Syria’s Transition and the Shadow of the Arab Uprisings

Whatever happens subsequently, former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fall from power in December 2024 is a victory of the Syrian people. The triumph of the forces led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is an important reminder that the weaknesses of Arab states revealed by last decade’s Arab uprisings have not been remedied. Unresponsive, exploitative governments propped up by outside support are always more fragile than they seem. Of course, it would be premature to classify events in Syria as the redemption of the Arab Spring—proof that democratic, rights-respecting governments can emerge in the Arab world following decades of tyranny. Still, the fate of Syria’s political trajectory ultimately depends on the Syrian people themselves for the first time in decades. A successful democratic transition is in the best interests of Syria, the region, and the United States. While the United States should not seek to dictate the outcome, U.S. officials can and should consider lessons from the Arab uprisings in devising their approach to Syria. These include:

• Use all available tools, up to and including sanctions, to prevent external spoilers from hindering democratic progress
• Prioritize the need for immediate economic relief by lifting U.S. sanctions on Syria that targeted the now-deposed regime of Bashar al-Assad
• Engage freely with the interim Syrian government and other relevant political actors, but withhold formal legal recognition of that government until it demonstrates control over all Syrian territory and takes tangible steps to govern inclusively
• Refrain from pushing for early elections and instead focus on supporting the development of a new constitution guaranteeing civil and minority rights, with a particular emphasis on electoral laws

Scrutiny of the actions or inactions of the major external players involved in the war in Syria—including Turkey, Russia, and Iranian-aligned groups—risks obscuring the critical fact that Syrians themselves are most responsible for the demise of the Assad family’s 50-year-long reign. As the United States has regularly experienced, external support for local actors, even when it is substantial, does not necessarily produce effective military forces. However, unlike many other militias—including Syrian groups earlier in the conflict—HTS and other Syrian militants leveraged external assistance to great effect. They were able to put aside internal rivalries that could have prevented a united front and demonstrated enough competence in governance to sustain the loyalty or at least acquiescence of most Syrians living under their control.¹ Most importantly, the failure of the Assad regime to use the Russian-Iranian security umbrella to undertake the internal reforms necessary to revitalize sclerotic institutions, including the Syrian military, ultimately left it vulnerable.²

Now too, the prospects for democratic governance in Syria rest firmly in the hands of the Syrian people. The only form of democracy that has a chance of taking root and surviving is one designed by and for Syrians and that enjoys genuine popular legitimacy. This does not mean that external actors have no role to play in Syria or that their policies will not exert a powerful influence over the country’s trajectory. Syrians will have to contend with regional governments—many of which view a democratic Syria as a threat to their own authority and could try to intervene in service of authoritarian actors, as seen in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.³ What it does mean, however, is that even policies intended to promote democracy will fail if they supplant the role of Syrians in governance or are unresponsive to their actual needs.

Democratic governance in the Middle East is the best outcome for the region’s people and is squarely in the interest of the United States. U.S. officials and foreign policy experts may be concerned about the viability of such governance in Syria, given that all Arab uprising countries—in which popular movements challenged repressive regimes—have either reverted to authoritarianism or descended into chaos since the uprisings began in late 2010.⁴ However, these failures were not the result of too much democracy but rather too little. Now, there is a new chance to get things right.

This is not to argue that democracy is a panacea for the region’s problems, which is an unfair standard by which to judge democratic governments. Instead, the crux of the matter is whether consolidated democracies or dictatorships are better at delivering for the people and maintaining peace and security at home and in the Middle East. At their best, democratic governments are more responsive to the views and needs of the public, ensure the protection of the basic rights to which all people are entitled, and uphold the rule of law so critical to economic growth. By contrast, the best people can for hope under authoritarian governments is a relatively benign ruler or leadership that refrains from the systematic exploitation of the public enabled by autocracy. In the absence of a successfully consolidated democracy in the region, it is impossible to render a definitive verdict on the relative performance of democracy versus autocracy in the Middle East. But given the depredations authoritarians have inflicted on Arab publics and their decidedly uneven impact on other countries, it would be imprudent and inappropriate to impede Syrians advocating for democracy or to empower those pursuing a new authoritarian order.

