Syria’s political destiny

At this critical juncture in Syria’s history, all eyes are on the profound wounds and multifaceted divisions plaguing the country, whose very chances of survival as a unified entity are frequently called into question. Yet to focus exclusively on fragmentation is to risk overlooking a quieter development: as paradoxical as it may seem, Syrians may now share more collective political and historical experiences than at any previous moment in their modern history.

In December 2024, Syrians threw off the Assad yoke, 54 years after Hafez al-Assad seized power and transformed the country into one of the most nefarious police states in contemporary history. The final blow to the tattered regime of his son, Bashar, was delivered by a coalition of rebel groups in a sudden, low-combat military offensive, ushering in a new era for the war-torn country.

Many hoped that the relative bloodlessness marking the early weeks of the transitional period would hold. Not rooted in an adequate understanding of Syria’s contemporary realities, these hopes were soon quashed. Divisions long nourished by the Assad regime – and already exposed during the war – were exacerbated by the practices of state and non-state actors in the aftermath of the regime’s fall, particularly in the spring and summer of 2025.

Despite the well-founded fears surrounding today’s Syria, however, one may nonetheless entertain the argument that Syrians now have more in common than at any point since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. If so, they possess a genuine opportunity to embark upon a state-building project capable of weathering future upheavals, offering a new conception of a modern Syrian nation.

To speak of a Syrian nation is, in itself, uncommon in the domestic context. The Arabic word most closely associated with nation, ummah, is not used in reference to the modern Syrian state; watan, meaning country or homeland, serves that purpose. Broader ummahs have traditionally vied for Syrians’ adherence: the Arab nation, a so-called Greater Syrian nation, and the Islamic nation.

Syrians did not draw the borders of their country; that process was initiated by the French and British during the First World War. After the Ottoman collapse, Syrians experimented with a relatively progressive constitutional monarchy under a king from the Arabian Hashemite dynasty, a project quickly crushed by France, which imposed a quasi-colonial mandate for 26 years. Upon independence in 1946, many politicians and activists devoted their energy not to consolidating the nascent republic, but to dissolving it into a larger entity.

Efforts to return Syria to the Hashemite fold continued into the 1950s. Meanwhile, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party advocated a Greater Syria stretching far beyond existing borders, grounded in pseudo-scientific and quasi-fascistic notions of racial compatibility and supremacy. Most potent of all was the idea of Arab unity, which came to be embodied by none more than the Egyptian tyrant Gamal Abdel Nasser. In each case, the Syrian state appeared provisional – a stepping stone towards a grander political destiny.

Indeed, Syria succumbed to the Nassermania sweeping through the region in 1958, when it united with Egypt to form the United Arab Republic (UAR). The pairing proved catastrophic for the ‘Northern Region’, as Syria was referred to during the UAR’s three-and-a-half-year lifespan. Syria seceded in 1961. Almost as if to compensate for breaking up the union, Syria would henceforth be officially named the Syrian Arab Republic.

Like other young Arab states, Syria gradually fell under authoritarian military rule. For 30 years, Hafez al-Assad paid lip service to Arab unity when in reality he was more focused on entrenching a complex police state and brutal one-man rule at home. Federations proposed with Libya, Egypt and Iraq never materialised, as their would-be architects proved unwilling to compromise on who would control a unified state. The rhetoric of unity endured; yet sovereignty remained jealously guarded.

These repeated experiments left an imprint on Syrian political consciousness. Over time, enthusiasm for supranational frameworks gave way to scepticism about whether such arrangements could deliver prosperity, efficient administration or representative rule.

Until recently, many Syrians prided themselves on not suffering the identity crises they attributed to the Lebanese and Egyptians. When differences began to surface after 2011, many would repeat the misguided phrase: ‘This isn’t Syria.’ The Assad regime’s decades-long enforcement of a warped and passive co-existence had merely suppressed the fragmentation that was simmering beneath the surface.

