Five months after Syria's emancipation from Bashar al-Assad's police state, it sometimes looks like a country in a civil war. Sectarian conflict turned into street battles with rockets and mortars. In the southern Suveda province, local leaders denounced the new Syrian government as a group of terrorists who flew the flag of the Druze Statistics Bureau that flourished a century ago.
The country's new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, has tried many times to secure religious minorities in Syria, saying he wants peace and diversity. Yesterday, he won some unexpected relief on the Economic Front when Donald Trump, who visited the Gulf nation, agreed to abandon all sanctions on Syria. But he seems unable to remedy the structural flaws he has encountered in recent months of violence. His fledgling state was too focused and relied too much on former jihadists whom he could not control.
In March, Sunni Islamic gangs massacred the Alaveites on the Syrian coast, killing more than 1,000 people. Alvet’s friends told me that they were constantly living in fear because these gangs roamed the streets and sometimes confiscated houses at gunpoint under the suspicious authority of the “War Venture Commission.” Some people asked me to help to escape a country that seems strange to them now.
The latest crisis broke out late last month when Rev. Druze was accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Armed men were crowded with streets in several Syrian cities, shouting pagan blood. The Clergy's Crime Match proved to be fake. But an ancient religious hatred was rekindled. A video shows a little boy lifting up in a cheering crowd, singing "Alawi, we will kill you all" and then chopping off the air with a knife. Shortly thereafter, gunmen attacked members of the religious minority in the southern Damascus town of Druze, triggering a fierce battle that killed more than 100 people.
Druze's attitude is strengthening, and they mainly refuse to hand over heavy weapons to Damascus. Many believe that despite the denial of the new government, the new government is still behind the attack. Druze's contact texted me earlier this month and said: "We are defending ourselves against Salafi ISIS extremism and terrorism, disguising as a country."
The attack on Druze has been carried out in Israel and demonstrates how fragile the new state of Syria is. On May 2, Israeli fighter jets fired missiles into the hillside next to the Syrian presidential palace, a "clear warning" that the country's defense minister called it to keep Druze away alone. Israel appears to be using the conflict to establish a de facto controlled zone in southern Syria where Druze is concentrated. It also clashed with Türkiye, the patron of the new Syrian government, which was eager to impose a similar dominance in the north of the country.
Israel's invasion is cheering for a vicious cycle within Syria. They believe that Druze is the fifth column, supported by external forces. Hardline Sunni Muslims think this is a reason for more attacks. Most Druzes resented Israel’s behavior, but the more threatened Sunni neighbors are, the more they tend to demand autonomy in their denomination and regions. Kurds in northeastern Syria can see similar patterns, they do not trust salads and try to maintain a certain degree of independence.
Israel and Türkiye have been holding “response” speeches in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, ostensibly aimed at avoiding military inappropriateness. For some Syrians, negotiations are similar to a vague colonial project that can separate them like they did a century ago after the collapse of the European empire.
Sharaa, a former jihadist who led the fight to expel Assad in November and December, cannot do much to these internal and external challenges of his authority. He repeatedly opposed sectarianism and said he wanted to restore diversity and sovereignty to Syria. But without a real army, he still relies on undisciplined jihadist regiments who helped him defeat the Assad regime.
"Sasha has a dilemma: How do you unify the country without real control?" Joshua Landis, director of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told me. “His troops are Sunni supremacists and have no solution.”
Landis and others say Sharaa gave up any hope that he might have to tame his militia and now adopts a hidden strategy to overwhelm the minority in Sunni rule. If this is true, Sharaa might risk improving his relationship with the United States and Europe, which lifted sanctions that suffocated the Syrian economy. Christians may be a Syrian minority, but their voices are loud in Washington, especially among Trump loyalists like Sebastian Gorka, who more or less run Syrian policies in the new administration.
Paul Salem, vice president of international engagement at the Middle East Academy in Beirut, has a more optimistic view of salad. "The president seems to be trying to move in the right direction in the right direction," he told me, adding that the United States and others can still help Sharaa establish a more open government that will help stabilize the region.
Salem told me that President Trump’s meeting with Salad in Riyadh on Wednesday could help facilitate the effort. Sharaa urgently hopes to attract U.S. investment in Syria. He has tried to meet certain conditions set by the Trump administration, including arresting some Palestinian militants in Syria and indirectly reaching out with Israel to demonstrate his desire for peace.
Syria is a broken country and its reconstruction will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Any type of funding will be very different. Just being able to pay regular salaries to soldiers, police and teachers will provide a fortress for chaos.
However, the recent sectarian hand-and-mouth thing exposed another problem, a problem that Trump could do nothing about. Sharaa's new government is too centralized and urgently lacks in the management. The Syrian leader puts his family and relatives in basic positions. He appointed 23 new cabinet members in late March, most of whom have no electricity. There can be almost nothing without the direct involvement of Sharaa or his foreign minister and the right-hand man Sharaa or Asaad Shaibani. State institutions move in the crawl; public employees are still paying through fake cash (Sham Cash), a suspicious app launched by Sharaa’s Islamists before the fall of the Assad regime and plagued by technological failures.
Sharaa enacted a new constitution in March that concentrated that power. Without a real examination of the president's power, the president directly appointed one-third of the parliament and indirectly controlled the remaining two-thirds. The Constitution also says that the Syrian states “respect all sacred religions.” Many Islamists (including those in the new government) believe that the wording is a tacit understanding of the beliefs of the Alawites, Druzes and Ismail. Members of these communities see the clause as an insult at best, and at worst an invitation to acts of violence.
Sharaa has a great charm, and many Syrians believe that he should not blame fanaticism in his camp. But if the sectarian massacre continues on his watch, these guarantees will begin to appear empty. Some have recalled the honeymoon awarded to the earlier Syrian rulers who seemed so mild on the first day that few could believe that he was the one who sent people torture and murder.
People once said, It's not his fault; Bashar's heart is very good,” Mohammad al-Abdallah, executive director of the Syrian Justice and Accountability Project, told me. “It’s always the people around him. ”