contract with the government to run the port at Tartus. Businessmen shuttle in and out of the capital.

Meanwhile, Mr Sharaa is rebranding the state. The red flag of Baathist Syria has been replaced by the green revolutionary standard. Much of the apparatus of Mr Assad’s hated regime has been dismantled. His feared intelligence services have gone. Hundreds of prisons stand empty. Syrians feel able to criticise their government in public. Syria has not turned into the Islamic caliphate his critics predicted. Women are being recruited into the police. Wine flows freely in the restaurants and bars of the old city of Damascus. This is not Afghanistan under the Taliban.

But cracks are beginning to appear. The economy has not collapsed, but the financial situation of many Syrians has deteriorated since liberation. Hundreds of thousands of government employees have been fired. Subsidies are being cut. Sanctions relief is yet to produce much. Reconstruction is mostly non-existent.

And Mr Sharaa is taking the state in a worrying direction. New bodies such as the General Authority for Borders and Customs and a sovereign-wealth fund have been created by presidential decree, stripping ministries of revenue-raising powers. Run by loyalists, there is no public oversight. “They have no legal or constitutional basis,” frets a lawyer in Damascus.

Meanwhile, a new General Secretariat for Political Affairs, headed by the foreign minister, has been established. Its mandate is opaque but its influence is far-reaching. Civil-society groups say gatherings have been cancelled after venues received threats from the office. Others say it vetted candidates for the recent elections.

For a year governance has rested on a chaotic mix of presidential and ministerial edicts. Ministries have issued decrees, only to revoke them later, or have another body issue a contradictory decision. A hastily gathered constitutional convention in March granted the president sweeping powers. In October he held “elections” for two-thirds of a new parliament. An electoral college of approved voters chose members of it from a list of selected candidates; Mr Sharaa will appoint the remainder. The process disappointed many. “They were the best we could do under the circumstances,” insists Mohammed Dahla, an mp in Damascus. Whether the body will have any meaningful powers is still unclear.

Nor is there much sign of Mr Assad’s cronies being brought to book. A body created to oversee transitional justice remains unfunded. Several of Mr Assad’s lieutenants have been hired by the new regime to manage political affairs. Syrians are increasingly taking things into their own hands. Revenge killings happen almost daily, particularly in mixed areas around Homs and the coast. Shadi Haroun, a former prisoner of Sednaya prison now advising the government, says such demands will not fade. “Syrian people didn’t carry out the revolution because they were poor, they did it because there were values missing in society—values like dignity, justice and citizenship.”

But worst have been Mr Sharaa’s failings in relations with minorities. Twice he has lost control of his security forces as they carried out sectarian atrocities. In March they responded to an attempted insurrection by Alawite fighters loyal to the fallen Assad regime; in July, to an uprising by Druze fighters in Suwayda.

The distrust in Suwayda will probably endure for a generation, says a Druze businessman involved in mediation with the government. Some fear that Alawites will flirt with insurgency if Mr Sharaa continues to exclude them. The interim president seems unable to grasp why minorities might fear the rule of a former jihadist in a Sunni-dominated country. Instead, he has simply urged them to lay down their weapons and join him.

Mr Sharaa has poured his energy into rebuilding Syria’s foreign ties. For now, no one else is capable of uniting the country. But if he fails to accommodate minorities and share power more widely, that may change. As a merchant from Idlib, the province Mr Sharaa ruled in Mr Assad’s last years, puts it: “He must remember he is running a state now, not a terror outfit.” ■