Syria’s Sunni Arab population greeted the collapse of Assad’s regime with elation. However, over a year later, the new government still faces many barriers to realizing the dreams that Syrians have held for their future ever since independence in 1946. Syria’s new government will need to overcome a gauntlet of challenges before it can build a functioning, independent, and unified state. The government has sought to find a middle ground between secular democracy, which would open the door to much-needed Western support, and Islamism, adherents of which formed the support base of the current president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, during the Syrian Civil War. In addition, despite the government’s promotion of a unitary style of governance and promise of inclusion of minorities, many groups, especially major Kurdish and Druze factions, are distrustful of the government and advocate for a federal Syria. If Syria is to avoid slipping into the sectarian authoritarianism that has long characterized its politics, the country will need to build a unified state without violating the rights of minorities.
Al-Sharaa, leader of the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and an insurgent who was formerly sanctioned as a terrorist by both the U.S. and U.N. Security Council, has spent the past year trying to reform his and his followers’ image in an effort to appeal to the international community. The interim constitution promised rights for members of minority religions such as Judaism and Christianity; however, the constitution’s language is not clear whether such protections extend to Druze and Alawites. It is unclear whether this language also includes the Druze and Alawites. It has also made overtures towards ethnic minorities such as the Kurds, promising to protect their cultural, language, and educational rights. It is unclear whether this language also includes the Druze and Alawites. The government designated Christmas and Easter as official state holidays and, in the constitution, merely claimed inspiration from Islamic jurisprudence rather than calling for adherence to Sharia law. This more neutral rhetoric seems to be a way to draw a compromise between hardline secularists and the base of HTS and other Islamist factions, which are strong advocates for political Islam.
It is important that while President Al-Sharaa ostensibly supports the cultural and religious rights of minorities, this support does not extend to endorsing federalism or devolving political authority to regional militias and government structures. Al-Sharaa has stated that the political unity of Syria is non-negotiable and, in January 2026, under his direction, the Syrian Army made significant territorial gains against the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which autonomously governed the oil-rich Kurdish-majority northeast of Syria during the civil war. The relative success at autonomy that the SDF has achieved was to the chagrin of Turkey, which has been fighting a 40-year anti-Kurdish insurgency inside its own borders to which the SDF shares political and ideological ties. The offensive came after stalled talks on integration. The government’s progress spurred a new agreement in which the SDF will integrate into the Syrian Army and hand control of Syria’s largest oil field, Al-Omar, to Damascus after years of Kurdish control. The SDF’s capitulation was made possible by further troop withdrawals from northern Syria and a decline in support to the SDF by the U.S., as the Trump administration believes that the purpose of American support for the Kurdish forces, to fight Islamic State militants, has been fulfilled.
Even under the assumption that the new Syrian government is as hostile to extremism as the American administration wishes it to be, the fragile condition of the Syrian army will be a major obstacle to its ability to contend with violent groups. Despite progress towards the disestablishment of autonomous militias, there remain many barriers to the creation of a national army. Agreements to integrate forces into the national army have proven slow, and Syria’s economic crisis, which persists despite the easing of Western sanctions, leaves the army critically underfunded. Developing a unified command structure, doctrine, and a universal training regime will take years. Furthermore, the plan for both a unified military and a Syrian political entity as a whole has been met with less than enthusiastic reactions by many members of Syria’s significant minority populations.
The catastrophic state of the Syrian economy is another barrier to the state being able to project enough authority to protect minority rights and provide effective governance. Between 2010 and 2023, as a result of continuous warfare and foreign sanctions, Syria’s GDP contracted by 84% and its dollar reserves numbered in just the hundreds of millions, worrying given the hyper-inflation that the Syrian pound has experienced. 67% of the country’s population lives on less than $3.65 per day. Without the alleviation of Syrians’ economic woes, the government will struggle to discourage crime and prevent tribalism as competing groups struggle for the small amount of wealth left in the country.
Given Al-Sharaa’s jihadist past, minority groups have been hesitant to embrace political integration. His inability, or unwillingness, to stop massacres of Alawites by ostensibly government-controlled militant Islamist groups in March 2025 has led many minority groups to believe that the government is either inept or malicious. In addition, a belated response to skirmishes between Druze and Bedouin militias was perceived as favoring the latter and pushed some Druze leaders to call for outright independence from Syria. Reservations about Syria’s ability to function as a unitary state without discrimination and violence towards Syrians not part of the Sunni Arab majority are the main reasons why so many Syrian minority leaders and international observers support a federalized Syria. In their view, an overbearing central government will simply increase resistance and heighten the chances that Syria breaks out into civil war once again.
However, detractors of federalism argue that excessive federalization will benefit extortionate local ethnic militias and foreign powers to the detriment of Syria. They contend that without proper economic and political integration, corruption and ethnic tensions will grow as the central government will lack the power to contend with the roaming militias that are epidemic throughout Syria and operate through bribes and violence rather than a modern bureaucratic government system. Furthermore, detractors of a federal Syrian state worry that this system would make it easier for foreign powers to divide up Syria and weaken its ability to resist influence. The Israeli government justified its bombing of Syrian government infrastructure earlier this year by citing clashes between government forces and Druze militias, which Israel argues involved the targeting of Druze civilians. Its daily incursions into Syrian territory have likely soured the majority population’s perception of the cause that it champions. Intervention in internal Syrian affairs by foreign powers on behalf of minorities is not new to the region, and especially not in Syria, which was divided into several autonomous political units based on ethnoreligious lines under French occupation and struggled to emerge as a united country. Nationalist, anti-colonial currents within the country, especially amongst the majority Arab population, are likely to serve as a roadblock to the level of federalization sought out by many minorities. Many Syrians will want to avoid a repeat of the perceived exploitation of Syria that has been justified by the protection of minorities.
Not all foreign governments interested in Syria push for decentralization. Turkey, due to worries about Kurdish autonomy in Syria potentially emboldening Kurdish nationalists in eastern Anatolia, has vowed to support the revitalization of Syrian institutions. They have already held talks between banking authorities, aiming to introduce Turkish lenders into Syria to finance reconstruction and to reinvigorate trade that has drastically declined due to a multitude of financial factors. If Syria chooses to continue to embrace centralization, it will still have some degree of foreign support despite Israel’s objections.
All things considered, the Syrian government must avoid excessive federalization that weakens its ability to maintain law and order and rebuild the country’s economic and defense infrastructure. At the same time, the government must safeguard minority rights in a way that avoids the abuses of the ethnocratic exclusionary governments of Syria’s past. If Syria cannot avoid straying too far into either centralization or federalism, it risks inflaming sectarian conflict and suffering a repeat of the catastrophic civil conflict that has plagued the country for decades.
Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: “Ahmed al-Sharaa in September 2025”, Image Sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made