The Assad family, like so many tyrannies before them, allowed their power, impunity, isolation and the resultant narcissism to foster a belief that their world would never end. Assad’s supporters—both for the father, Hafez, and the son, Bashar—would chant “our leader forever.” Until the day inevitably came when their rule ended and people sang, “forever is over.”
But states do have a unique power to weave the fabric of their people’s entire reality. From mundane daily activities, interactions and emotions to the breadth of their dreams, their cultural practices, and even political conceptions.
This is why Ahmed al-Sharaa, the man who unexpectedly finds himself in charge of shaping Syria’s next forever, and the tens of millions of Syrians who have stumbled into this reality with him, both have a far more complex task than many recognize.
Luckily, they are not in uncharted territory. Syria is among the last of the “Arab Spring” nations to dethrone its tyrant. Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans all tried to build a state for their people, only to relapse into fresh new hells of their own contexts. But their failures carry lessons for Sharaa, and for Syrians writ large.
Above all, the ambitions of Sharaa and his people will live and die together. While Sharaa is the man destined to head the transition toward a new Syria, the rest of the country is destined to define the transition. Syria’s civil society and the broader public must become the pressure that guides the myriad forces swirling around this formative period. Especially on socio-political issues like fashioning and securing the new body politic.
System overhaul
Syrian exceptionalists say their country’s experience is unique, and that they have already undergone the failure of the Arab Spring transition that the other countries faced and learned its lessons, as their initial hopes for change only led to worse oppression from a brutal and kleptocratic regime desperate to cling to power. Yet that war-time descension is not necessarily over. After half a century, its drivers remain in the muscle memory of the system and the people.
All distinctiveness aside, the recent toppling of the Assad regime bears one vital commonality with its Arab Spring counterparts: the impulse to celebrate a regime’s end just because it no longer has the same face.
But the Assads ruled for 56 years. This means an Assad was the forever figure for generations who lived and died under their rule. And this traumatic legacy molded the entire worldview of the generation that survived it. Assad’s tyranny may have been symbolized by one family, but it was animated by thousands of people. The product of bureaucratic systems, conditioned behaviors, survivalist opportunism, and the institutions these grew into. Assad was a system—and right now, only its façade has disappeared.
Syria’s revolutionary counterparts in the Arab world all failed to adequately appraise the legacy system and were consumed by it.
Already, the paranoia and insecurity that characterized the Assad system can be seen in Sharaa, who is rapidly developing a loyalist-stuffed deep state of his own. All the while, the street remains divided and directionless. Rising insecurity has derailed initial plans for an inclusive new military, as community-based forces like the Kurds or armed groups in the west and south of Syria remain wary of attempts to fold them into a new Syrian army. Instead, Sharaa is filling top roles with those he trusts, even if they are not citizens. Syrians, like those in the other spring states, are hurtling from a place of hopeful excitement into a mire of political stagnation where they risk being sucked under by reciprocal violence as vengeance and insecurity tear at the social fabric from Daraa to Homs.
Sharaa should realize that his only real bulwark against the legacy system is gathering every element of Assad’s legacy, from the sectarianized bureaucracy and army, the oligarchic economy, restrictive foreign partnerships, divided society and their unifying hopes to forge it into something new, and that is a task he can only do alongside every other constituency of his country.
Stuffing the old system with new faces didn’t save Egypt’s Mohammed Morsi or Tunisia’s Rashed Ghannouchi. But tangible progress towards an inclusive vision recruits him millions of protectors. It also builds resilience in Syria’s transition—meaning that even in the face of elite-level or foreign-imported sabotage as in Libya—the revolution keeps its bearings. And this begins with the constitutional process.
Politics of the people, by the people, for the people
Sharaa’s decision to defer elections for years may have sparked outrage but was the wise choice based on the lessons of the Arab Spring. As Libya showed, elections require an appropriate socio-political environment to be constructive rather than destructive. Elections are not a means of political transformation; they are a marker of it. Some state-building and nation-building must be done first to frame the new order.
However, by announcing the creation of a constitutional committee, Sharaa repeated a familiar mistake. He has invested everything in an elite vehicle—which he hopes to control—that will retreat to an ivory tower for the years this process will likely take, before inevitably delivering a lifeless document to a transformed country and people. This is why the lack of progress towards it should be welcomed, as it presents the opportunity for something different.
As Libya’s perennial civil-war, and the deep-state counterrevolutions of Tunisia and Egypt demonstrate, insecurity is the most destabilizing dynamic for a state in transition. It fuels destructive forces like factionalism, fragmentation and cyclical vengeance.
From a bottom-up level, this may explain why Sharaa is struggling to unify all forces under a new state. From a top-down perspective, it may be driving him to repeat other revolutionary leaderships’ past mistakes. Like Sharaa, insecurity drove them to halt processes that subordinate force to the law, to instead try to own security institutions, only for security forces to facilitate coups once the revolutionary honeymoon inevitably ended.
The failure to progress with military reunification or the constitutional process since December should be a reminder that no individual can do all that is required to shape a nation. Given Sharaa rode to power on a military rather than political movement, this should be the people’s cue to organize and cohere to frame and shape the process.
The reason why Sharaa’s effort is failing is not only because he is trying to go it alone, but also because he is treating a socio-political problem as if it is a hard power one. The virtue of a constitutional process as a cohering, stabilizing and constructive force that will ultimately make the leadership’s life easier must be sold to Sharaa and his circle. Constitutionalism is not a philosophical pursuit but a utilitarian one.
For example, security sector reform should be an act of transitional justice operating under a broader process of rejuvenating the law, rather than a cold power calculation to pack institutions with loyalists. Only a unitary law with the promise of equality and demonstrated enforcement, which transforms security sectors from rulers to servants, gives citizens a power to trust in and an order all wish to preserve.
Foundation for a new forever
If Syria is to learn this lesson, Syrians must move quickly to recreate relationships with the state, and with each other.
This can only be done by convening a committee of jurists and civil society representatives of Syria’s diverse social tapestry to draft a bill of rights as the first article of a new Syrian constitution that immediately comes into force. This would equalize Syrians under the law, demonstrate the tangible value of the constitution, and inspire faith in the new nation. These are advancements that dispel the insecurities obstructing meaningful security sector unification, helping Syria sidestep Libya-style fragmentation.
Simultaneously, Syrians must come together to call for a national reconciliation process led by legal experts, incorporating international best practices from examples like South Africa. This can sooth Syrians’ burning sense of injustice and cohere Syria’s fragmented society before revenge killings lead to spiraling violence. Again, this should not be considered a philosophical concept divorced from the hard realities of the revolutionary authority’s daily struggle, but as an urgent stabilizing measure that will pay compounding dividends.
These two moves should be the first steps towards a fluid, transformative, constitutional process, perceived more as scaffolding for the new nation as it is built than an elite project. Doing so would allow Syrians a procedural vehicle to dodge the pitfalls of other transitions, and the flexibility to learn on the job. But like every other revolutionary move, it requires a struggle. Given the path Sharaa is already traversing, and the buffeting geopolitical and economic forces the country faces, Syrian civil-society must start bridging divides and pushing a common agenda with their communities and international allies to present this as a clear, popular and beneficial plan to their caretaker leadership.
This inclusive and utilitarian approach, which allows all to feel more secure and invested in the change to come, is exactly what Sharaa requires if he is to be free to lead the country through the economic and geopolitical perils the revolution must traverse to survive.
