In his first interview since assuming the Syrian presidency on January 29th, Ahmed al-Sharaa sat down with The Economist and laid out his vision for rebuilding Syria’s smashed, fractured and bankrupt state. Forty-eight hours into his tenure, the former al-Qaeda leader in Syria previously known by his nom de guerre, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, outlined a timetable for taking Syria in “the direction of” democracy and promised presidential elections. Many outsiders hoped that his rise would mark Syria’s strategic shift out of the clutches of Iran and Russia and into the Western fold. In fact, he spoke harshly about America’s “illegal” military presence in Syria, welcomed negotiations with Russia about its military bases and warned Israel that its advance into Syria since the fall of the Assad regime “will cause a lot of trouble in the future”.
There was little sign of the inclusivity that he mentioned so enthusiastically. He was surrounded by a small band of advisers mostly drawn from his Idlib emirate. Otherwise, the cavernous palace, six times the size of the White House, was empty.
Read the transcript of our interview with Ahmed al-Sharaa
Mr Sharaa has a way of appearing to be all things to all men. When he announced his presidency two nights earlier, he wore military fatigues as he stood before rebel chiefs. The following evening he spoke to Syrians as a civilian in a black suit and green tie. For The Economist, he chose a hipster look: a casual cream jacket over a black shirt buttoned to the neck and slim trousers. He might have been heading for a Friday night out on the town. He seems preoccupied with his image. He mentioned his attire three times, perhaps because he knows that observers will read a lot into it.
His messages, delivered in soft tones, appeared tailored for each audience. But the constant changes make a man who orchestrated suicide-bombings for Islamic State and led al-Qaeda in Syria hard to measure. Though inaugurated as an interim president, his vision is long term. Many of his undertakings—like a constitution and elections—were pushed “three or four years” into the future. In the meantime he is intent on consolidating the power he has grabbed.
First is the question of capacity. He wants to re-establish central authority over Syria’s fractured state and, Kurds aside, claims to have secured the agreement of “all” Syria’s militias to join a new Syrian army. All militias, including his own—Hayat Tahrir al-Sham—he says, have been dissolved. “Anyone who keeps a weapon outside the control of the state” would be subject to unspecified “measures”. He ruled out a federal arrangement to deal with Kurdish opposition. But the projection of a strongman was belied by the absence of palace staff. There was no one on hand to serve coffee, and only one person freshly arrived in the country for the first time handling comms. His foreign minister and fellow former jihadist, Asaad al-Shaibani, sat at his side directing proceedings.
On the ground his 30,000-man force is stretched just as thin. As he notes, “a vast area is still out of the control of the Syrian state”. None of the rebel commanders assembled for his stage-managed inauguration were broadcast clapping. “We also sacrificed for a decade,” says a southern rebel commander, who fumes that Mr Sharaa took charge of what had been a collective effort to overthrow the Assads. Rival militias control most of the country’s borders. Many of their chiefs, some of whom were previously officers in the Syrian army, are reluctant to surrender their weapons, fiefs or command. The defence minister has yet to set a deadline for them to do so. The Kurds, who control Syria’s prime oil fields, farmland and the dam that powers much of its electricity in the east, refuse to recognise his rule. When asked about his negotiations with the Kurds, Mr Sharaa replied: “Not with that much optimism.”
Mr Sharaa is also struggling to curb the excesses of jihadists who hitherto formed his base. To date, a bloodbath has been averted. But the information ministry has restricted access for foreign journalists to the coastal provinces and Homs, where revenge killings against Alawites are spiking. Mr Sharaa dismisses talk of a resurgent Islamic State (IS) as “a big exaggeration”. But he admits that his forces have foiled “many attempted attacks” since he took power. IS cells are believed to be returning to Damascus and other cities, soaking up growing dissent.
Second is the question of whether he actually intends to fulfil his promises—or at least try. In our interview, Mr Sharaa used the word “democracy” publicly for the first time since taking power. “If democracy means that the people decide who will rule them and who represents them in the parliament,” he said, somewhat half-heartedly, “then yes, Syria is going in this direction.” He insisted he would replace his cabinet of loyalists from Idlib. He promised to replace them in a month with a “broader and diverse government with participation from all segments of society”. He said that ministers and members of a newly appointed parliament would be chosen according to “competency, not ethnicity or religion”, raising the prospect that for the first time he might appoint some non-Sunnis. He would also hold “free and fair” elections and complete the drafting of a constitution together with the UN after “at least three to four years”. For the first time, he promised presidential elections.
