In his first interview since assuming the Syrian presidency on January 29th, Ahmed al-Sharaa sat down with The Economist and laid out his vision for rebuilding Syria’s smashed and bankrupt state. Forty-eight hours into his tenure, the former al-Qaeda leader in Syria outlined a timetable for taking Syria in “the direction of” democracy and promised elections. Many outsiders hoped that his rise would mark Syria’s strategic shift out of the clutches of Iran and Russia and into the Western fold. In fact, he spoke harshly about America’s “illegal” military presence in Syria, welcomed talks with Russia about its military bases and warned Israel that its advance into Syria since the fall of the Assad regime “will cause a lot of trouble in the future”.
There was little sign of the inclusivity that he mentioned so enthusiastically. He was surrounded by a small band of advisers mostly drawn from his Idlib emirate. Otherwise the cavernous palace, six times the size of the White House, was empty.
Mr Sharaa has a way of appearing to be all things to all men. When he announced his presidency two nights earlier, he wore military fatigues as he stood before rebel chiefs. The next evening he spoke to Syrians as a civilian in a black suit and green tie. For The Economist, he chose a hipster look: a cream jacket over a black shirt buttoned to the neck and slim trousers. He might have been heading for a Friday night out on the town. He mentioned his attire three times, perhaps because he knows that observers will read a lot into it.
His messages seem tailored for each audience. But the constant changes make a man who set up suicide-bombings for Islamic State and led al-Qaeda in Syria hard to measure. He is an interim president, but his vision is long-term. Many of his undertakings, like a constitution and elections, were pushed “three or four years” into the future. For now he is intent on consolidating the power he has grabbed.
First is the question of capacity. He wants to re-establish central authority over Syria’s fractured state and, Kurds aside, claims to have secured the agreement of “all” Syria’s militias to join a new Syrian army. All militias, including his own, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (hts), he says, have been dissolved. “Anyone who keeps a weapon outside the control of the state” would be subject to unspecified “measures”. He ruled out a federal arrangement to deal with Kurdish opposition. But the projection of a strongman was belied by the absence of palace staff. There was no one on hand to serve coffee. His foreign minister and fellow former jihadist, Asaad al-Shaibani, sat at his side directing proceedings.
On the ground his 30,000-man force is stretched just as thin. As he notes, “a vast area is still out of the control of the Syrian state”. None of the rebel commanders assembled for his stage-managed inauguration clapped. “We also sacrificed for a decade,” says a rebel commander, who fumes that Mr Sharaa took charge of what had been a collective effort to overthrow the Assads. Rival militias control most of the country’s borders. Many of their chiefs are reluctant to surrender their weapons, fiefs or command. The Kurds, who control Syria’s prime oilfields, farmland and the dam that provides much of its electricity in the east, refuse to recognise his rule.
Mr Sharaa is also struggling to curb the jihadists who hitherto formed his base. To date, a bloodbath has been averted. But the information ministry has restricted access for foreign journalists in areas where revenge killings against Alawites are spiking. Mr Sharaa dismisses talk of a resurgent Islamic State (IS). But he admits that his forces have foiled “many attempted attacks” since he took power. IS cells are believed to be returning, soaking up growing dissent.
He has promises to keep
Second is the question of whether he actually intends to fulfil his promises—or at least try. In our interview, Mr Sharaa used the word “democracy” publicly for the first time since taking power. “If democracy means that the people decide who will rule them and who represents them in the parliament,” he said, somewhat half-heartedly, “then yes, Syria is going in this direction.” He insisted he would replace his cabinet of loyalists from Idlib in a month with a “broader and diverse government with participation from all segments of society”. He said that ministers and members of a new parliament would be chosen according to “competency, not ethnicity or religion”, raising the prospect that for the first time he might appoint some non-Sunnis. He would also hold “free and fair” elections and complete the drafting of a constitution together with the UN after “at least three to four years”. For the first time, he promised presidential elections.
But Mr Sharaa is juggling many constituencies, including his jihadist base and a largely conservative Sunni Arab majority. If he deprives them of the spoils of war and the Islamic state he promised when he was running Idlib, he risks a backlash. He has set a room in the presidential palace aside for prayer and removed the ashtrays from the coffee tables, in keeping with his puritanical strain of Islam. (He has also grown his moustache, which is at odds with it.)
In our interview he palmed off the issue of sharia, Islamic law, onto one of his appointed bodies. If the interim government approves sharia, he said, “my role is to enforce it; and if they do not approve it, my role is to enforce their decision, as well”. The formation of political parties was another matter for the constitutional committee. He was also non-committal on whether women would have equal rights and access to power. There would be a “wide labour market” for them, he said.
That is unlikely to satisfy Syria’s religious minorities, particularly the Alawites, who held sway under the Assads. When he speaks of democracy, many fear he means Sunni Arab majoritarian rule. (“In our region there are various definitions of democracy,” he says.) Presidential elections could look like the plebiscites of other Arab security regimes. And he is intent on gutting what remains of the battered but still functioning state he inherited. He has disbanded the Baath party, security apparatuses and much of the civil service.
Mr Sharaa’s biggest challenge is the economy. Power flickers for an hour a day. The scale of reconstruction is unfathomable. The country has a massive liquidity crisis and lacks the cash to pay salaries even at pitiful rates. “Without economic development we will return to a state of chaos,” he warns.
Recovery can come only with help from abroad. On January 30th he welcomed Qatar’s emir, the first head of state to visit since Mr Assad’s ousting. On February 2nd he made his first trip abroad as president, to Saudi Arabia, where he was born. He singled out both as potential investors in “big…projects”. But he also needs America, whose sanctions, he said, pose “the gravest risk” to his plans. He praised Donald Trump for “seeking peace in the region” and spoke of restoring diplomatic relations “in the coming days”. He has also tried to improve Syria’s regional standing by vowing to halt the export of captagon, an amphetamine mass-produced in Syria under the Assads, and to bring foreign fighters under the government’s control. He said he had “pledged” to Turkey that Syria would not be a base for the pkk, the Kurdish Workers’ Party which backs the Kurdish administration in the north-east.
But Mr Sharaa carries the millstone of his designation and that of his movement as terrorists. “My status is the president of Syria, not hts,” he protests. But many in the region are outraged at his appointment of HTS cadres to top positions and of foreign jihadists to army posts. There are signs that the frustration could be denting his initial courtship with the West. He contrasted Russia’s readiness to negotiate a deal on its military bases with America’s reluctance and called the presence of American forces in Syria “illegal”.
He also said Israel “needed to retreat” from land it had occupied beyond the armistice lines of 1974 after Mr Assad’s fall. Israel’s displacement of Palestinians was “a big crime”. He said “actually we want peace with all parties” but noted that as long as Israel occupied the Golan, a mountain plateau it conquered in 1967, any deal would be premature. And it would require “wide public opinion”.
For now, under Mr Sharaa, Syria is the calmest it has been since the Arab spring in 2011. The country is breathing more freely after half a century of totalitarian rule. But its new president has a long way to go to prove that he is inclusive, that his jihadist worldview is behind him and that he is Syria’s best hope of a fresh start. ■
Editor’s note: This article has been amended to clarify Ahmed al-Sharaa’s statement on the enforcement of sharia.
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