By Dr. Adnan Bozan

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, I have not regarded Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, and his rise to power in Damascus as merely an ordinary transfer of power from one regime to another. Nor do I believe that the Syrian scene can be understood through an internal reading detached from the regional and international conflict that has shaped Syria throughout the past years. Al-Sharaa did not arrive in Damascus in a political vacuum, nor did his story begin the moment he entered the capital. He came to power at a moment of profound regional complexity, when Syria had become an arena for competing and often contradictory international and regional projects, and when the new authority was, directly or indirectly, part of a broader reshaping of the balance of power in the Levant.

For this reason, the question I consider more important today is not whether Ahmed al-Sharaa is still Syria’s transitional president—that is an established fact—but rather this: Is the political role assigned to this authority still sustainable in the form in which it began, or has the phase during which it was expected to perform a particular function already reached its end? This question becomes even more pressing when we place Syria’s successive developments within a single context instead of viewing them as isolated events.

The transitional authority led by Ahmed al-Sharaa has, over the past period, achieved significant breakthroughs abroad, moving from isolation toward regional and international openness, gaining broad political recognition and engagement, and expanding Syria’s international relations. But external openness does not necessarily mean internal success. International recognition does not feed a hungry population, lower prices, or rebuild trust between the state and society. A state is not measured by the number of delegations it receives in Damascus, but by its ability to provide security, bread, employment, dignity, and justice, and by its ability to give citizens a sense that they have a future in their own country.

Syria today, despite some signs of improvement at the macroeconomic level, continues to face a profound social and economic crisis. Millions of Syrians still suffer from poverty and food insecurity, while the cost of living has risen beyond what large segments of society can bear, and wages have remained incapable of keeping pace with prices. The recent fuel crisis exposed the fragility of the situation even more clearly. In September 2026, increases in diesel, gasoline, and gas prices triggered protests in different parts of the country, with roads blocked, tires burned, and protesters raising their voices against the authorities. The Syrian government subsequently introduced lower diesel prices for certain sectors in response to the protests. When fuel itself becomes a trigger for street unrest, the problem is no longer merely the price of fuel; it is an economy that has lost much of its capacity to protect people from economic collapse.

Here I return to the question I raised in my previous article: Has al-Julani’s political role come to an end, or is there another phase that has yet to be carried out?

I am not claiming that there is a secret document proving that Ahmed al-Sharaa was brought to Damascus to carry out a specific set of foreign instructions. Such a claim would require direct evidence. Rather, I read the political trajectory through its outcomes, intersections, and the balance of forces surrounding it. From this perspective, I see the new authority not simply as an internal outcome of the Syrian war, but as one that emerged at a regional moment in which the struggle for influence, the future of Syria, Damascus’s relationship with Iran and Hezbollah and forces associated with them, and the future of regional borders and corridors were all central elements of the wider picture.

The regional map has changed dramatically since Assad’s fall. Therefore, the real question is not only: What has the Damascus authority done? It is also: What was expected of it? What has it been able to accomplish? And what has it failed to accomplish?

Here lies one of the central dilemmas of the Syrian scene. The new authority entered Damascus carrying a military, security, and political legacy, but found itself confronting a devastated state, an exhausted economy, a society composed of multiple communities, established armed forces and groups, competing regional interests, and Syrian populations that do not want one form of centralization to be replaced by another, nor one security-based authority by a new one. More importantly, the authority has so far failed to transform the slogan of “transition” into an inclusive Syrian political contract.

There has been progress on certain issues, including the reorganization of relations with Kurdish forces, but this issue itself has become one of the most sensitive questions in Syria. Recent military and political developments, including the process of integrating institutions and forces affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces into state institutions, have not resolved the substance of the Kurdish question. Nor have they settled the questions surrounding the Kurds’ place within the new Syrian state, their political, cultural, and linguistic rights, the nature of the political system, or the distribution of power and wealth. The SDF formally dissolved as part of the broader integration process in August 2026, while questions concerning Kurdish-language education and political and cultural rights have continued to generate debate and protest.

For me, this is not a marginal detail.

The Kurds of Syria cannot approach the new phase merely as an administrative process for integrating institutions or forces, because the issue is far deeper than that. It concerns the Kurds’ place within the Syrian state, the limits of centralization, the nature of the political system, national and cultural rights, the distribution of political power and wealth, and guarantees against a return to the centralized security state that originally contributed to producing the Syrian tragedy.

Integration cannot become another name for erasure, nor can Syrian unity become a pretext for reproducing Damascus-centered centralization. A unified state does not necessarily mean a single center of power, and centralization is not a prerequisite for preserving the unity of the country. What genuinely threatens Syria’s unity is injustice, exclusion, the monopolization of power and wealth, and the concentration of decision-making in the hands of one center.

From this perspective, I believe that what is happening in the Syrian streets should not be interpreted merely as protests over fuel prices or rising costs. An economic protest may begin with bread and fuel, but when citizens lose confidence in the state, it can develop into a protest against the very manner in which the country is governed. Poverty then becomes more than an economic problem; when combined with a loss of trust, it becomes a political crisis.

For this reason, I believe the Syrian transition has entered a different phase: it has moved from the question of overthrowing the previous regime to the question of whether the new system is capable of producing a functioning state. This is the real test facing Ahmed al-Sharaa.

