EXPERT INTERVIEW — For the first time since the December rebellion that overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Syria has seen a spate of large-scale violence, as Assad loyalists rose up last week against forces loyal to the rebel movement that now governs the country. More than 1,300 people have been killed in clashes that broke out last Thursday.
In a nationally televised speech Sunday, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former rebel leader who now serves as Syria’s interim president, accused Assad’s supporters and unnamed foreign backers of fanning the violence.
"We find ourselves facing a new danger - attempts by remnants of the former regime and their foreign backers to incite new strife and drag our country into a civil war,” al-Sharaa said.
Reuters reported on Monday that Sharaa's office was forming a committee to investigate the killings. There were also reports that government forces and beaten back the uprising and were searching mountainous areas of Latakia province, where an estimated 5,000 pro-Assad insurgents were hiding.
In a separate development Monday, the interim government signed a deal with the Kurdish-led authority that controls the country’s northeast – a breakthrough that would bring most of Syria under the control of the new government, including key border crossings with Turkey and Iraq, and prisons where some 9,000 suspected members of the Islamic State are held.
Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski spoke with Charles Lister, a longtime expert on Syria, who traveled to the country recently to assess the rule of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, the rebel movement which al-Sharaa led and has since turned into an interim government. Lister – who was in Syria just prior to the latest spate of violence – sees potential for future unrest, major governance challenges that lie ahead, but above all a population that is largely “elated to be free of the grip” of the Assad regime.
THE CONTEXT
- Syrian rebels led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) captured the Syrian capital, Damascus, on December 8, 2024, ousting dictator Bashar al-Assad and ending the Assad family’s 53-year rule. Assad fled to Russia. HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa became the interim president of Syria.
- Various powers have engaged with the new leadership to influence Syria’s transition. A delegation of senior U.S. diplomats traveled to Syria in December to meet with al-Sharaa. China’s ambassador to Syria met al-Sharaa on February 22, and Russia, which had backed Assad, has been negotiating with Syria’s new government to maintain its military bases in the country. Israel, meanwhile, has moved forces into Syrian territory along the Israel-Syria border and several Israeli officials have said the new regime in Damascus cannot be trusted.
- Syria held a national dialogue conference on February 25 as part of efforts to form an inclusive and representative post-Assad government. Some observers raised concerns about the marginalization of some groups – including the Kurdish and Druze communities.
- Last week the new government launched a military operation in the western coastal provinces of Tartus and Latakia — the heartland of the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs. The operation was launched to halt sectarian violence and revenge killings that followed clashes between government forces and armed Assad loyalists. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that more than 1,300 people have been killed, including around 1,000 civilians.
The Cipher Brief: What can you tell us about the recent violence – and its impact?
Lister: We’d seen increasing signs of a primarily Alawite, pro-Assad insurgency developing, mostly on the coast. The violence that's resulted is unprecedented in the-post Assad era, and it has triggered all of the worst fears that most Syrians have had in the back of their minds – you don't just forget and put aside nearly 14 years of horrendous civil conflict overnight. All of the worst instincts – the thirst for revenge and desire to hit back at rival communities had just been simmering in a pot with a very gentle lid on it since Assad fell, and everything just blew up very quickly.
It goes to show the shortcomings of the interim government – it took them about 48 hours to establish some control over what was happening in that area of the country – but the fact that they have done so is being seen as an encouraging sign. Along with the fact that they established various committees to investigate and to implement justice and accountability. But clearly the interim government took a hit from all of that violence.
At the same time, there’s been another enormous development, with the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] agreeing to a comprehensive deal with the interim government to dissolve and integrate into the Syrian state. This has arguably been the biggest and most important challenge for the interim government to resolve, in order to reunite the country and put it back on track. From a U.S. perspective it's a huge development. The U.S. military has been pushing behind the scenes for this deal to be made, and been facilitating most of the in-person negotiations between the SDF and Damascus. This appears to be giving Syrians all across the country another glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, notwithstanding the horrific violence of just a few days ago
The Cipher Brief: Tell us about the journey you just made in Syria. What were the core takeaways from the visit?
