Excluding Iran, the interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa appears, through his successive tours to Moscow, Washington, London, and other world capitals, to be seeking to re-engineer the network of contradictions that erupted with the outbreak of the civil war in Syria fourteen years ago. The international and regional conflict over Syria has not receded; rather, it has moved into a new phase that can be described as “securing interests” through agreements and contracts, with the aim of manufacturing the sustainability of those interests.<\/p>\n
In the shadow of a brittle peripheral sovereignty, like the current state of Syria, which remains immersed in the post-war atmosphere and has not yet entered the phase of state foundation, the ability to object or maneuver is almost nonexistent. This leaves the country open to all forms of tutelage and management from the outside.<\/p>\n
The “Appease Everyone” Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n At the core of this approach emerges a specific strategy that can be summarized by the idea of “appeasing everyone,” which al-Sharaa’s team calls “the intersection of interests.” Pragmatism, as Al-Shaybani asserts, dictates this behavior. However, this approach places Syria’s status, wealth, and people before the appetite of international powers, under the pretext of achieving two goals announced by Damascus: guaranteeing security and peace, and opening the door to foreign investment.<\/p>\n Yet, the deeper goal is to consolidate sovereignty and legitimacy in the hands of a single group, which considers itself the victor in the civil war after the fall of the Assad regime, and views the state as being acquired by the logic of “whoever liberates decides,” rather than being the fruit of social consensus among the various forces within the country.<\/p>\n Away from the clamor of the Western and regional campaign promoting the polishing of the Damascus authority team and portraying Damascus’s conduct as a natural and sound choice, the realities that erupted after the millennium in peripheral and fragile states, from Africa to the Middle East\u2014such as Congo, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria\u2014prove that such countries remained trapped in a suffocating network of international and regional contradictions and never peacefully emerged from it.<\/p>\n The essence of the problem lies in the nature of the competition between major and regional powers, in addition to the clash of interests of monopolistic economic corporations seeking to redraw the rules of the international order. As is customary, the rules collapse first in fragile and brittle states, and Syria is no exception; rather, it is considered one of the arenas where the collision of interests is most intensely concentrated in this brazen manner.<\/p>\n Without dwelling on this, Ahmed al-Sharaa\u2019s public and supporters rush, with clear levity, to describe his foreign movements as a kind of scoring new points for his record: “In less than a year, we have achieved great accomplishments,” or “We managed to break the isolation surrounding a figure with Jihadi roots, who today is at the forefront of the Syrian scene inside the most important world capitals.” All of this excites a specific bloc intoxicated by “Umayyad Arabism.”<\/p>\n What these people ignore is a self-evident truth: the outside, no matter how much diplomatic openness it shows, does not change its fundamental choices towards Syria since its entry into the crucible of the civil war. No country has backed down from its interests, including China; instead, the war, with al-Sharaa, has moved from the escalation phase to the phase of reaping the rewards. The dilemma is that any country that feels excluded, even if it is America or Britain, may re-ignite these contradictions on the ground within the Syrian arena, which means that the path of peace, security, and investment boasted by al-Sharaa’s team could stumble at any moment.<\/p>\n Between Propaganda and Reality<\/strong><\/p>\n Al-Sharaa presents himself as the sole person capable of containing international and regional contradictions through his political moves, as if he wants to convince his audience that he can “dance with the devils.” However, his recent visit to Washington, and his agreement to join the war on terror, raises practical questions about the realism and ability of al-Sharaa to implement such dictates.<\/p>\n The man, who has not yet experienced any genuine ideological shift with his fundamentalist base, will face an immense difficulty in confronting the remnants of the ISIS organization which, according to multiple reports, have begun to re-establish a presence in Sunni-majority cities, from Aleppo to Daraa. What further complicates the scene is that the file of foreign fighters, whether contained or fought against, will keep the country atop an explosive pile of open and permanent wars, provided that clashes do not erupt within al-Sharaa’s own bloc.<\/p>\n More importantly, he lacks a practical and comprehensive vision for understanding with the Syrian Democratic Forces, the only power that has proven genuine effectiveness in fighting terrorism inside Syria.