Ahmed al-Sharaa is a former jihadist who is attempting to rebuild Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. He leads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which grew out of Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate. He once waged jihad against American occupiers in Iraq and spent five years in Iraqi prisons—a history that makes him deeply distrusted in Shia-majority Iraq.
In 2015, while still leading Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Sharaa said Syria's Druze should convert to Islam. Around the same time his group massacred roughly 20 Druze villagers, a legacy that has fuelled deep mistrust among the Druze community in Suwayda. His proposed constitutional framework has been rejected by Druze religious leaders as too Islamic and unrepresentative.
Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader in Lebanon, rushed to embrace al-Sharaa after Damascus fell.
Before taking power nationally, al-Sharaa governed Idlib province during the final years of the Assad regime. He ran a competent administration that oversaw a flourishing economy, but became increasingly brutal, imprisoning many of his critics. Towards the end of his rule in Idlib, protesters chanted for his downfall.
Al-Sharaa signed an interim constitution in March 2025 that leant heavily on Islamic law, compounding fears among minorities. Power is held tightly by perhaps half a dozen people in Damascus. Efforts to weld Syria's myriad militias into a national army have foundered. The issuance of identity documents has stalled; civil registries outside Idlib have not recorded births, deaths or marriages since Assad's fall. The government has been reluctant to recruit minorities, particularly Alawites, into its new security institutions.
A suicide-bomb attack at a church near Damascus in June 2025 was the work of an extremist group, roundly condemned by the government. Religious zealots have harassed Christian-run bars in Damascus. Gunmen stormed a nightclub, killing a woman. In both cases arrests were made, but minorities worry such incidents signal Islamist rule creeping in. In March 2025 pro-government militias massacred around 1,400 Alawites in Syria's coastal Latakia region. A committee investigating the massacre concluded that commanders had not ordered the killings, pinning blame on lower-ranking soldiers—a finding many Syrians regard as a whitewash. Calls from Alawites for international protection have grown.
Al-Sharaa visited Emmanuel Macron, the French president, at the Élysée Palace.
By mid-2025 a growing number of Syrians, especially from minority groups, were voicing frustration with al-Sharaa's government. In July 2025, amid carnage in Suwayda, a coalition of activists launched the Syrian Centenary Initiative—the beginnings of an organised political opposition. Its name refers to a Druze-led uprising against the French mandate in Syria a century ago. Its first act was to demand an immediate ceasefire. It also called upon the government to rewrite the constitutional declaration so that it would allow the formation of political parties and provide more protection for civil-society groups.
Among its founders are George Sabra, a Christian politician who once led a coalition of exiled opposition groups, and Ayman Asfari, a Syrian-British billionaire who was once touted to be al-Sharaa's prime minister. It also includes Alawite activists and businessmen from Aleppo.
The government has reacted badly, ignoring the movement's demands and attacking its members. Civil-society activists say criticism is treated as treason. Reports of Alawite women disappearing from coastal areas—documented by human-rights groups—have been met with denials from the government. Journalists who investigate crimes by state security forces are harassed online; some have been arrested without charge. Since the Suwayda killings, Druze leaders have rejected government pleas to join the security forces. Some Druze militias now openly fly the Israeli flag; some are calling for secession.
Nine in ten Syrians still live in poverty.
On September 24th 2025 al-Sharaa addressed the UN General Assembly, the first Syrian leader to do so in almost 60 years. Tom Barrack, America's ambassador to Turkey and Donald Trump's envoy to Syria, ushered al-Sharaa along America's corridors of power.
Al-Sharaa seems uninterested in rebuilding the formal state, preferring to create parallel structures. In late 2025 he established a new customs authority, run by a former jihadist comrade, placing Syria's main source of tax revenue under a crony rather than the finance ministry.
New bodies such as the General Authority for Borders and Customs and a sovereign-wealth fund have been created by presidential decree, stripping ministries of revenue-raising powers. A General Secretariat for Political Affairs, headed by the foreign minister, has been established; civil-society groups say gatherings have been cancelled after venues received threats from the office. In October 2025 al-Sharaa held elections for two-thirds of a new parliament: an electoral college of approved voters chose members from a list of selected candidates; al-Sharaa will appoint the remainder. A body created to oversee transitional justice remains unfunded. Several of Assad's lieutenants have been hired by the new regime to manage political affairs. Revenge killings happen almost daily, particularly in mixed areas around Homs and the coast.
Al-Sharaa has appointed his three brothers and a brother-in-law to key positions. Foreign investors say they must chase his brother Hazem rather than the appropriate ministers. His foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, moved into the Tishreen Palace, a former residence of Bashar al-Assad. Elections for a People's Assembly were planned with no universal suffrage: electoral colleges selected by the government would choose candidates from pre-screened lists. Political parties remain banned.
On May 14th 2025 Donald Trump met al-Sharaa in Riyadh—the first meeting between American and Syrian presidents in 25 years. The previous day Trump had announced he would lift American sanctions on Syria. Trump called al-Sharaa "a good young attractive guy" with "a very strong past". Trump urged al-Sharaa to join the Abraham accords, to rid Syria of foreign terrorists and to deport Palestinian fighters. Al-Sharaa said he accepted the 1974 disengagement deal that established a buffer zone between Israel and Syria, and invited American firms to invest in Syrian oil and gas.