Lister: The biggest one is that after nearly 54 years, Syria is finally free of the grip of the Assad dynasty. Syrians all across the country were, in my experience, elated to just be free of that grip. The very simple act of sitting around a table and having a political conversation, for most Syrians, is a completely brand new experience. So as we look at Syria attempting to peel itself away from nearly 14 years of catastrophic conflict and rebuild and recover and reunite, they are starting from the very basics, learning politics from the ground up.
That was probably the biggest takeaway – but the economy is in ruins and there are still plenty of security concerns. The challenges for the transition are enormous.
The Cipher Brief: There's been a lot of concern, particularly outside Syria, of the remnants of the Islamic State, ISIS. You and others reported that there had been at least eight recent plots that were foiled. And it's hard to know whether that's good news that they foiled these plots, or bad news that they're able to plan that many potential attacks.
Lister: It's kind of a split story. In 2024, while Assad was still in place, ISIS was on the resurgence in Syria. They tripled their operational tempo in 2024 compared to 2023. The average deadliness of ISIS attacks in Syria more than doubled in 2024 compared to the previous year. The sophistication, the geographic reach, the amount of fighters devoted to individual attacks all increased significantly. Until December, all the red alarm bells were ringing in CENTCOM (Central Command) and SOCOM (Special Operations Command), who were running the counter-ISIS campaign.
But as soon as Assad left, ISIS attacks almost disappeared in Syria. I would say since December, there've probably been 12 to 15 attacks. That is a staggering reduction. We used to have 15 attacks a week throughout 2024.
There are a number of reasons for this. ISIS fighters were seen to be fleeing mostly to Iraq as soon as Assad fell. The reason for that is the security vacuum that they had long exploited in the central desert that was, at least on paper, governed by the regime no longer existed. The interim government filled some of that gap, but also U.S. aircraft, drones and helicopters and fighter jets have been patrolling and monitoring that region ever since Assad left, whereas we previously were unable to do so. In the few days after Assad fell, the U.S. conducted as many as 75 strikes on ISIS in that central desert. So ISIS suddenly found themselves newly vulnerable.
And then there's the big issue: the greatest driver of ISIS’s operations and recruitment was always the Syrian regime – the brutality, the corruption, the fact that Syrians saw no light at the end of the tunnel after all those years of civil conflict. With Assad out of the way, all of a sudden the greatest justification for ISIS's existence and its activities vanished. And in its place is a conglomeration of primarily Sunni Arab rebel groups that come from the very same communities that ISIS would otherwise want to be trying to exploit. I think that is an existential challenge to ISIS's hopes and aspirations in Syria. And that's why we've seen this collapse in ISIS activities.
There have been these domestic plots — but very different activities than we'd seen from ISIS before. Before, ISIS was running an insurgency against the regime, against the Russians, against the U.S., against our partners, the SDF. Now, the only real significant ISIS activities we're seeing are plots to conduct large-scale bombings or massacres in urban centers. And that's ISIS 101. It's what they've always done – seek to sow chaos, sectarian strife and divisions in unstable environments. And thankfully, eight plots, as I was told in Damascus, have been foiled. And most of those were thanks to intelligence sharing with the United States, which is of course a new development as well.
The Cipher Brief: Let's turn to HTS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. History has taught us that rebels generally don't make the transition to effective rulers. They held this big national dialogue recently. What's your assessment of how that went?
Lister: The national dialogue was imperfect. It was never going to be perfect, quite frankly, after 14 years of conflict and given the rich and diverse nature of the country. Pulling together hundreds and hundreds of Syrians in one room to speak was always going to be a challenge. I think the fact that it happened at all is a good thing. Yes, there could have been more and other people involved. It was diverse, it did include all governorates, but there could have been more people engaged. But again, from the Syrian perspective, the fact that it happened at all is a good sign.
Though many Syrians have justifiable reasons to be skeptical or concerned about HTS's lead role in the interim government, they all said, It's a million times better for us than having Assad. So it's different levels of concern. And baby steps, incremental elements of progress, are probably the best that we can hope for here.
