One finds it necessary, when taking stock of the first year of rule by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) authority and verifying the soundness of one’s predictions or analyses of the Syrian scene, to examine the trajectory of this authority and the manner in which it practices politics and governance. This allows for an assessment of whether this trajectory aligns with or contradicts the foresight previously offered, and to test the impact of the collective criticism directed at the authority in pushing it toward some form of change, flexibility, or review.
There is a need to observe the repercussions of the actions undertaken by HTS, the “Interim Government,” or the “De Facto Authority” over the past twelve months on its behavior and the effect of all this on its future policy. This is an authority that seeks to enter the stage of statehood and establish difficult equations enabling it to maintain the presence of its Jihadi reference point, pushing it to legitimize its current policies by emphasizing and exaggerating “secondary issues” to reach the furthest limits of “tolerance” in issuing fatwas (religious edicts) and legal justifications. This is done to achieve harmony and compatibility with the requirements and conditions of time and place, but also to permit the “brothers”—the commanders and ministers (always relying on and citing the heritage of the Pious Predecessors/Jurisprudence of War and Peace)—to practice politics in an astonishingly Machiavellian manner. This allows them to establish relations and forge alliances with the enemies of yesterday, and to market their system as a guarantor of these enemies’ interests in a remarkably functional and clientelist way.
The HTS authority began its rule by committing appalling massacres and violations on the coast against the Syrian Alawite component, paving the way for these massacres through sectarian incitement and mobilization, launching a “General Mobilization” against an entire sect. This was presented as a response to an attack carried out by armed groups, which the authority claimed were “remnants” of the former regime, without presenting any tangible evidence to substantiate this narrative. No bodies of fighters from these groups were displayed, nor were authenticated confessions from captured individuals presented. All scenes and video clips that appeared on social media were of unarmed civilians liquidated by gunmen affiliated with the factions loyal to the authority. The whole world witnessed how the authority’s gunmen murdered sons in front of their mothers and fathers (such as the killing of the sons of the Syrian Alawite woman Zurqa Sibahi, Umm Ayman, before her eyes).
Not long after, the authority fabricated an incident/story of unknown origin about “insulting the Prophet Muhammad,”which was circulated as an “audio recording” allegedly spoken by a person on the “TikTok” application. The authority marketed him as belonging to the Syrian Druze component, thereby preparing for a new campaign of identity-based assaults and killings, this time including the Druze in the Damascus countryside, where the authority’s gunmen and their loyalists killed hundreds of Druze citizens in the Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya neighborhoods, creating another rift in the Syrian national fabric.
Following this, the authority launched its campaign on Suweida to openly and explicitly target the entire Syrian Druze component (this campaign resulted in the killing of thousands, the destruction of villages, the abduction of civilians, the humiliation of the elderly by shaving their beards and mustaches, the looting of guest houses, and the desecration of shrines, etc.). It relied on its war mentality, utilizing the “tribal fervor” (faz’at al-‘asha’ir) in a strategy that, over time, became fixed: to incite the Sunni Arab component against other Syrian components that the authority seeks to pre-emptively discipline and crush their aspirations for political participation and a decentralized democratic national state. Furthermore, by using the “Sunni Arab tribes,” the authority seeks to implicate the largest component of the Syrian people in its civil war, thereby achieving its goal of blending into and integrating with this component, and mobilizing it behind its agenda. This is meant to claim representation of the majority, thus pulling the entire component behind the Salafi/Jihadi minority-group HTS—which is isolated within the Sunni majority and inside “Levantine Islam”—an organization whose known religious and political figures are now leading the country.
The attacks by the authority’s factions and the “tribal fervor” praised by the interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, only ceased after humiliating Israeli attacks struck the Presidential Palace and the General Staff headquarters in Damascus. These attacks exposed to the authority the error of its reliance on secret contacts, promises, and “hints,” which the leaders of this authority admitted when discussing the “deception” they experienced after meeting with Israeli officials in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku.
Before long, the authority exploited the incident of a man and his wife being killed and sectarian phrases being written at the crime scene, this time in the city of Homs, to mobilize crowds against Alawite civilians in many neighborhoods of the city, resorting to vandalism and intimidation. Syrians and the world once again witnessed the authority inciting tribes and sects of its own people against each other. Had it not been for the emergence of wise figures from the victimized tribe who issued a statement calling for calm and reason, matters might have escalated into a scenario similar to the attacks against Druze citizens in Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya.