If his task in the previous phase was to dismantle the Assad system and reposition Syria within the regional order, then the task before him now is far greater: to build a state in which Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, Assyrians, Druze, Alawites, Christians, and all other Syrians feel that they are equal citizens, rather than communities waiting for someone in Damascus to decide their fate. If the authorities remain governed by the logic of dominance, then the crisis will no longer be merely a crisis of government; it will become a crisis of the state itself.

Nor do I believe that the current protests can be separated from this transformation. Syrians have protested in several areas over prices, fuel, and deteriorating living conditions, while protests in the northeast have also reflected other dimensions, including Kurdish rights, Kurdish-language education, and the nature of the relationship with the central government. Recent reporting indicates that Kurdish-language education remains a contentious issue as Damascus reasserts state authority over formerly Kurdish-administered areas. This means that the Syrian street is not moving because of a single factor, but because of accumulated pressures: poverty, rising prices, inadequate services, loss of trust, fear of the future, disagreement over the structure of the state, and struggles over rights and political power.

Here I arrive at the most dangerous point in my reading of the situation:

The transitional authority may have entered a phase in which the political function it carried when it arrived in Damascus is beginning to diminish.

This does not necessarily mean that it will fall tomorrow, nor does it mean that there is a specific date for its end. Authorities can survive for long periods despite poverty and protests if they possess instruments of power, external support, and the ability to redistribute interests. But the more dangerous indicator is the convergence of several crises at the same time: an economic crisis, a crisis of trust, a crisis of political representation, a crisis concerning the identity of the state, a crisis in the relationship between the center and the periphery, alongside continuing security and social tensions.

When these crises converge, the question changes. It is no longer simply whether the authorities will fall, but rather: What form will Syria take if the authorities fail to rebuild the national social contract?

For this reason, I do not rule out the possibility that the coming phase could be more difficult than the previous one—not because I possess a political prophecy, but because the existing indicators warrant serious concern if genuine political solutions are not found for the causes driving people into the streets.

The greatest mistake may be for the authorities to treat every protest as a conspiracy, or for the opposition to treat every protest as the beginning of a new revolution. Both interpretations reduce the Syrian reality to something far simpler than it actually is. There are external interests competing over Syria, but there is also genuine social anger that does not need to be manufactured from abroad. External powers can exploit this anger and push it in directions that serve their interests, but that is different from claiming that they created the anger from nothing.

External powers do not always need to manufacture a crisis; sometimes it is enough for them to find an existing crisis and exploit it. This is precisely the point that must be understood. Hunger is real, high prices are real, the loss of trust is real, and fear of the future is real. At the same time, the ability of external powers to exploit and redirect these crises cannot be ignored.

For this reason, I believe Syria faces a dangerous possibility: that economic protest could turn into political conflict, political conflict into social and regional conflict, and the country could then find itself facing another cycle of violence, albeit under different headings from those of the previous war.

And this is precisely where Syria’s Kurdish population must pay attention.

I do not believe that the Kurds should wait to see what Damascus, Ankara, Washington, Moscow, or any other capital decides, and only then formulate a position after circumstances have already been imposed upon them. What is required is political, legal, and societal preparedness for all possible scenarios, adherence to rights, the development of a clear vision for Syria’s future, avoidance of becoming a tool in the projects of others, and a determination not to fall once again into a catastrophe in which the Kurds have no say over their own fate.

Syrian Kurds are not a reserve force in anyone else’s project, nor are they merely a number in a regional equation, and they should not be required to pay the price for the mistakes of others.

Preparing for the coming phase does not mean calling for war. It means political, legal, and societal preparedness, and the construction of a clear vision for the Syria of the future: a decentralized state, a state based on citizenship, a state that recognizes its national and cultural diversity, constitutionally guarantees rights, distributes power and wealth fairly, and prevents the return of the security state, whether in its old form or a new one.

As for Ahmed al-Sharaa, I return to the first question: Has his political role come to an end?

I would say that it may be too early to declare its end as an accomplished fact. But it would also be a mistake to assume that the function with which his political phase began will remain the same forever. Politics does not preserve people in positions of power merely because they have reached them; it preserves them according to their ability to respond to the transformations produced by the phase itself.

If al-Sharaa arrived in Damascus as a man of a particular phase, that does not necessarily mean that he will be the man of the next phase. A politician’s function may end before his presence in power ends. He may remain in office while his political role has changed. And he may move from being an instrument in the reshaping of the political landscape to becoming one of the parties caught in its crisis.

This is the possibility that I believe deserves close attention now.

Syria does not merely need a change of names; it needs a change in the rules of the game. If the state remains centralized, authority remains above society, the economy remains incapable of securing the minimum conditions for life, and national and cultural rights remain subject to political bargaining, then changing individuals will not change the essence of the crisis.

That is why I say to all Syrians, and to the Kurds in particular: Do not wait for the moment of explosion before thinking about the day after. Politics that begins after an explosion has always been more costly than politics that prepares for it before it occurs.

The coming phase is not necessarily one of immediate collapse. But it is a genuine phase of testing, and it may become one of the most difficult periods Syria has faced since Assad’s fall, because the question is no longer simply: Who governs Damascus? The question is: What kind of Syria will emerge from the ruins of the old Syria?

Syrians once took to the streets demanding dignity, and they paid an enormous price in blood, displacement, poverty, and hunger. The danger today is that renewed anger could turn into another catastrophe while the powers competing over Syria remain outside the fire.

This time, Syrians must not once again become mere instruments in a history written for them from abroad.

The Syria of tomorrow must be built by the will of Syrians themselves. Otherwise, a change of power will be nothing more than the beginning of another cycle of tragedy.