Frederick Deknatel is the Executive Editor of Democracy in Exile, the DAWN journal.
The euphoria that erupted across Syria after the sudden fall of the Assad regime in early December has since given way to harsh realities—of sectarian violence, the dual traumas of a 14-year civil war and a 54-year dictatorship, and creeping doubts about Syria's new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the Islamist rebel-turned-statesman. When Bashar al-Assad abruptly fled Damascus for Moscow in the face of a lightning rebel offensive, Syrians celebrated the end of a war and the end of a regime. It was, many hoped, a new dawn for a country that has only known the brutality of Hafez al-Assad and his son, Bashar, since the 1970s.
From how to rebuild a country in ruins to whether the new authorities in Damascus can contain sectarian reprisals, there is no shortage of obstacles to Syria's post-Assad political transition, set against the backdrop of both civil war and the regime's authoritarian legacy. To understand the stakes and magnify the voices of Syrians addressing their hopes and their fears after Assad, Democracy in Exile reached out to a wide range of scholars, writers, journalists and activists with a big question: What is the single greatest threat to a democratic transition in Syria?
The way forward is not through changing flags or pledging blind loyalty to new leaders—it's through finding common ground and seeing each other as Syrians for the first time.
- Lina Sergie Attar
Syria's—and Syrians'—Existential Crisis
This week, as I was scrolling through Facebook, I saw a death announcement posted by a friend. It was for his brother who had been detained at 18, tortured and killed in the infamous Tadmor Prison, in 1982. After 40 years, thousands of Syrians could finally learn the fate of their disappeared loved ones when the lists of the dead at Tadmor Prison were released.
How do you get justice for that?
It has been nearly four months since the Assad regime fell, ending 54 years of tyranny and fear. While Syrians continue to celebrate their newfound freedom, the nation faces countless threats: foreign interference and proxy meddling, crippling economic sanctions, a fragile new government struggling to evolve from extremist roots, and a country left in ruins. The political transition must meet the needs of millions of people who are hungry, displaced, traumatized and yearning for life after 14 years of war. But the greatest threat is deeper: our existential crisis.
Who are we as a people without the fear of the regime? How do we express ourselves when the walls no longer have ears? How do we reconcile the collective trauma of hundreds of thousands killed and disappeared, and millions displaced, when we know the perpetrators, the informants and torturers were our neighbors, relatives and community members?
After December 8, opposing Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, was like a trend. Overnight, Syrians—many who had never uttered a word against the regime before—switched their profile photos to the revolutionary green flag and declared victory. There was even a new name for this "fresh opposition": mukawi, the person who turns a corner. At the same time, the new government, led by Ahmad al-Sharaa and the now-dissolved Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, called for reconciliation, amnesty (except for those who had committed crimes) and disarmament with the armed groups across the country, including the remnants of Assad's army. The new leader was attempting to turn the page to focus on the future.
But by March, this goodwill had run out. Hundreds of security forces of the new caretaker government were killed in the coastal areas, reigniting sectarian wounds. More than 1,000 civilians, mostly Alawites, were then killed in retaliation by armed groups, security forces and others. Entire Alawite families were slaughtered in villages, just as the same had happened to Sunni families years ago during the war.
In facing the first massacre after Assad, Syrians must answer a fundamental question. Who are we? What do we want our country to be? How do we process the decades of oppression and terror in order to truly "turn the page"?
How do we heal? Justice for every victim is impossible. But accountability is possible. We must break the cycle of violence, learning from other post-conflict nations and investing in deep community work, especially with the new generation of Syrians who grew up in the war. The way forward is not through changing flags or pledging blind loyalty to new leaders—it's through finding common ground and seeing each other as Syrians for the first time. It's through walking down the street and seeing your neighbor and thinking, I'm sorry for your pain. I feel it too.
This is who we are. This is how Syria can become home again, in freedom and dignity, for all Syrians.
—Lina Sergie Attar is a Syrian-American architect and writer from Aleppo and the founder and CEO of the Karam Foundation.
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From Factions to Unified State
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the new administration under Ahmad al-Sharaa is its ability to transform itself from a coalition of multiple and disparate factions that managed to topple the Assad regime in December into a single, unified state with functioning institutions and the rule of law.