There are good reasons to be skeptical of HTS and other Syrian militant groups and their ability to forge a durable state structure that can govern the whole of Syria in any fashion, let alone democratically. HTS is a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO) with past ties to the Islamic State group and al-Qaida and a record of human rights abuses.⁵ HTS leader and interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has gone to great lengths to project a more moderate image to Syrians and the international community.⁶ At the same time, however, HTS has engaged in retributive violence against the Alawite community from which Assad comes, and the new HTS-controlled Ministry of Education tried to amend Syria’s curriculum to conform with an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam that denigrates Judaism and Christianity.⁷

The United States should approach Syria with abiding and sincere humility, reflecting both the Syrian people’s central role in their transition and its own struggles to promote peaceful, inclusive, and democratic transitions in the Middle East. It is unclear whether the Trump administration will seek to promote a democratic outcome in Syria. President Donald Trump is notoriously indifferent to democratic norms and procedures and unabashedly embraces authoritarian leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.⁸ Domestically, Trump has defied the constitutional prerogatives of Congress, exploited his position to enrich himself and loyalists, and even called on his supporters to overturn the results of a democratic election.

Nevertheless, some senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have advocated for democracy at least in countries ruled by adversaries of the United States.⁹ Congress also will have an important role to play regarding foreign assistance and the application or withdrawal of sanctions. While the U.S. government cannot be certain how best to support stabilization in Syria and an indigenous push for democracy, it can at least try to learn from its past experiences during the height of the Arab uprisings by heeding the following lessons.

Focus on deterring external spoilers

Deterring external spoilers is perhaps the single most important role that the United States can play now—as well as its most appropriate role, considering its position as an outsider. As mentioned above, the machinations of foreign governments have only contributed to sabotaging democratic progress, in several cases fueling the very instability they feared. For instance, competition between Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) contributed to the fracturing of Libya into rival governments, while external interventions in Syria prolonged the civil war and exacerbated the scale of suffering.¹⁰ Russia, Iran, and Iranian-affiliated groups will continue to pose a threat to Syria’s transition, though they are operating from a far weaker position than was the case during last decade’s Arab uprisings.¹¹

In the months ahead, U.S. regional partners may prove the greatest external threats to the Syrian people’s exercise of self-determination. Turkey has substantial leverage over the military coalition that brought down Assad, and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, can be expected to prioritize his ongoing campaign against Syrian Kurdish groups along the border over Syria’s political future.¹² If past is prologue, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar will vie with each other for influence, supporting competing Syrian factions in their pursuit of power.¹³ Egypt and Jordan, ever anxious about Islamist groups, will do the same, albeit with more limited resources.¹⁴ Israel’s deployment of soldiers in sovereign Syrian territory following Assad’s fall could unintentionally precipitate new threats to Israel from Syrian actors and distort Syrian politics over an issue of national sovereignty.¹⁵ The United States should employ coercive tools, including sanctions, to prevent U.S. adversaries from rebuilding their foothold in Syria. With its partners, the United States must be vigilant in detecting and calling out deleterious actions from any and all spoilers and resorting to pressure when necessary.

Prioritize economic stabilization

While the survival of democracy requires a values commitment, the inability of democratic governments to provide services, deliver relief, and promote economic activity can quickly discredit both elected leaders and this form of governance. This challenge plagued every Arab uprising country that started down the democratic path, and Syria is unlikely to be an exception. The costs of supporting millions of refugees and internally displaced persons are enormous, not to mention the astronomical reconstruction requirements—estimated at $250 billion.¹⁶ If the new Syrian authorities fail to show early progress, any popular legitimacy they possess will soon dissipate and invite challengers to upend the system.

