Two very different types of Syria are emerging in the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in December 2024. On the one hand, Syria is brimming with confidence. According to the European Union Agency for Asylum, just under one million people have returned to the country, since the fall of the Assad regime. That is a staggering proportion of the approximately six million who are estimated to have fled overseas, according to figures compiled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It reveals just how desperate Syrians have been to return to their homeland after 14 years of war and six decades of autocratic Baathist rule. Millions more are expected to return as things stabilise further.

I spent a fortnight in Syria last December, observing celebrations to mark the first year since the country’s liberation. There was a distinctly different feeling in the air from my previous visit, which came just weeks after rebels had first swept into Damascus. Then, scores of Kalashnikov-toting, balaclava-wearing young men lined the streets, making their presence both obvious and felt. Vehicles with licence plates from Idlib also lined the streets – a marker distinguishing them as having come from the last rebel stronghold in the country’s north-western province.

All of that provoked widespread unease about what might come next. Assad’s government had portrayed Idlib as an al-Qaeda statelet determined to impose a form of governance over the country not too dissimilar from the way in which ISIS had governed the eastern provinces during the mid-2010s. That narrative was characteristic of the way in which Syria was run, with the government manufacturing communal hostilities, pitting different sects against one another, and maintaining a ubiquitous sense of fear.

The Assad regime’s legacy continues to pose very real challenges for the transitional government, who are keen to project the image of a unified and harmonious country. This is the other side of post-revolutionary Syria, brought into sharp relief by the recent collapse of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia that has operated in the east of the country. The SDF rose to prominence as the West’s preferred local actor to spearhead the fightback against ISIS. While they led ground assaults against the group, western airpower supported them from above. When ISIS eventually collapsed, the SDF took almost 100,000 men, women and children, associated with the group into custody. Empowered and emboldened by both their victory and international relationships, the SDF has refused to reintegrate with the Syrian state ever since the removal of Assad. That standoff came to a head in recent weeks as fighting broke out, first in Aleppo, and then elsewhere.

In this respect, it is instructive not to think of the conflict in Syria since 2011 as a singular event – as one civil war – but rather as a series of several parallel struggles. One dimension of that is ethnic competition; in this case, between Arabs and Kurds. Despite the government’s attempts to reassure them of their place within the country – such as acknowledging Kurdish as a state language, restoring citizenship to those from whom it was stripped under discriminatory laws passed in 1962, or making the Nowruz festival a national holiday – distrust remains. After negotiations repeatedly broke down or stalled, the Arab Shaitat tribe of Deir ez-Zour decided it had had enough. They launched a major offensive against the Kurds, whom they have long accused of imposing Kurdish domination over Arab areas. They had originally tried fighting ISIS alone, rebelling against them in 2014, but were unable to offer sustained resistance. ISIS eventually triumphed and brutally punished the Shaitat by massacring more than 1,000 members of their community, bringing them to heel in the process.

The arrival of the SDF was therefore born of necessity. In the process, however, many locals came to see them as just another alien entity, replacing the one which had come before. It precipitated a wave of continuous clashes, the most serious of which occurred in August and September 2023, resulting in over 100 deaths. US officials intervened at the time, brokering a truce by arguing that instability could result in an ISIS resurgence. Realities on the ground are wildly different today. Under President Trump, the United States is firmly supporting the transitional government and has lost patience with what it sees as the SDF’s intransigence. All that has resulted in a dramatic reversal of SDF fortunes, which until a few weeks ago controlled almost a third of Syrian territory, but has now been forced back into its strongholds of Hasakah, Qamishli and Kobane.

Resolving these types of tensions has been a key priority for the transitional government as it aims to project a softer, more inclusive image. At the most obvious level, there is a different feel on the streets of major cities as paramilitary fighters have mostly been replaced by uniformed police or traffic officers. More strategically, a new emblem was also launched on 3 July at a ceremony in Damascus along with a snazzy website to accompany the occasion. It formalises the country’s break from its Baathist past and marks the birth of a new aesthetic for the state.

This is about more than window-dressing. The visual rebranding also signifies a move away from the control of Syria by an individual, his family, and from the cult of personality more generally. Posters commemorating the one-year liberation featured powerful but generic revolutionary imagery, rather than faces of the current leadership.

That shift in identity is most acutely felt with the unveiling of new bank notes which replace those carrying the faces of Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez. Now they carry images of mulberries, oranges, olives, and wheat. It marks ‘a move away from the veneration of individuals’, said President Ahmed al-Sharaa and a pivot towards things which are considered both inherently and enduringly Syrian.

The entire process is aimed at erasing the omnipresence of the Baathist legacy. Those efforts are led by Mohammad Selwaye who created Mpire, an award-winning branding and design agency in Sweden, and Waseem Kadoura, a Creative Art Director, previously based in Germany. Both are part of the Syrian diaspora that was displaced by the war, but who have now returned to assist the transitional government. Their efforts are aimed at washing away the ‘aggressive’ image associated with Syria under its previously ‘criminal family.’ They insist that Syria’s new approach will be ‘human-centric’ and ‘prioritise the well-being dignity of every Syrian, ensuring that every citizen feels valued and respected.’

In that regard, the emblem unveiled on 3 July removes the shield once carried by the Syrian eagle, marking a symbolic shedding of the state’s traditionally combative posturing. Instead, it now carries three stars above its head, representing its citizens, to demonstrate the primacy of people over the state. Its five-pointed tail also represents the country’s northern, southern, eastern, western, and central provinces.

Selwaye and Kadoura’s efforts are evocative of the snazzy media campaigns run by Gulf states, particularly of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as they market themselves to the world. Saudi’s ‘Welcome to Arabia’ campaign, for example, has sought to dramatically recast the kingdom’s image as an open and welcoming tourist destination. Blending traditional landscapes and architecture with geometric patterns and stylised digital fonts, the campaign has a clear and strong theme associated with it. This is unsurprising given that Mpire has offices in both Riyadh and Dubai, where it has worked on digital campaigns for a range of private and public sector clients.

With those skills now deployed at home, the transitional government hopes to overcome the country’s history of war and oppression. ‘We stand on the threshold of a new narrative built not on dazzling design, but on redrawing the relationship between society and the state’, said Minister of Information, Hamza al-Mustafa, at a ceremony last July.

A resident of Jaramana, a predominantly Druze city where tensions have resulted in the ongoing crisis in Suweyda, told me these initiatives mean nothing while violence persists. ‘I don’t trust them’, he said. Outbursts of communal, sectarian, or ethnic violence as seen in places like Latakia, the south, and now the east, immediately overshadow attractive aesthetics. ‘But I hope I’m wrong,’ he continues. ‘I hope they can change the situation.’