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Lawfare Archive: The New Syrian Government and Its Problems

March 28, 2026·32 min·3 clips

Steve Heidemann warns Syria's new government is designing a transition that will consolidate authoritarian power like Turkey under Erdogan.

This Lawfare Archive episode, originally recorded in March 2025, features Daniel Bynum and Stephen Heidemann of Smith College discussing Syria’s political transition three months after the December 2024 collapse of the Assad regime. Heidemann describes Ahmad al-Shara’s progress in establishing transition structures: securing armed factions’ agreement to his presidency, convening a national consultation, appointing legal and Islamic scholars to draft an interim constitution, and creating a National Security Council. However, beneath these orderly steps, al-Shara has concentrated power as both president and commander-in-chief, with direct or indirect authority over parliament and the judiciary, raising concerns about democratic backsliding. When asked for a comparable model, Heidemann points to Erdogan’s Turkey: a super-empowered executive, controlled media, intolerance of dissent, and free-market economics, but with potentially deeper Islamist ideology driving social policy. The conversation turns to the violent confrontation in Syria’s Alawi coastal region, where roughly 4,000 Assad loyalists launched an attack on interim government forces. The government’s response drew in affiliated armed groups and Sunni civilians with grudges from the civil war, resulting in approximately 1,000 deaths. About a quarter of fatalities were caused by pro-Assad fighters. The episode exposed the interim government’s limited control over nominally loyal armed factions, though the loyalists’ goal of sparking a broader civil war did not materialize. Heidemann then explains the SDF-government agreement, an eight-point document signed by al-Shara and SDF leader Mazloum Abdi. It acknowledges Kurds as full and equal citizens of Syria but leaves unresolved the questions of SDF military integration and Kurdish regional autonomy. Key pressure points included Turkish threats of military intervention against the SDF and U.S. military officials advising the Kurds that American troop presence could not be guaranteed under the Trump administration. On Turkey, Heidemann describes it as the preeminent regional actor seeking to shape Syria’s transition, driven by border security concerns, proxy relationships with northern armed factions, and longstanding hostility toward the PKK-linked SDF. Israel’s approach receives pointed criticism. Since the regime’s fall, Israel has occupied significant territory in southern Syria, launched hundreds of strikes to degrade former regime military equipment, and begun outreach to the Syrian Druze community. Heidemann argues this strategy of maintaining a weak, fragmented Syria is shortsighted, as instability could invite renewed Iranian intervention and Turkish action. He notes that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has publicly called for engaging the new Syrian government instead. The discussion concludes with U.S. sanctions policy. Heidemann identifies the economic crisis as the single greatest threat to Syria’s transition, noting that most sanctions targeted the now-defunct Assad regime. Without relief, ordinary Syrians will increasingly question whether the new government can deliver, creating fertile ground for popular grievance. The Trump administration has acknowledged positive signals from al-Shara but has taken no concrete steps toward lifting sanctions or removing Syria’s state sponsor of terror designation, which has been in place since 1979.

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