Has Ahmad al-Sharaa disappointed the expectations placed upon him? Yes, this man has indeed disappointed many and he has not been the president they had hoped for. But who are these “many”?
They are those who stood alongside the Assad regime, alongside the repression of freedoms, arrests and torture unto death, alongside corruption and the trafficking of Captagon. They branded al-Sharaa a "Daesh extremist" whose radicalism could never inspire trust, yet he surprised them with his formal suit and tie. They said he would behead Assad’s supporters, but he astonished them when he declared: “We want a victory without vengeance.” They claimed he had four wives, not to mention war captives, only to discover that he had but one wife, whom he loved and who resembled all the women of Syria. They asserted that he would impose the veil, that he would curtail personal freedoms, and that Syria would become a "new Afghanistan." But al-Sharaa showed openness toward all components of the people, respect for their customs, and their way of life, never interfering with anyone’s culture. They said the Syrian people would not tolerate his presence for more than six months and predicted his swift downfall, but they were astonished to see the majority rally around him.
Indeed, the president disappointed many, yet the confidence of the free in him was neither misplaced nor in vain.
They forgot, and feign to forget, that al-Sharaa inherited a Syria abandoned by a war criminal. He received it without fuel, without electricity, without gas. He received a bankrupt country, torn between militias backed by Iran, Russia or the United States. He received it without infrastructure, which economically suffocated him. He received it in ruins, a shattered state.
And yet, let us ask ourselves: What prevents Syria today from advancing on the path of reconstruction, from healing the wounds of 14 years of repression and massacres, from building a Syria worthy of its name and of its Arab and regional standing? What delays the building of the state, of society, of factories, of schools? What hinders the rebuilding of the army?
If we answer these questions, we also answer the one haunting so many minds: will Ahmed al-Sharaa succeed in preserving Syria’s unity and reopening for the Syrian people the path to a free and dignified life?
Separatist demands have intensified in Syria, as has Israeli intransigence and its blatant interference in Syria’s internal affairs, compounded by the American thorn in the country’s eastern flank, namely, the terrorist militias of the PKK's Syrian offshoot, the YPG and SDF.
Let us first speak of the YPG militias: no one understands what YPG leader Ferhat Abdi Şahin and his grotesque “democracy” truly seek, especially after PKK terrorist group leader Abdullah Öcalan himself had renounced his absurd ideas, which had brought nothing but death and destruction.
How can Öcalan consent to disarmament in Türkiye, while his YPG lackeys obstinately reject it in Syria? Not only do they refuse, but they continue to theorize forms of governance and demand decentralization as though achieving decentralization would alter their fascist mode of domination over the regions they control! They forget that they are nothing but mercenaries of the U.S. and Israel, and that nothing binds them to Syria save sordid interests.
Much has been said about the true nature of the SDF, but at its core, they are merely the facade of a foreign project, not a Syrian entity. This is the greatest deception: how can a body claim “Syrian-ness” when its entire leadership, those who set strategies and control resources, is composed of PKK cadres who are not even Syrian?
The most blatant proof of the SDF’s falsehood and lack of credibility lies in their refusal to comply with the decision of their own ideological leader Öcalan, whose portraits they brandish in every institution and public square, when he ordered self-dissolution and the surrender of arms.
All negotiations with Damascus, and all their statements – men and women alike (for we must not forget that the SDF “venerate women”) – yes, even as they abduct young girls (Do you grasp the full horror of the word “abduction”?) and force them to join their ranks, they nevertheless manage to sell to the West the lie of a supposed female emancipation. Is the West blind?
I therefore say: all negotiations with Damascus, all statements by their leaders about their attachment to Syria’s unity and their role as an innocent lamb defending Kurdish rights, are nothing but lies and maneuvers to buy time. Likewise, all their “campaigns” against Daesh, for it is now notorious that if Daesh were to disappear, their very existence would lose all purpose.
The SDF’s latest maneuvers suggest that they seek to ally with minorities against Damascus, in order to impose their thesis of autonomy based on sectarian and ethnic identities. They undertake preventive security measures to suppress any widespread anger that might erupt against them by accusing opponents of belonging to Daesh.
Then comes the thorny question of Suwayda and the recent events there. The situation must be clarified from the beginning. The Druze have three spiritual leaders, one of whom, Hikmat al-Hijri, is the only one supported by Israel, which backs his claims that the Syrian government oppresses his community. He has even gone so far as to demand the independence of a province that does not even have 1 million inhabitants.
Al-Hijri would never have dared to posture and boast without Israel’s backing. And everyone knows what Israel is, and what its aims are in the region, just as the YPG only dares to strut thanks to Western support.
The great irony lies in the fact that a considerable number of secularists and pseudo-progressives, who criticize al-Sharaa and stigmatize Syrians on account of his ideological background, demanding a non-religious state, have aligned themselves under the banner of al-Hijri, the so-called Sheikh Akl, a fanatical religious leader. An astonishing obstinacy in blinding themselves to everything happening in Syria after Assad’s fall, seeing only "oppression of minorities,” minorities which, in truth, have never experienced what the Sunni majority of Syria endured: prisons, torture, massacres, destruction and forced displacement for 14 years. Nor have they suffered, in truth, from systematic acts of vengeance, which many observers of the Syrian issue had nonetheless anticipated.
The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, based in Qatar's Doha, published on Aug. 31, 2025, the main and preliminary results of a survey conducted in Syria in cooperation with the Arab Center for the Study of Contemporary Syria, within the framework of the 2025 Arab Index annual survey. This survey was carried out among a sample of 3,690 people, using a stratified, multistage cluster sampling method, representative of Syrian society across all its provinces and social and economic components. Among the findings, 80% to 94% of Syrians said they felt hope, happiness and relief after the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime; 57% declared that the political situation was “good or very good” while 56% stated that the security situation was “good or very good;” 66% judged the economic situation to be “bad or very bad” and 56% of Syrians believe the country is “moving in the right direction.”
The Syrians are not ready to abandon this government, despite its mistakes. Hope still governs the moment, and confidence remains that it will manage to avoid its errors and march in accordance with the will of a people conscious of and committed to the unity of their land. This government will succeed, thanks to the support of sincere neighbors, particularly Türkiye, which has consistently demonstrated its support for Syrian territorial unity, Syria’s progress and prosperity, as well as the backing of Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The YPG/SDF do not represent the Kurds. Al-Hijri and Israel do not represent the Druze. Only the free Syrian embodies the free Syria.