Despite the authority signing an agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria on March 10, 2025, which included clauses ensuring the peaceful integration of that region—and its forces that protected it and liberated its cities from the terrorist organization ISIS—into the state, the authority resorted to evasiveness, procrastination, and offering out-of-context “interpretations” to evade the implementation of the agreement’s clauses. This is in addition to the continuous threat of a military solution, and statements boasting of strength through Turkey and hinting at an attack that its army might launch.
A noticeable trend is the increasing tone of refusal by the authority toward meetings and rounds of dialogue with the delegations of the Autonomous Administration, and a retreat from the agreement, whenever the authority registers a “political and diplomatic victory” through a visit by its president to this or that country, or when its entourage and public celebrate with noisy ceremonies and festivals the signing of contracts for “major investment and reconstruction projects” worth tens of billions of dollars, most of which remain on paper and do not go beyond the well-known propaganda/marketing framework.
Within this context, the authority continues, through its media outlets and campaigns of “General Mobilization” and “tribal fervor” on social media, to attack the SDF and the Syrian Kurdish component, and mobilizes demonstrations that have taken on a non-nationalistic and racially sectarian character. This involves insulting the Kurdish, Druze, and Alawite components through the use of symbolism intended for defamation, insult, contempt, and disdain—a foolish and base act that only reflects a narrow, infantile factional mentality incapable of understanding and absorbing the principles and values of nation and nationalism.
As for what the authority tells foreign governments and human rights organizations regarding the investigation committees it established to uncover the perpetrators responsible for the coastal and Suweida massacres, this too has remained empty talk and baseless promises. These “investigations” have yielded no results, and the criminals and murderers have not been brought to justice. We have not witnessed any prosecution or trial of these individuals. Because the authority lies to both the internal and external audiences and cannot shed its skin or abandon its reliance on force and brutality as the only method and style it masters, it used the elements involved in the murder of Alawite civilians on the coast to launch its genocidal campaign against the Druze component in Suweida. Most of those whose crimes were documented, and whose identities became known through video clips, are still at large, serving in factions belonging to the authority’s army, protected from justice and accountability.
The authority continues to follow the same approach since its arrival in the capital Damascus and the holding of the “Victory Conference,” and subsequently, the rapid cosmetic steps aimed at enabling passage, entrenchment, and replacement—such as the “National Dialogue Conference” and the “Constitutional Declaration.” It seeks to expand within the Sunni Arab component and structure Syria as a majority and minorities, positioning itself as the block representing the Sunni Arab majority, while keeping and portraying the “minorities” as scattered, besieged, and exhausted, outside the balance of calculations.
In order to create this sectarian majority, the authority strives to suffocate political parties and forces, bury the historical Syrian opposition legacy, and create a break with the long stage of struggle against the Assad regimes. It also acts to prevent the rise of civil society and combats women, hindering their manifestation within unifying Syrian frameworks that transcend regionalism, sectarianism, and nationalism, thereby frustrating all attempts to establish a civil, national political life.
The authority aims to manufacture a “supportive environment” by appealing to primitive, low-level relations and descending to the bottom of society, where it re-establishes the tribe and sheikhdoms as both a base for itself and as tools of repression and intimidation for its political opponents. It attempts to stifle Sunni urbanism in the major cities (Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama) and keep it away from political organizational work, using many means, including flooding these cities with waves of rural people and forming pliable demographic belts in the hands of the authority, through agents who are “sheikhs,” “notables,” and “mukhtars” (village heads). It also aims to deprive the urban and metropolitan Sunni civil bourgeoisie in these cities of overseeing the means of production, trade, reconstruction, and services sectors, placing the “bureaucracy” of laws, legislation, pledges, and deals in the hands of that rural, factional oligarchy. This is in addition to restrictive actions against the open urban atmosphere, intensified campaigns to disrupt celebrations and weddings, raids on cafes and bars, assaults on city dwellers, and daily interference in their way of life.
The authority also seeks to consolidate the strange amalgam upon which it builds its pillars:
First: The rigid Salafi/Jihadi nucleus with a takfiri (excommunicatory) tendency, represented by HTS figures and references, whether those in the top echelon (Abd al-Rahim Attoun, Abdullah al-Muhaysini, Abu al-Zubair al-Shami, Abu Yusuf al-Hamawi…) or those appointed to supervise and guide the ministers and senior government and “state” officials.
