September 05, 2025

Qué Sharaa, Sharaa

By: Eitan Danon and Daniel Schneiderman

This article was originally published in the Foreign Policy.

Later this month, Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa will appear before the U.N. General Assembly—the first Syrian leader to do so since 1967. The world will be watching to see how he plans to navigate the religious and ethnic kaleidoscope of a country still traumatized by five decades of brutal authoritarian rule under the Assad family. The challenge that Sharaa faces is herculean, and it is in the interest of the United States and its partners to help him succeed.

Since becoming Syria’s interim president, Sharaa has sought to build a strong central government. However, sectarian violence has challenged these plans, raising fears that different factions could play spoiler to an orderly transition. In June, a Sunni extremist suicide bomber killed 25 people and injured 60 more at the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in a Damascus suburb. In March, Syrian forces and government-aligned militia groups killed 1,500 Alawites along the western coastline. More recently, communal violence erupted between the Druze and Sunni Bedouin in Syria’s southwestern Suwayda province, with Israel intervening and saying it did so to protect the Druze.

The success of any political process in Syria hinges on Sharaa’s ability to resolve a host of interlocking institutional and economic problems.

Any heavy-handed attempts by Sharaa to forcibly subdue unrest in the Alawite, Druze, and Kurdish communities is a recipe for disaster. With questions lingering about transitional justice and reconciliation for crimes committed against the Syrian people, Sharaa shouldn’t be surprised by minority groups’ skepticism of the state.

Sharaa’s government has promised to be inclusive, and in September, Syria will hold its first parliamentary election since Assad’s ouster. Sharaa has also put technocrats in key positions, such as economist Mohammed Yisr Barnieh as finance minister as well as electrical engineer and energy sector professional Mohammad al-Bashir as energy minister.

Read the full article in Foreign Policy.

More from CNAS

View All Reports View All Articles & Multimedia