In 100 days, Sharaa managed to have himself appointed as the new president of Syria for the duration of a five-year transition period, issue a constitutional declaration concentrating all power in his hands, host a flawed but much needed dialogue conference and announce a new government comprising 23 ministers of relatively diverse backgrounds. Yet he has singularly failed to address the most pressing needs of all: security and transitional justice. Millions of Syrians have been demanding and impatiently waiting for justice for decades under the Assad regime.
The failure to address the issue of transitional justice in a timely manner, and the undisciplined response to the attempted armed insurgency by remnants of the previous regime, resulted in the wave of sectarian violence that has swept the predominantly Alawite coastal region since March 6. These are both symptoms of the new administration's seeming inability to transform itself from the factional mindset that carried it to victory, to that of a state that operates and responds to crises under the rule of law. That raises serious questions regarding the degree of actual control that the new authorities have over their forces that have yet to coalesce into a unified military command. More critically, it begs a larger question. To what degree does Sharaa and his administration actually control the situation on the ground in Syria, when one considers the deteriorating security conditions in various parts of the country?
—Amr Al-Azm is a Syrian archaeologist and professor of Middle East history and anthropology at Shawnee State University in Ohio and the Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University.
Failing to Prioritize Justice
The greatest threat to Syria's democratic transition following Assad's fall is the new government's failure to prioritize justice. Since Assad's regime collapsed, the families of those who vanished into Syria's infamous prisons—and those who survived—have urgently demanded answers. They ask: What is being done to preserve detention centers, now crime scenes containing vital evidence of the regime's atrocities? What will become of the thousands of regime documents that might finally reveal the fates of their missing loved ones?
Instead of clear answers, Syrians have watched as the new authorities opened the presidential palace doors not to grieving families, but to foreign journalists, influencers and European diplomats. High-ranking loyalists of the former regime remain untouched. Mohammad Hamsho—dubbed "The Rubble King" for his illicit fortune built from extracting steel and iron out of neighborhoods flattened by Assad's bombs—still resides in his Damascus home, reportedly protected by connections in Qatar. Similarly, Fadi Saqr, a militia leader involved in the notorious Tadamon massacre, now oversees the reconciliation and civil peace process that should have held him accountable.
One might argue that rehabilitating the new leader's image is essential for lifting international sanctions and rebuilding Syria. Yet by neglecting accountability, the new government under Ahmed al-Sharaa has left many Syrians disillusioned. Many have lost faith in any overtures toward transitional justice, which has led them to take matters into their own hands—fueling outbreaks of collective punishment in communities historically loyal to Assad, and threatening to plunge Syria back into cycles of revenge and violence.
Both issues are indeed critical, but I fear that without a meaningful way to address the pain and losses of a nation still desperately seeking answers, Syria faces a grave risk of spiraling back into the violence and chaos it desperately needs to escape. With killings and atrocities of that level, fueled by a lack of justice, sanctions will never be lifted.
—Loubna Mrie is a Syrian journalist, activist and writer, who covered the war in Syria as a photojournalist for Reuters. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Rolling Stone, Time and The New Republic, among other outlets. She is at work on her first book, which will be published by Penguin Random House.
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Rights for All, Not for Groups
There are a thousand ways Syria's transition could career off the rails, but only one that leads to a decent outcome: an embrace of universal rights. Unfortunately, Syria's new rulers, like the regime they deposed, are suffused with sectarianism and reductive identity group politics. The Assad dynasty ruled for half a century as a coalition of minorities that dominated a majority—with minorities and majorities defined not by ideology or political party or something else fungible, but by sect. It was possible for a member of the Sunni Arab majority, or a Kurd, to support of the regime, but never join its inner circle.
Likewise, the rebel coalition that has taken over Syria built its following among disenfranchised Sunni Arabs. The new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, forged his identity as a leader in jihadi circles, and his faction originally aspired to establish a Sunni Islamist theocracy in Syria. During long years courting foreign backers, these rebels-turned-rulers have learned the language of inclusivity and universal rights. As president, Sharaa has espoused some nationalist views, which counter his faction's sectarian origins.
Now the rebel coalition that has taken over the country faces a choice. It can play to its base, and its original ideologies, and fashion itself a Sunni Islamist regime—or, it can blaze a unique path in the contemporary Middle East and become the first modern state to enshrine equal rights for all its citizens, independent of sect, religion or ethnic group.