<\/p>\n Tel Aviv’s Obstacles<\/strong><\/p>\n Although the US envoy to Syria announced, at the beginning of al-Sharaa’s visit, the necessity of establishing a platform that brings together Syria, Turkey, and Israel to formulate a kind of understanding between these parties, Benjamin Netanyahu came out days later to reassert his conditions: positioning on Mount Hermon, not withdrawing from the buffer zones, imposing disarmament in southern Syria, and guaranteeing the protection of the Druze.<\/p>\n However, this Israeli approach directly clashes with the interests of Turkey, which in turn seeks to balance its influence with Israel within the Syrian arena. In light of this deep contradiction, al-Sharaa’s hypothesis of “holding the stick by the middle” appears unsustainable, as Tel Aviv, specifically, will not accept any formula of balance with Turkey after the events of October 7th, and considers itself the party that overthrew the Assad regime and its Iranian allies. Taking into account that the Trump administration will likely favor Tel Aviv, al-Sharaa in this case will lose most of his cards, turning the idea of stability and peace into nothing more than empty propaganda.<\/p>\n The Russian-Western Competition and the Refugee Crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n Since the Russian-Western conflict has not reached conclusive results in Ukraine, it is natural for this competition to extend and interact more intensely on the Syrian stage. Despite al-Sharaa’s team admitting, albeit shyly, that Moscow was a partner in the war against them previously, al-Sharaa has made promises to the Russians to protect their interests in Syria: safeguarding military bases on the coast, signing specific armament deals, and maintaining Russian influence in the warm waters.<\/p>\n Effectively, these promises fundamentally contradict the traditional British vision based on preventing Russia from establishing a sustained presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Trump administration, along with European capitals, will likely join this approach, especially since the West views post-Assad Syria as having become, for the first time since its foundation, part of its strategic sphere. Consequently, it will not easily accept any understandings that grant Moscow extensive influence within Syria, unless this presence serves Tel Aviv’s interests more than it serves Damascus.<\/p>\n On another front, al-Sharaa is attempting to invest the refugee card to reach understandings with European and neighboring countries, especially after the German Foreign Minister was hosted in Damascus a while ago. It should be noted that this file itself requires providing substantial resources to restore the country’s operational capacity, as well as the existence of a stable political system that provides security and safety. Since al-Sharaa to this moment lacks a vision for founding the state in a way that achieves security, safety, and fundamental freedoms for Syrians, the root of the refugee problem remains unresolved. Consequently, the complexity of this file practically becomes greater than al-Sharaa’s capacity and his romantic statements can handle.<\/p>\n Generally, manipulating contradictions and distributing promises in an attempt to re-engineer the clash of external interests in Syria will come at a hefty price. It will either push the country toward deep social divisions or open the door to a dictatorship that surpasses the Assad dictatorship many times over, because this approach requires a new totalitarian grip, capable of balancing those interests at the expense of silencing any internal demand from Syrians.<\/p>\n The core of the problem lies in al-Sharaa ignoring the demands of the people for which they took to the streets. With the absence of internal legitimacy, the policy of making concessions to the outside at the expense of a minimum level of partnership with the inside becomes a guaranteed recipe for the explosion of bigger crises in a fragile state like Syria. Dealing with the symptoms without addressing the roots of the political and social crises is destined for inevitable failure. Al-Sharaa, no matter how much skill he claims, is no more cunning than the authoritarian regimes that have passed through the region and ended up powerless before the rules of conflict and legitimacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Excluding Iran, the interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa appears, through his successive tours to Moscow, Washington, London, and other world capitals, to be seeking to re-engineer the network of contradictions that erupted with the outbreak of the civil war in Syria fourteen years ago. The international and regional conflict over Syria has not receded; rather, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3449,"featured_media":14187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,61],"tags":[1031,724,40,1062],"ppma_author":[1215],"class_list":["post-14186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-slider","tag-ahmed-al-sharaa","tag-israel","tag-syria","tag-u-s"],"authors":[{"term_id":1215,"user_id":3449,"is_guest":0,"slug":"ferhad-hemmi-2","display_name":"Ferhad Hemmi","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-03-25-at-19.30.21.jpeg","url2x":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-03-25-at-19.30.21.jpeg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14188,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14186\/revisions\/14188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14186"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}