Second: Factions belonging to the so-called “Syrian National Army” (SNA) established by Turkey in 2017, and the rehabilitation of its leaders/warlords within “divisions” belonging to the new army. These individuals (Mohammed Jassim/Abu Amsha (Commander of Division 25), Seif al-Din Boulad/Seif Abu Bakr (Commander of Division 76), Fahim Issa (Deputy Minister of Defense and Commander of the Eastern Region), Ahmad al-Hays/Abu Hatem Shaqra (Commander of Division 86), Doghan Suleiman (Brigade Commander in Division 72), and Araba Idris/Abu Ghazi (Commander of the 6th Brigade in Division 52)) are directly linked to Turkish intelligence and receive their orders from Ankara. They also have extensive records of crimes, and most of them are internationally wanted due to the atrocities and violations they are directly involved in. This is not to mention politicians, journalists, and media figures imposed by Turkey on the authority, some of whom assumed important positions, such as Hassan al-Dughaim, Nour al-Din al-Baba, Musa al-Omar, and others.
Finally: a diverse mix of security and administrative officials, businessmen and economists, field shabiha(thugs), and media personnel who, until recently, worked for the former regime’s machinery. These represent the racist “Ba’athist” tendency that justified the former regime’s crimes against Syrians. The authority is now trying to benefit from their expertise in justifying its own crimes and using them for aggression and thuggery (tashbeeh) against its opponents. These include Fadi Saqr, Khaled al-Ahmad, Abdullah al-Hamad, Hamsho, and al-Qaterji.
While the authority describes its opponents—here, entire Syrian components—as “remnants” and “separatists” and accuses them of forming an “alliance of minorities,” it, as the Salafi-Jihadi minority represented by HTS, proceeds to establish and consolidate the astonishing self-serving “cocktail” (Jihadi, Ba’athist, Turanian) upon which its rule depends.
The authority adheres to its functional role, hoping and believing that by doing so, it will satisfy all parties and create a state of clientelism that will offer every influential actor a piece of the “Syrian cake,” distracting them from tightening the screws on it, or perhaps holding it accountable and punishing it in the future. Accordingly, we find the authority proceeding with a clear “cunningness” (fahlawa) to satisfy all adversaries and competitors on Syrian soil, attempting to bring together the Russian and the American, the Israeli and the Turk, and the Qatari with the Saudi and the Emirati! There is a clear acceptance by the authority of the foreign role and presence, coupled with a squandering of national sovereignty and the concession of Syrian territories to both Turkey and Israel, all with the aim of the faction remaining in power.
The goal is for this “functionalism” and “mutual service” to others to translate into the provision of “counter-services” and a factor stabilizing the authority in power, thereby deflecting attention from all the massacres and violations it has committed and is committing against the Syrian people. This understanding is based on a narrow, non-national factional interest. There is a belief that the supportive external axes are the guarantee for keeping the faction in power, without the need for a democratic process, national consensus, or the participation of other forces. In essence, the faction/authority aims to transform into a functional oligarchy that submits to the outside world, in exchange for rigidity regarding internal demands and popular calls for democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. There is an effort and an attempt to delude both domestic and foreign audiences that the authority has a comprehensive vision for “zeroing out problems” with regional and international powers, especially those that intervened in the Syrian crisis and continue to intervene, control the field, and are strongly present. This is a “foreign policy first” mentality and methodology, which the authority wants to use as a source of strength against internal demands, and a clear policy of enticement for the powers coveting the Syrian homeland and wishing to perpetuate their influence regardless of the nature of the ruling authority.
The stocktake of the first year of HTS rule reveals an authority based on a Jihadi/Takfiri faction, allied with several currents and tendencies, some linked to foreign actors, and others internal that possess significant capital built upon Syrian blood. The authority attempts to leverage and build upon both directions. There is a functionalism and a “business” of “offering services” to the outside world, and there is a focus on repression and extreme centralizationin its totalitarian-authoritarian form. Rejection of diversity and pluralism is evident, along with an attempt to suppress others by launching massive, misleading accusations, and a relentless effort to drag the largest Syrian component (Sunni, urban/central) to position itself behind the authority, while simultaneously threatening it with a heavy stick: a primitive, fringe public that the authority has manufactured to be quickly led into its wars and invasions. A public that only needs to be told “move, move” (labat, labat) to be at its beck and call, as Ahmad al-Sharaa boasted, threatened, and mocked.
