Syria and the Predicament of Deferred Questions: On President al-Sharaa’s Interview
Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s recent interview on Al Jazeera came at an exceptionally sensitive juncture — coinciding with the completion of the process to form the People’s Assembly, the renewed talk of a possible Syrian military intervention in Lebanon, and pressing domestic files, chief among them the Damascus–Deir ez-Zor road incident, which claimed the lives of 35 people. This unfolded against a backdrop of unresolved security and political files. The interview was also one of the president’s first extended public appearances since taking power, to be followed by a second segment next week focused on his personal life — all of which raised expectations about the nature of the answers he would give on the character of the political system, the identity of the state, a clearer vision for managing the transitional period, and the country’s most pressing domestic issues.
Yet the interview’s significance extends beyond the answers themselves — some of which were repetitive or self-evident given the authorities’ conduct and rhetoric over recent months — and reinforces an impression already taking shape: that external files continue to weigh more heavily than domestic priorities. What the interview reveals about the nature of the political discourse adopted by the new authorities matters as much as what was actually said, since it left a large part of the state’s foundational questions still open.
It was clear that the interview sought to project a new phase in the transition from the legitimacy of toppling the former regime to a new legitimacy grounded in “achievement” and state administration. Yet this discursive shift has, to a considerable degree, outpaced the completion of the political and institutional foundations that would give such legitimacy stable substance. The interview suggested that the shift toward the language of statehood is proceeding at a faster pace than the actual building of the state — reinforcing the impression that the transitional authority is behaving as though it were already a permanent, legitimate government.
Generalities on the Big Questions
The second observation concerns the generality of the answers given to major political questions — reconstruction, transitional justice, and especially the questions of democracy and identity.
The question of democracy, while inherently fraught and open to pre-emptive justification, was framed as a question that was “previously” pressing — invoking the debates of the Arab Spring, and even situating itself within global discussions of the “crisis of democracy and what comes after.” This framing seemed intended to lend any answer a broader legitimacy and interpretive frame, easing the intensity of scrutiny both domestically and internationally.
While it is true that debates over the crisis and decline of liberal democracy have become a fixture of contemporary political literature, and that the search for alternative models of governance is now being seriously pursued, this does not change the fact that the Arab region has not yet exhausted the experience of democracy to begin with. Moreover, despite its crises, the democratic model remains the one best equipped to correct its own imbalances through internal mechanisms — foremost among them the peaceful transfer of power, oversight, accountability, and the ability to revisit policy through institutions and elections. Invoking global debates about “post-democracy,” then, is not on its own sufficient to justify bypassing the democratic question in the Syrian case, or deferring an answer to it.
Still, the president’s actual answer deserves attention. He said: “We are pushing toward people’s participation, so that people have a say in choosing their ruler as well as the laws needed to manage their affairs — and we have done this through the People’s Assembly, whose first sessions have begun, and I believe we are moving in the right direction.” This framing raises two problems. First, it reduces political participation to its electoral dimension alone, without addressing the other components of a democratic system — the separation of powers, judicial independence, centralization versus decentralization, mechanisms of oversight and accountability, and transparency and governance. Second, it raises a question of consistency with the existing institutional structure: the People’s Assembly, in its current form, has no authority to choose the president of the republic, let alone hold him — or the government, for that matter — accountable.
Its first term, moreover, was formed through electoral bodies and appointments, alongside limited constitutional and political powers — constraints that limit its capacity to fulfill the representative and democratic role attributed to it in the president’s answer. More significant than the content of the answer itself is that it did not represent a break with the president’s previous discourse, but rather an extension of it. Since taking power, the word “democracy” has been notably absent from his speeches and from his answers to questions about it — whether regarding the present or his vision for the post-transitional phase, particularly the future of the political system. It has generally been replaced with more general terms such as “participation,” “shura (consultation),” “the people’s choice,” and “representation,” without a clear definition of the concept or of the mechanisms by which it would take effect within the authorities’ vision for the new state. These are the same terms that featured in the president’s speech at the opening of the People’s Assembly — consistent with the position he established since the Idlib experience, that shura is “advisory” rather than “binding.”