With tight constraints on its foreign assistance budget, the United States will need other countries and institutions to finance Syria’s reconstruction.¹⁷ Nevertheless, the Trump administration can facilitate investments by revisiting the onerous sanctions regime on Syria.¹⁸ The Biden administration’s issuance of a new general license expanding authorizations for public services and humanitarian assistance should help to remove some barriers, but due to overcompliance, the sanctions will continue to have an adverse effect.¹⁹ As a matter of standard procedure, delisting groups as FTOs and thereby lifting sanctions on them is a time-intensive and evidence-driven process, and there should be no exception in the case of HTS. Yet, it would be a grave error to leave in place other sanctions that were imposed in response to the actions of the Assad regime but continue to hobble Syria’s economy. Assad is gone and those sanctions should go with him, clearing hurdles to investments in many sectors. As a start, the provisions in the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act that prohibits exports on the Commerce Control List, as well as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act that sanctions the energy and infrastructure sectors, should be amended.²⁰

Differentiate between engagement and recognition

The Biden administration did well by directly engaging with Sharaa soon after the Assad regime’s collapse and even lifting the bounty on his head.²¹ It was encouraging to see Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens, and Ambassador Daniel Rubinstein* meet with the new leadership.²² Diplomacy should not be viewed as a potential “reward” to withhold in exchange for changes in behavior, but rather as a valuable instrument to advance U.S. objectives. Relying on intermediaries to convey messages is a fraught business that risks clouding U.S. assessments with the biases and sometimes willful distortions of other countries. Dialogue is not only the best way to learn the intentions, concerns, and priorities of an interlocutor, but also the most effective way to influence and shape those views. While the Obama administration generally practiced this approach during the Arab uprisings, the deliberate lack of engagement with certain political actors under preceding administrations hindered its understanding of newly ascendant groups and forced the U.S. government to start from scratch in 2011 rather than building on existing relationships.²³

On the other hand, the United States should not rush to recognize the new Syrian leadership until it has proven its ability to govern the vast majority of Syrian territory in a way that does not threaten its neighbors, demonstrated a popular mandate or at least public acquiescence, and shown it is responsive to Syrians regardless of their ethnicity or sect. International recognition is an important incentive to new governing regimes and, once it is proffered, it is difficult to retract fully. For example, in Libya after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi, the Obama administration may have recognized the Transitional National Council prematurely, relinquishing influence over the transition.²⁴ To be clear, the U.S. government should have no role in selecting Syria’s leadership, but as a sovereign country, the United States is not compelled to recognize a government that fails to justly and democratically represent its people or exercise effective control over its territory. 

Remember that democracy is more than just elections

In other transitions in the Middle East, the United States has exhibited a tendency to fixate on elections to the exclusion of other elements of democratic governance and society.²⁵ In Egypt, in particular, the Obama administration mistakenly viewed elections as something akin to a panacea to the country’s ills, pushing for voting to take place at the earliest possible time.²⁶ Elections, however, can ignite or exacerbate tensions and problems if not held under appropriate conditions. Elections are of course at the heart of democracy, but they are most likely to succeed when the rules are understood and accepted, fundamental freedoms are respected, and “losers” enjoy protections against naked majoritarianism.

In Syria, Sharaa has indicated he is in no rush to hold elections, saying they could take up to four years.²⁷ The Biden administration reacted negatively to Sharaa’s declaration and urged the HTS-led government to conduct elections as soon as possible.²⁸ Instead, it would be wise to focus the interim government not on an artificial deadline for elections but on the importance of drafting a constitution and establishing electoral laws that ensure all Syrian political players have a stake in the system. Centralized political systems with a strong executive tend to create a zero-sum dynamic that leaves entire communities alienated and ripe for exploitation by spoilers. Similarly, first-past-the-post electoral systems, and even some proportional representation schemes with a high barrier to entry, often produce unrepresentative outcomes that disproportionately empower larger parties.

Neither the United States nor any other country can ensure a successful democratic transition in Syria. Yet, any number of foreign powers could undermine Syria’s democratic prospects. While the Hippocratic oath of “first, do no harm” should be the overriding principle guiding U.S. policy in Syria, any steps the U.S. government does take should account for the lessons of the past. It is possible—indeed, it is likely—that the United States will make new mistakes, but at the very least, it can and should avoid repeating the same errors.

The author would like to thank Laura Kilbury for her assistance.

*Author’s note: In the interest of full disclosure, the author previously worked for Ambassador Leaf and with Ambassador Carstens as deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs. The author also worked for Ambassador Rubinstein as an intelligence analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.