For the first time in 53 years, Syrians gathered this week to talk about the future of their country without fear of imprisonment or death. The country’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is a former Al-Qaeda militant who in his past life organized suicide bombings in Damascus and was jailed by the U.S. military in Iraq for killing American soldiers. Sharaa has ditched his nom de guerre (Abu Mohammad al-Jolani) and his fatigues, exchanging the latter for a well-pressed suit. His transformation from jihadist to pseudo-renaissance man has been about as dramatic as Syria’s abrupt departure from the Assad family dictatorship.
After weeks of preparations in which the post-Assad transitional government’s hand-picked officials traveled the country to speak to ordinary Syrians about the state’s most pressing domestic issues, about 600 delegates went to Damascus for a two day-long national dialogue conference. The session was hastily organized, with invitees given short notice, and some attendees questioned whether Sharaa and his loyalist administration would seriously consider their list of 18 non-binding recommendations. As outlined in the press, the recommendations seem quite basic: Syria should have sovereignty over all its territories; the country shouldn’t be fragmented; militias within Syria’s borders should reintegrate into the ranks of the new Syrian army; and the legislative council, which the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) government has vowed to set up, should be established at the earliest possible opportunity.
For the purposes of creating a whole new political system from the ground-up, the national dialogue was a major step in the right direction. Thus far, Sharaa and his transitional authority have been more talented at destroying the old order—dissolving the Assad-controlled legislature, demolishing the Baath Party, and snuffing out the Syrian intelligence services—than creating new structures or outlining a political program that goes beyond the most superficial generalities.
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