By positioning itself as protector of minorities – not because they faced immediate existential threat, but because the posture helped Assad legitimise his authoritarian rule internationally – the regime entrenched communal mistrust as a governing mechanism. The fear that Assad’s fall would replace the perceived Alawite domination with that of another minority – Sunni extremists – persuaded many to accept the dictator as the lesser of two evils.

In the mayhem that followed the outbreak of the revolution, the Kurds, long deprived of cultural and citizenship rights, strove to secure autonomy by force. The Druze, historically suspicious of centralised states and conscription, attempted to keep their distance. After the regime’s fall, these groups and others were reluctant to relinquish the autonomy they had gained during the war. Assad’s long-cultivated prophecy seemed to have been realised when an Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), replaced him.

It is often said that Ahmed al-Sharaa, the founder of HTS, was drawn to radical Islamism in his youth as an alternative to the secular project of Arab nationalism, whose failure he witnessed at home, where he was raised by a lifelong Nasserist father. The Islamist group Al-Sharaa formed in Syria after his release from prison – following his role in the Iraq war – gradually severed ties with transnational terrorist networks and declared its objective to be the overthrow of tyranny within Syria. In doing so, Al-Sharaa departed from the core jihadist rejection of modern state borders in favour of the Islamic ummah.

Upon coming to power, Al-Sharaa pledged to be a leader to all Syrians, regardless of religion or ethnicity (he was proclaimed president in January 2025). Yet the freedom of expression he had just helped deliver to Syrians quickly revealed the depth of division and competing narratives that 14 years of conflict had produced. Syria’s diversity emerged as a serious threat to the prospects of the country’s unity, with bouts of ethnic and sectarian violence on the ground and a deluge of hate speech online. The population has been deeply scarred by decades of inhumane treatment by their state, army and security apparatuses. The slow and seemingly inadequate efforts towards transitional justice seemed to make preventing collective punishments and extrajudicial revenge killings a much harder task.

But the coming to the surface of every component of Syrian society is not the problem. The passive co-existence prevalent under Assad – never talking about differences, and pretending one is not aware of them, while resorting to hollow slogans about unity should they somehow come up – was in itself detrimental to the health of society.

Today, Syrians and the international community profess commitment to preserving Syria in its current territorial form. This objective can be realised by cultivating a national identity grounded not in the embellishing of contrived abstract notions of homogeneity imposed by dominant powers or intellectual elites, but in shared lived experience. Generations of Syrians have navigated the same Kafkaesque bureaucracies; endured severe and indiscriminate economic hardship; mourned innocent loved ones who were killed or forcibly disappeared; survived persecution, hunger, thirst and displacement at home; were made refugees and faced xenophobia abroad. Their modern identity has been shaped by misfortunes inflicted by both domestic and foreign forces.

While Syrians work on achieving post-conflict social cohesion, they may also have to recognise that it is time for Syria to take its territorial reality seriously – notwithstanding the question of illegally occupied territories, such as the Golan Heights – without having to disavow cultural ties that extend beyond its borders. A return to the pre-UAR designation of the Syrian Republic would not strip the majority of Syrians who identify as Arabs from their language or proud heritage. It would merely signal goodwill towards the remaining components of society, and break with the tradition of military dictators vying to extend their dominance beyond their countries’ borders. This is not to say that increased cooperation and alliances with other Arab and Muslim-majority countries should cease, but nor should Syria’s distinctiveness be dismissed or subsumed into a wider entity.

A multilingual, multi-ethnic and modern nation that celebrates its diversity and does not compromise on any aspect of its rich history can break out of the black-and-white perceptions of the major shifts that brought Syria to where it is today. A modern Syrian can wish his neighbour a Merry Christmas and learn how to say ‘good morning’ in Kurmanji Kurdish and ‘thank you’ in Western Armenian – as many already do – while preserving the time-honoured Syrian traditions of honing one’s Classical Arabic skills by reading the Quran and memorising pre-Islamic odes.

And just as the strict metres which govern the structure of these odes may seem like cumbersome inherited constraints, yet yield distinctive harmony, Syrians may still find their shared rhythm – one enriched, rather than diminished, by its numerous distinct inflections.