“Syria Is Syria”: Deferring the Identity Question
As for “Syria” — offered as an answer to the questions of state identity and the model on which the shape of the state would be based — the president said he was “against importing models,” a position that appears reasonable given the differences between societies and their historical, social, and regional contexts. Yet this does not answer the original question. “Syria” expresses national belonging to the state, but it does not define its political, constitutional, or even religious identity, nor does it clarify the frames of reference on which it will be built, the nature of the system it will adopt, or the shape of the relationship between state and society. This is compounded by the president’s argument, which goes so far as to question the very need to define these things at all: “Why should we bind ourselves to cultural definitions we invented under particular circumstances?” and that “Syria resembles Syria; it will be Syria, in the form befitting Syria, its civilization, and our vision for its future.”
This flexibility, while understandable from the standpoint of managing a transitional phase — and perhaps reflecting, in many respects, an attempt to break with the president’s earlier ideological discourse without that break being complete or explicit — also grants considerable political room for maneuver. The more general the answers, the fewer the commitments they entail, and the greater the capacity to reinterpret them according to the needs of the moment, narrowing the space for political and legal accountability around them. Yet this comes at a political cost, one that raises the question of how long such ambiguity can persist, and when these issues will require more specific answers — given that they are foundational questions for national dialogue, for building broader political and social consensus, and for drafting a new social contract that would define the state’s identity, the nature of its political system, and the relationship between authority and society.
What Was Absent
As much as the interview addressed certain issues and questions, it is equally worth asking what was missing from it. The greater weight went to external and regional files, particularly relations with neighboring countries — Lebanon and Iraq especially. Domestically, developments in northeastern Syria and the file on integrating the Syrian Democratic Forces received considerably more space — significant given the sensitivity of the moment, amid rising indicators of political and tribal tension in Hasakah province, following the pitching of a “war tent” by Arab tribal sheikhs against the SDF over grievances related to the marginalization of Arab-majority areas and their insufficient inclusion in administrative appointments or development and services plans, despite recent understandings reached between Damascus and the SDF — an escalation that was temporarily frozen following the intervention of a team from the Syrian presidency.
By contrast, while attention centered on the northeast, there was a notable absence of a file no less important or sensitive: Suwayda. It was raised only in passing by the interviewer, without being expanded upon in the conversation — notable especially as a year has now passed since the bloody events of July 2025 in the province, arguably the most urgent and difficult file, and one whose resolution appears to be deferred. The province encompasses many of the central challenges facing Syria, all converging within an exceptionally narrow geographic space: the absence of state authority, decentralization, relations with minorities, competing narratives over victims and events, transitional justice, war-economy and militia networks, and Israeli intervention. These are not challenges unique to Suwayda alone, but the legacy left there, its weight, and the way it is handled together constitute an important indicator of Syria’s future.
The Southern File
Although the president spoke of “his country’s pursuit of a security agreement with Israel, with the participation of Arab states,” he simultaneously expressed pessimism about the success of the framework agreement between Israel and Lebanon, citing “gaps in it” and asserting that “the Syrian track is entirely separate.” He did not clarify how or in what way it differs — particularly amid the steady increase in recent Israeli incursions into southern Syria, which have expanded notably in recent days into the western countryside of Daraa province. This raises questions about how the new authorities intend to approach the security and political challenges of southern Syria as a whole, and whether they will address them within a comprehensive national vision or through separate arrangements for each file.
Conclusion
In sum, these three sets of issues — those present, those absent, and those deferred — together outline the real challenge facing the new authorities. They will determine the nature of the transition from the legitimacy of liberation to the legitimacy of statehood, and the limits of the authorities’ capacity to build a more stable political and institutional legitimacy.