But Mr Sharaa is juggling many constituencies, including his jihadist base and a largely conservative Sunni Arab majority. If he deprives them of the spoils of war and the Islamic state he promised when he was running Idlib, he risks a backlash. He has turned a side-room in the presidential palace into a prayer-room and removed the ashtrays from the coffee tables, in keeping with his puritanical strain of Islam. (He has, however, also grown his moustache, which is at odds with it.)
In our interview, he palmed off the issue of sharia, Islamic law, onto one of his appointed bodies. If the interim legislative assembly approves sharia, he said, “my role is to enforce it; and if they do not approve it, my role is to enforce their decision, as well”. In the meantime, the courts would adjudicate the vast backlog of legal cases according to the old civil code, he said. The formation of political parties was another matter for the constitutional committee to decide. He was also non-committal on whether women would have equal rights and access to power. There would be a “wide labour market” for women, he replied.
That is unlikely to satisfy Syria’s religious minorities, particularly the Alawites, who held sway under the Assads. When he speaks of democracy, many suspect he means Sunni Arab majoritarian rule. (“In our region there are various definitions of democracy,” he says.) Presidential elections could look like the plebiscites of other Arab security regimes. After all, Syria has been a dictatorship for all but three years since independence in 1946. And Mr Sharaa is intent on gutting what remains of the battered but still functioning state he inherited. He has disbanded the Baath party, security apparatuses and much of the civil service of the Assads, fuelling anxieties among the 1.3m former state employees and their families and just as deBaathification in Iraq risks fuelling sectarian tensions.
Mr Sharaa’s biggest challenge is the economy. Power flickers for an hour a day. The scale of reconstruction is unfathomable. And the country has a massive liquidity crisis (caused, according to bankers, by delays in currency shipments from Russia) and lacks the cash to pay salaries even at pitifully low rates. “Without economic development we will return to a state of chaos,” he warns.
Recovery can only come with help from abroad. On January 30th he welcomed Qatar’s emir, the first head of state to visit since Mr Assad’s ousting. On February 2nd he made his first trip abroad as president, to Saudi Arabia, where he was born. Ahead of the visit, he singled out both as potential investors in “big… projects”. But he also needs America, whose sanctions, he said, pose “the gravest risk” to his plans: “The Syrian people have suffered enough.” He praised Donald Trump for “seeking peace in the region” and spoke of restoring diplomatic relations “in the coming days”. He has also tried to improve Syria’s regional standing by vowing to halt the export of captagon, an amphetamine mass-produced in Syria under the Assads, and to bring foreign fighters under the government’s control. He said he had “pledged” to Turkey that Syria would not be a base for the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party which backs the Kurdish administration in the north-east.
But Mr Sharaa carries the millstone of his designation and that of his movement as terrorists. “My status is the president of Syria, not HTS,” he protests. But many in the region are outraged at his appointment of HTS cadres to top positions and of foreign jihadists to army posts. There are signs that the frustration could be denting his initial courtship with the West. He contrasted Russia’s readiness to negotiate a deal on its military bases with America’s reluctance and called the presence of American forces in Syria “illegal”.
He also said Israel “needed to retreat” from territory it had occupied beyond the armistice lines of 1974 after Mr Assad’s fall. Israel’s displacement of Palestinians was “a big crime”, he continued. Asked whether he would be ready to follow Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Muhammad bin Salman, if he normalised with Israel, he replied that “actually we want peace with all parties”. But he noted that as long as Israel occupied the Golan, a mountain plateau it conquered in 1967, any agreement would be premature. It would, in any case, require “wide public opinion”.
For now, under Mr Sharaa, Syria is the calmest it has been since the Arab spring in 2011. The country is breathing more freely after half a century of totalitarian rule. But its new president has a long way to go to prove that he is inclusive, that his jihadist worldview is behind him and that he is Syria’s best hope of a fresh start.■
Editor’s note: This article has been amended to clarify Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s statement on the enforcement of sharia.