“Damascus is not a city, it is a mother.”
Nizar Qabbani
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Population
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Sunni Islam (majority)
Alawite, Christian, and Druze minorities
GDP (nominal)
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Political system
After gaining independence from France in 1946, Syria experienced ongoing political instability marked by frequent coups d’état. The Baath Party, a nationalist and socialist movement, seized power in 1963, and Hafez al-Assad became president in 1970, establishing a centralized authoritarian regime based on a cult of the party, control of the economy, and the suppression of all forms of opposition.
After his death in 2000, Bashar al-Assad assumed the presidency and initiated limited reforms, while maintaining strict military and police control. After 2011, the country plunged into a devastating civil war pitting the regime against various rebel and jihadist groups, with the intervention of foreign powers such as Russia, Iran, and the United States. On December 8, 2024, Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow in the face of a lightning offensive by a coalition of Islamist groups. Since then, the new government has imposed a restructuring of state institutions and has been attempting to unify the country.
A former fighter who renounced jihad, Ahmad al-Sharaa led an Islamist coalition that toppled Bashar al-Assad before asserting its authority across Syrian territory. He has inherited a country that is economically drained, socially fractured and deeply scarred by fourteen years of war.
His Islamist government is trying to balance financial dependence on the Gulf, pragmatic dialogue with the West and the pursuit of still-fragile stability. Having reunited the country territorially, he must now consolidate the state, contain sectarian tensions and rebuild weakened institutions. He has also opened channels of discussion with Israel focused on security and de-escalation, without moving towards normalisation.
