Syria Holds National Dialogue to Chart A Path After Bashar al-Assad

The Washington Post

15:11 JST, February 26, 2025

DAMASCUS — Hundreds of Syrian politicians and activists gathered Tuesday in Damascus to endorse the opening steps of the country’s political transition, a milestone event after decades of ironfisted one-family rule.

Nearly three months after President Bashar al-Assad fled Syria in the face of a rebel advance, much of the country is still suspended between relief at the dictatorship’s demise and anxiety over what is to come. Fourteen years of war and Western sanctions have shredded the economy and left Syria’s social fabric badly frayed.

The two-day conference, billed by its organizers as the first step in the country’s political transition, holds major significance for ordinary Syrians and the international community alike, offering early indications of the openness of the new Islamist rulers to a democratic process. The United States and European Union say they will not fully lift crippling economic sanctions – most of them introduced to weaken Assad – without it.

As night fell Tuesday, a statement from the event’s organizers said the conference had agreed upon calling for the creation of a temporary legislative council, and a committee that would draft a new constitution “achieving a balance between authorities, establishing justice, freedom, and equality, and laying the foundation for a state of law and institutions.”

How those would be achieved has yet to be seen. Although inclusivity has been one of interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s major promises, he and other figures from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist militant group that led the charge to topple Assad, for now command the lion’s share of power in Syria.

Notably absent were representatives of Syria’s Kurdish-led autonomous administration in the northeast, or the Syrian Democratic Forces militia that Washington backed to defeat Islamic State militants there. The new government had demanded that the force disarm and join a new national army as a precondition for participation in the process. No agreement has been reached.

The conference’s final statement addressed the dispute directly, saying that attendees rejected “any form of fragmentation, division, or ceding any part of the homeland.”

Critical Condition

In his opening address, Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, likened the country to a sick patient: “Syria calls on you to stand united and cooperate to heal it, bandage its wounds and console it, with full confidence that you will not let it down,” he said.

The nation he described is in such critical condition that, for many citizens, it appears to be barely on life support. Life is grindingly hard. Many districts go dark when the sun sets. During a cold snap this week, students in Damascus wore their coats inside and huddled together on classroom benches as they studied.

In the suburb of Darayya, much of it pummeled by Assad’s forces into rubble, many residents paid little heed to the conference that dominated the news broadcasts. In the local cemetery, Mahmoud Abdulwahab, a gravedigger, said that economic concerns eclipsed political ones at this stage. More and more people were finding themselves unable to afford proper headstones when their loved ones died. “People need to put food on the table first,” he said. “The dead don’t care; it’s the living who need help.”

The conference’s recommendations are nonbinding, and despite lofty objectives, its organization appeared hasty, dismaying many in Syria and the diaspora. Attendees said they received invitations late Saturday or Sunday, leaving some invitees unable to make it in time.

“It is critical that this is only the start,” said Omar Hammady, who served as a political and constitutional affairs adviser to United Nations envoys in Syria, Libya and Yemen. The rush, he said, appeared to stem from “unrealistic” promises, made in the early days after Assad’s fall, for some form of political transition by March 1, as well as from a need to manage criticism from hard-liners within Sharaa’s own political faction.

“The sooner you establish a status quo which is acceptable to the broadest Syrian spectrum and to the international community, the better,” Hammady said.

As attendees milled around on the marble-floored Dama Rose Hotel late Monday, some gossiping in small groups, others rushing across the lobby to greet old friends, many said they viewed the conference as an opportunity to lobby for a more consultative political process.

“I don’t have very high expectations, but it’s a step forward. It’s a must,” said Alia Mansour, a journalist. “We need this, and we should fight for this.”

Social Fabric

Throughout the transition, major questions will hang over how, and whether, Syria’s new rulers will seek to mend the country’s delicate social fabric. The Assad family came from the minority Alawite sect, and they often cast themselves as the group’s protectors. With the regime gone, the community has grown increasingly fearful amid a slow drumbeat of revenge attacks and firings from the country’s bloated and sclerotic public sector.

Alawites dominated a security state so feared and pervasive that it was not unusual for people to remark that even the walls had ears. But many families also suffered greatly, as the regime forcibly conscripted their sons and did little to lift them out of poverty.

“A prerequisite for any transitional process is to stabilize the economy and make sure you preserve security,” Hammady said. “This is not just a theoretical analysis; this is what we learn from close, recent and comparable experiences,” he said, citing the failures of transition processes in Yemen and Libya to save those countries from a return to war.

In Mezze 86, a district in the Damascus suburbs that is home to many families from Syria’s now-disbanded military and intelligence services, residents were wary of speaking with reporters about the new political process and, when they did, they emphasized that they did not feel that the new Syria was for them.

“They didn’t pick a representative from our area,” said Wissam Hamdan, 45, the head teacher of a boys’ elementary school. “We should have been invited.”