For many Syrians, the events of December 2024 had a surreal quality. After nearly a decade and a half of brutal civil war, it had seemed that the regime of Bashar al-Assad had fended off any serious challenges to its authority. Assad and his supporters may not have been able to deliver a killing blow to the various opposition forces in the country, but they had managed to confine them to the country’s periphery. That all changed in late November, when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Islamist group led by former al-Qaeda militant, Ahmad al-Sharaa, launched a lightning offensive from its stronghold on the Turkish-Syrian border, which brought an end to more than half a century of Assad family rule within a matter of weeks.
Syrians and members of the international community alike greeted the fall of the regime with a mix of optimism and apprehension. Although many Syrians are glad to see the back of Assad, the shadow of ethnic conflict and religious sectarianism looms over the war-torn country. Despite its official commitment to secular Arab nationalism, the social and political base of the Assad regime was firmly rooted in the country’s minority Alawite sect. In contrast, al-Sharaa hails from Syria’s Sunni majority and represents a Salafi-jihadist tradition that shares its political DNA with groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
“Al-Sharaa has sought to project an image of moderation both at home and abroad.”
Nevertheless, since being anointed Syria’s interim president in late January, al-Sharaa has sought to project an image of moderation both at home and abroad, exchanging his military fatigues for a tailored suit. Moreover, although Syria’s new interim constitution has ruffled feathers by enshrining Islamic jurisprudence as the “primary source of legislation,” the document has also promised a new Syria based on equality before the law regardless of “race, religion, gender, or lineage.”
On the question of whether al-Sharaa has truly eschewed his past radicalism, the early signs are mixed. On the one hand, he has opted for diplomacy over brute force in his efforts to bring the territories held by the Kurdish-led (and US-backed) Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) under central government control. On the other hand, a wave of vicious sectarian pogroms directed against Syria’s Alawite community has led many to question the intentions of the newly formed Damascus government. Nonetheless, al-Sharaa has seemingly come to accept both the Syrian nation state and the republican form of government as legitimate. This is in contrast to the Islamic State, like HTS an outgrowth of Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, which sought to overturn the Middle Eastern’s nation states and replace them with a pan-Islamic caliphate.
Moreover, al-Sharaa has been at pains to stress that his new administration poses no threat to its neighbors. Not everyone is convinced by this apparent road-to-Damascus conversion, with Israel, which since the fall of Assad has moved to expand its military presence in southern Syria, expressing skepticism. But perhaps the surest sign that Syria’s new rulers seek reconciliation and reintegration into the international order has been their approach to reconstruction and, more precisely, their embrace of neoliberal economic reforms.
The long-term success of the new Syrian government will hinge on its ability to rebuild the country’s shattered economy. Since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, Syria’s GDP has been cut in half, and over 6 million Syrians have fled the country, including many of the most educated elements of society. Of those who remain, including upward of 7 million internally displaced people, some 90 percent now live below the poverty line. Moreover, the cost of reconstruction is astronomical, with estimates from 2019 ranging from $250 billion to $400 billion.
In response, the new Syrian government has announced a wide-ranging program of privatization of state-controlled infrastructure and industries as part of a bid to attract foreign investment in the country. As Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani told the Financial Times in January, ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, “there needs to be clear messages to open the way for foreign investors, and to encourage Syrian investors to return to Syria.” At the same time, ministers (perhaps channeling the spirit of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency) have also promised to slash the number of Syrians on the government payroll from 1.3 million to 900,000 as part of an effort to clamp down on waste and corruption.
In adopting the language of neoliberalism, Syria’s Islamist government has apparently abandoned any dreams they may have once held of reviving the caliphate in favor of “neoliberalism with Salafi characteristics”: a vision of a future in which development is measured in mosque and mall construction—a new Syria in which stylish young women purchase designer hijabs before enjoying an opulent iftar meal at TGI Fridays.
Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that HTS’s neoliberal turn represents a fundamental break from Syria’s recent past. When Bashar al-Assad came to power in 2000, following the death of his father, Hafiz al-Assad, the heyday of Arab socialism in the 1960s had long since passed, and the process of economic liberalization was already well underway. However, in an optimistic political moment that in certain ways mirrors the atmosphere that prevails in today’s Syria, the death of the elder Assad raised hopes that the country’s new ruler would complement economic reform with a relaxation of political control. These hopes were quickly dashed with the suppression of the short-lived Damascus Spring in early 2001.
Yet even as political reform ground to a halt, the process of neoliberalization intensified. The country was opened to the IMF and World Bank, land was privatized, business rates were reduced, subsidies were cut, and social welfare provisions were rolled back. This new direction was codified in 2005 at the Ba’ath party congress under the doctrine of the “social market economy,” a strategy that “position[ed] the private sector as a leader in the process of economic development and employment.”
On the surface, these policies seemed to succeed in revitalizing the Syrian economy, with annual growth rates reaching 5 percent between 2005 and 2011. Yet, the benefits of this growth were siphoned off by the country’s venal political elite. Moreover, as political scientist Joseph Daher observed, privatization also served as a mechanism for strengthening the regime and its allies’ control over the country, paving the way for the emergence of new monopolies controlled by individuals closely linked to Bashar al-Assad.
Syria’s neoliberal kleptocracy was perhaps best symbolized in this period by Rami Makhlouf, Assad’s cousin and Syria’s wealthiest businessman, whose sprawling business empire extended across key sectors such as telecommunications, oil and gas, construction, banking, aviation, and retail. In contrast, for the majority of the Syrian population, economic reform became synonymous with stagnating wages, inflation, growing inequality, and declining public services. These increasingly desperate economic circumstances helped precipitate Syria’s degeneration into civil war in 2011.
If the past is any guide, then, the economic reforms al-Sharaa has introduced should be viewed skeptically by anyone who hopes for a democratic Syria. The opportunities for both personal self-enrichment and the consolidation of political control, through assigning vast swaths of the economy to individuals friendly to the new order, may prove hard to resist. In short, “neoliberalism with Salafi characteristics” may end up replacing one kleptocratic elite with another—to the detriment, once again, of the Syrian people.