Repealing the most restrictive sanctions will require an act of Congress. Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator, said Congress will want to see evidence that Syria is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism.
Hawks in the White House, including Sebastian Gorka and Tulsi Gabbard, are unconvinced by al-Sharaa's transformation and insist Syria remains a counter-terrorism issue. But evangelical Christians and Jewish leaders in America have pushed for engagement. At a Brussels donors' conference in March 2025, America listed eight demands for his administration, including helping to find missing Americans such as Austin Tice, an imprisoned journalist.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an American-backed group that includes a PKK proxy, initially said it would integrate its fighters into Syria's new army. On June 2nd 2025 the SDF and the government swapped 470 prisoners.
In January 2026 the SDF collapsed after negotiations with Damascus floundered. Fighting broke out on January 6th in a Kurdish part of Aleppo; the SDF withdrew barely a week later. Syria's tribes mobilised and thousands of Arab SDF recruits defected. Al-Sharaa issued a presidential decree recognising Kurdish cultural rights, eroding the SDF's bargaining position. The SDF's units are to be dismantled and its fighters integrated into the army with no Kurdish-majority units. Mazloum Abdi, the SDF's leader, was offered three army divisions and a senior defence post, but the deal fell through.
In November 2025 al-Sharaa became the first Syrian leader to walk into the White House, where he met Donald Trump. Trump said he would renew a six-month suspension of the Caesar Act, a gamut of sanctions that have strangled reconstruction in Syria. Syria's government also joined the American-led anti-Islamic State coalition, formalising what had already become a working counter-terrorism relationship. Al-Sharaa's path to power began as a fighter for al-Qaeda in Iraq, IS's predecessor, and many of his associates in Damascus share that lineage. Syrian security units sometimes wear patches with IS insignia. But al-Sharaa spent years fighting IS. Joining a coalition led by America was no easy move: he needed time to secure the backing of influential clerics. Twenty of them gave their blessing during a session of a special religious council. Abdullah al-Muhaysini, a Saudi cleric prominent in Syria's jihadist milieu, described the coalition deal as "a political understanding, not a military alliance". Syria still seems unlikely to accept a US military base in Damascus, but a security office based in the American embassy there may be possible.
The collapse of the Assad regime has left the Alawites divided. At least 25,000 have fled to Lebanon. In late November 2025 Ghazal Ghazal, a hardline Alawite cleric, rallied thousands in mostly peaceful protests calling for a self-governing Alawite region—an idea al-Sharaa's government has dismissed. Calls to arms have circulated among former officers. Mohammed Jaber, a militia commander under Assad, and his brother Ahmed are part of a network seeking to foment rebellion. Another faction is linked to Suheil al-Hassan and Kamal al-Hassan, two former generals who decamped to Moscow with Assad. NGOs allegedly linked to these groups have distributed stipends to Syrian refugees in northern Lebanon and attempted to establish training camps on Lebanese soil, though the effort fizzled once they lacked political cover.
By overthrowing a regime backed by Shia Iran and defeating militias representing minority sects such as Alawites and Druze, al-Sharaa has delighted many in Syria's Sunni majority and thrilled Sunnis in Lebanon and Iraq who worry their Shia compatriots will sideline them politically. Unpublished polling suggests he commands broad support in Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well. His youth, natty dress sense and unusual mix of Islamism and pragmatism have all bolstered his popularity.
Al-Sharaa's associates liken him to the Umayyad caliphs, who grabbed power from the Prophet's descendants and butchered their Shia followers. His victory in Syria, bolstered by Sunni Gulf petrodollars, may embolden Sunnis elsewhere. He is said to have met Israeli officials during visits to the UAE and Azerbaijan. For months his commanders in the south co-ordinated military manoeuvres directly with Israeli army officers. A draft non-belligerence pact would have parked Syria's claims to the Golan Heights and paved the way to normalisation. Women are being recruited into the police under his government. Wine flows freely in the restaurants and bars of old Damascus.
In July 2025 an attack on a Druze merchant sparked clashes between Bedouin groups and Druze militias in Suwayda. Al-Sharaa sent government troops to intervene, ostensibly to enforce a ceasefire, but appeared keen to use the incident to establish central control over the south-western province. Rather than quell the violence, his troops—many of them jihadists—worsened it. Government forces carried out summary executions of Druze men and other atrocities. A fragile truce ended the bloodshed on July 20th. Scores of Druze were killed in attacks that recalled the massacre of hundreds of Alawites in March. Gunmen shaved off the moustaches of some Druze, with videos of the humiliation circulating on social media. Israel responded on July 16th by striking the presidential palace, the defence ministry and the army command in Damascus. Al-Sharaa's push to subdue minorities rather than reconcile with them and integrate them into a pluralist state risks deepening instability and alienating not just minorities but the Sunni mainstream and his Western backers. His government has promised to investigate what happened in Suwayda.
Al-Sharaa could not attend an Arab League summit in Baghdad in 2025 because of threats from pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. He flew to Riyadh instead, where he met Trump and secured a promise that America would lift its sanctions. Saudi Arabia is keen to support al-Sharaa in part because a strong Syria would be a bulwark against Iranian influence. His interim government wants to privatise state-run firms and woo foreign investors.
Confessions may be good for the soul, but they are bad for the reputation.