Mealy-mouthed, limited inclusivity won't suffice to save Syria from a new era of fragmentation and sectarian violence. Sharaa has tried to have it both ways, promising security for all Syrians but at the same time operating within the old regime's sectarian paradigm. According to the initial constitutional declaration and Sharaa's own comments, the president will have to be a Muslim (as was the case under the previous regime) and Islam is elevated to the primary source of law.
Already, the new regime has implemented a de facto policy of barring Alawites from the security services. Communities that enjoyed special favor under Assad—Alawites, Christians, Shia—understandably fear communal retribution. The sectarian violence in early March illustrates the dead end of this route. Former regime elements, presumably Alawites, started an insurgency; in retaliation, militants allied with the new rulers (or perhaps under their command) massacred Alawites by the hundreds.
Every indication so far is that Sharaa and his compatriots, who ran Idlib province as their own rebel fiefdom, plan to rule in keeping with recent history, locating rights in communities rather than in citizens. Sectarian politics and laws will prove a terrible mistake, doing nothing to reverse Syria's sectarian dynamic while substituting majoritarian rule for the previous tyranny of minorities.
The only way to create a Syrian order that safeguards rights and creates at least the prospect of nonviolent coexistence is to vest universal rights equally in all citizens. A regime of universal rights will extend security to all—and in addition, universal rights will protect sectarian communal rights, too. Universal rights would draw on Syria's rich history of communal diversity and coexistence, demonstrating that universal equal rights for citizens serve individual and communal interests alike.
—Thanassis Cambanis is an author, journalist and the director of Century International at the Century Foundation. His work focuses on U.S. foreign policy, Arab politics and social movements in the Middle East.
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Shedding the Legacy of Assad Family Rule
The greatest obstacle to Syria's political transition from crime family rule to consent of the governed is the inheritance received from those who fled in December 2024. The material aspect of that legacy is a ruined country with 90 percent of the population impoverished. But the ideological facet of the inheritance—sectarian fear and loathing—may present the greatest challenge to Syria's political transition.
For 54 years, Assad family rule rooted itself in sectarianism, falsely claiming to be nationalistic and secular. Members of the family's minority Alawite sect commanded key military units and intelligence and security organizations, implementing state terror. During the final 13 years of family rule, those elements—with the help of Russian bombers and American indifference—waged a campaign of mass homicide against Syrian civilians, nearly all of whom in rebel-controlled areas were Sunni Muslims, Syria's majority sect.
Many Alawites, especially during the popular uprising that began in 2011, saw the regime of Bashar al-Assad as an incompetent, kleptocratic, murderous, narco-state. But they were powerless to resist beyond military draft evasion and emigration. And the regime's regional enemies unwittingly but decisively supported Assad by arming Islamist Sunni extremists (some released by Assad from prison) to dominate the armed opposition, causing Alawites, Christians and even some Sunnis to fear the alternative to Assad more than Assad himself.
Assad's war on civilians killed hundreds of thousands, uprooted more than half of Syria's population and left a legacy of sectarian fears and hatreds, most recently manifested in the genocidal revenge killings of Alawite civilians by armed Islamist elements linked to Syria's new regime. Assad and his allies hope this atrocity is the opening salvo of sectarian chaos blocking transition and enabling their return.
Unless Syria's new leaders actually practice what the Assads falsely preached—Syrian nationalism and unity, with empowered citizenship eclipsing sect—political transition to consent of the governed is stillborn.
—Ambassador Frederic C. Hof is a senior fellow with the Bard College Center for Civic Engagement and the author of Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a Syrian-Israeli Peace (2022).
There are a thousand ways Syria's transition could career off the rails, but only one that leads to a decent outcome: an embrace of universal rights.
- Thanassis Cambanis
Fighting for Truth
Democracy fundamentally relies on the free flow of accurate information and transparency, which empowers citizens to engage in informed decision-making and even create some kind of collective identity. In the context of Syria, disinformation represents a formidable threat to the ongoing political transition, as it distorts public discourse, undermines trust in leaders and institutions, and ultimately erodes the democratic process.
There is currently a fierce and ongoing battle over information and truth in post-Assad Syria, where the digital arena has become as pivotal as the battlefield itself. The fall of the Assad dictatorship in December did not end the conflict between the Syrian resistance and the regime—it simply shifted the war from physical frontlines to an intense information war, where narratives, disinformation and digital manipulation have become key weapons. Since Syria's liberation from the Assad regime, thousands of fake accounts have proliferated on social media, publishing hundreds of thousands of posts, all converging on one aim: to see the interim leaders of Syria fail to stabilize the country and Syrians move on to a better future.