The Cipher Brief: And as for Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of HTS, who now is essentially the leader of the country – how do you assess his role so far?
Lister: So far, I think he's almost played the textbook line-by-line role that you would expect in a very delicate, fragile post-conflict transition like this. As I say, plenty of things that could have been done better, but nothing that's been done terribly badly.
He has been a lot more pragmatic on geopolitical issues than most would have expected. He went straight back to speaking with the Russians. He's not pushed back against a whole series of Israeli provocations, which, given his origins in the Golan Heights, is probably an impressive amount of pragmatism for now.
Of course, his history since 2003 is very concerning, especially from an international perspective. But we shouldn't also forget that he comes from an upper-middle class family in Damascus. He grew up in the most expensive, most elite neighborhood of the Syrian capital. His father was a renowned Syrian economist, not just with the Syrian government, but also with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He grew up in the creme de la creme of Syrian academia and political thinking. He's basically re-adopted that prior persona since he took over Damascus. And frankly, speaking to Syrians of all stripes, he appears to have done it pretty well.
People were surprisingly proud to have him as their interim statesman. There's a basic reason for that: after 50 years of being an international pariah, Syria is suddenly the heart of international attention. Royal families, presidents, prime ministers are flocking to Syria, trying to engage and control and influence this transition. And Syrians see that as a reason for pride.
Now, of course, they're concerned about HTS's foot soldiers. But for Ahmed al-Sharaa individually, there was an element not just of acceptance, but almost an embrace of his leadership. And that comes down to more simple human realities for Syrians. They're desperate for stability, but they also want to see Syria become part of the world again. And they're watching that play out right now in a way that I think probably most of us wouldn't necessarily have expected.
The Cipher Brief: The U.S. is in a really interesting situation. You mentioned the intelligence collaboration and cooperation that's going on. HTS is still on the U.S. terrorist list, and 900 or so American forces remain in the country. What do you think the U.S. posture should be? Should they remove the terrorist designation, given everything you've said?
Lister: I don't think they should remove it straight away, although I do think it should always be under consideration. Counterterrorism designations should never be designed to be there forever. They should always be used as leverage to try to influence better behavior. That's the purpose of a designation – you punish bad behavior, but you also try to incentivize better behavior.
Ahmed al-Sharaa had a 10-million-dollar bounty on his head for nearly a decade. And yet, for the last six years or so in northwestern Syria, he's been opening up highways and shopping malls. He's been attending university lectures and meetings with all kinds of notables in the open, in the daylight with no security — while U.S. drones were flying overhead. We never once tried to take him out. Now that tells me a lot about how the U.S. designation – both of HTS, but also him as an individual – what those designations really meant. It meant we didn't like what this group had done. We didn't like what it stood for. But we weren't necessarily entirely opposed to what it's been doing over the past five or six years, which has been qualitatively different. They've been rebuilding churches with their own money. They've been repatriating Christians back to Northwestern Syria who'd fled the war in earlier years. They've taken a lot of those other steps. They've been reaching out to the United States through intermediaries for years. And there's some evidence that they've been cooperating with U.S. intelligence for a campaign of drone strikes in Idlib for several years, too.
We should be doing what the Biden administration did on its way out, which was to engage aggressively and to engage to influence. If we don't engage a transition of any stripe, we're never going to be able to influence its behavior. And whether we like it or not, the United States is the most powerful country in the world. We do have a great deal of leverage to bear here. And if we want Syria to stop being a gaping wound in the heart of the Middle East that only destabilizes, then engaging this transition, despite its controversial history, would be the right step.
The Middle East has been unstable for so long, and Syria for most of the time has been at the heart of that instability. We finally have a chance to pivot Syria in a better direction. And the U.S. doesn't need to spend dollars doing this. We don't need to deploy more troops. If anything, we don't need to spend anything and we can remove our troops. The regional states are more than happy to take advantage of this opportunity. But it involves, at the end of the day, the U.S. removing at least some of its country-specific sanctions to allow the regional states to plow investment in and support and prop up and influence this transition in the right directions. Otherwise, it's a huge missed strategic opportunity.
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