At the center of this digital war are foreign powers like Russia, Iran and Israel, but also European and American right-wing groups, leftist conspiracy theorists and Assad regime remnants, each with distinct agendas aimed at shaping perceptions of Syria's future and leveraging their full disruptive potential.
Investigations have revealed covert digital campaigns involving thousands of fake accounts disseminating hundreds of thousands of posts. In those campaigns, digital "journalists," influencers and bloggers have published altered pictures and videos or manipulated their timestamps and locations to make it look like current leaders are precipitating chaos and sectarian reprisals in Syria. Narratives are further amplified by extensive social media campaigns involving bot accounts and troll farms often linked to foreign intelligence agencies.
Russia, long a staunch supporter of Assad, seeks to discredit the new Syrian interim leaders by portraying them as incompetent or as puppets of Western interests and Israeli directives. State-run media outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, have been instrumental in these efforts, fabricating narratives that constantly depict a Syria descending into violence and chaos after Assad's fall. Iran, for its part, aided by remnants of the regime, has turned mostly to sectarian messaging and stirring up sectarian tensions, falsely reporting attacks on Syria's minorities and amplifying fears of a resurgent ISIS, fabricating or exaggerating evidence of terrorist cells. As to Israel, its strategy, rooted in longstanding territorial expansionism and regional ambitions, plays a pivotal role in propagating disinformation. Israel does not want to see a stable, flourishing and democratic Syria that could potentially hinder these ambitions. Its disinformation campaign is designed to instill fears among Syrians, weaken international support for the interim leaders while promoting the idea that Israeli military intervention is necessary for regional stability. Meanwhile, pro-Russian conspiracy theorists, Islamophobes and right-wing groups in Europe and the United States have seized and capitalized on disinformation online, amplifying its impact.
The amount of disinformation spreading is so flagrant, it has prompted observers to ask if Syria is at the center of the world. Undoubtedly, disinformation destabilizes Syria's political transitional processes, affecting everything from democratic governance and the inclusion of more Syrians within the transitional coalition, to the vital lifting of European and American sanctions on Syria, to international diplomatic and humanitarian engagements. As Syria embarks on its already challenging journey toward healing and rebuilding all that's been destroyed, the fight to reclaim objective truth from a cacophony of manipulated and weaponized narratives, or to silence the noise, is a critical front in its ongoing struggle for stability and democracy.
—Line Khatib is the author of Quest for Democracy: Liberalism in the Modern Arab World and Islamic Revivalism in Syria: The Rise and Fall of Ba'thist Secularism.
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Israel's Threat to Syria's Transition—With America's Help
After the fall of Bashar al-Assad's brutal regime, one of the greatest challenges to Syria's stability and potential for a democratic transition has been the actions of its powerful neighbor, Israel. This threat posed by Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government has received far less attention in the West, among policymakers and in the media, than other challenges facing Syrians today. Within hours of Assad's fall on December 8 last year, Israel moved quickly to occupy Syrian territory and destroy much of Syria's already-decrepit military capabilities.
Israeli troops crossed from the occupied Golan Heights into adjacent Syrian territory, occupying a demilitarized "buffer zone" that was established by the United Nations a year after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Within 48 hours of the Baathist regime's collapse, Israel had carried out hundreds of air strikes throughout Syria, destroying major military assets: old fighter jets, helicopters, naval ships, missile stockpiles and air defense systems. Netanyahu's government exploited the chaos to make sure that Syria does not retain the military capacity to defend itself, no matter who ultimately controls the new Syrian state. And Israel did so with the tacit support of then-U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration regurgitated Israel's argument that it was acting preemptively in self-defense against unspecified threats from the Syrian rebels and jihadists who had overthrown Assad's regime in a lighting offensive.
Over the past few months, Israel has continued carrying out airstrikes against targets in various parts of Syria and further ground incursions into Syrian territory, violating the U.N.-brokered 1974 cease-fire and disengagement of forces agreement that had largely held for 50 years. The muted U.S. and European responses to Israel's actions in Syria have once again shown that Western powers hold Israel to a different standard than most other countries that might attack their neighbors under the pretext of preemptive self-defense. The international community would usually condemn a country for invading its neighbor and targeting most of its military assets—as the U.S. and Western powers did in response to Russia's invasion and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022.
In its final weeks in office, the Biden administration largely defended Israel's actions in Syria and accepted the explanations of Israeli officials at face value. President Donald Trump has done no better. In fact, Netanyahu has wagered that the new U.S. administration will give Israel even greater cover to operate in Syrian territory.
After Assad's fall, Netanyahu declared that the Golan Heights—an area that Israel captured from Syria and has occupied since the 1967 war—would remain part of Israel "for eternity." Israel unilaterally annexed the territory in 1981, but the U.N. Security Council and nearly the entire world does not recognize Israel's sovereignty over the strategic plateau, which is only 40 miles from Damascus. In 2019, the first Trump administration recognized Israel's annexation of the Golan—and Biden did not take any steps to reverse that decision, despite his consistent criticism of Russia's attempts to annex territory in Ukraine.
Those actions by two American presidents—Trump's support for Israel's annexation of the Golan, and Biden's acquiescence—paved the way for Netanyahu and his government to seize more territory from Syria after the Assad regime collapsed.
—Mohamad Bazzi is the director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University and a non-resident fellow at DAWN.
A Troubling Transition Under Sharaa
With the signing of an interim constitution on March 13, Syria's nascent political transition entered a new phase. Against steep odds, Ahmad al-Sharaa has put the pieces in place for what he envisions as a five-year transitional period. These include securing his own position as president, appointing an interim government, convening a one-day national dialogue meeting, drafting an interim constitution, securing the (nominal) agreement of armed factions and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to integrate into a restructured Syrian military, re-establishing relations with countries that had broken with the Assad regime and securing limited relief from some economic sanctions. Sharaa has offered reassurances concerning Syria's support for the elimination of its remaining chemical weapons, halting the production of the narcotic Captagon, and adopted a pragmatic position in response to Israel's occupation in southern Syria.
Violence targeting Alawis and those associated with the Assad regime occur too often. A wave of revenge killings in mid-March swept coastal areas, leaving hundreds, perhaps thousands, of victims in its wake, many of them Alawi civilians. This episode reflects the intensity of social polarization after 14 years of conflict and casts a dark shadow over the interim government's claims to respect minorities. It is in no way to excuse or justify mass violence, however, to note that in relation to other postwar score-settling, Syria's experience thus far has been less brutal: some 10,500 French collaborators are believed to have been executed or murdered in the aftermath of World War II.
If Sharaa appears to have navigated the initial phase of Syria's transition effectively, we can now see more clearly where he wants to take the country during this next phase. The indicators are troubling. Human Rights Watch and Syrian civil society organizations have pointed to serious shortcomings in the interim constitution—written by a small group of men hand-picked by Sharaa. Its provisions centralize vast authority in Sharaa's hands—including direct or indirect control over parliament and the judiciary, and the authority unilaterally to constitute a committee to draft a permanent constitution. It includes, as well, a ban on the formation of political parties until a new law can be issued, language that empowers the president to abridge freedoms to protect national security, and the absence of language affirming women's rights, the right to protest and the right to form associations. In addition, Islamist extremists previously appointed to senior positions in the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Education remain in place, as do foreign fighters that Sharaa inexplicably placed in senior roles in the new Ministry of Defense.
The idea that post-Assad Syria might have moved seamlessly toward some form of democracy was aspirational. Yet the contours of the transition's new phase suggest that Sharaa has in mind a Syria that he will continue to rule, and a Syria that is both Islamist and non-democratic. Some six decades after the Baath Party seized power in March 1963, after 54 years of Assadist rule, after 14 years of brutal civil war, Syrians deserve better.
—Steven Heydemann is the Janet Wright Ketcham 1953 Professor in Middle East Studies at Smith College. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution.
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Nothing Is Possible Without Syria's Economic Recovery
The biggest threat to Syria's political transition, in my view, is the country's continuing economic collapse. When Syria's new leadership toppled the Assad government and seized power late last year, it took over a wrecked, bankrupted country. Since then, outside countries have not provided the type of assistance that Syria needs to recover, including both sanctions relief and large infusions of material support, and Syria itself lacks the resources to pull out of its economic spiral. Now the country is stuck in a sanctioned limbo, but without even the support that Iran had been delivering to sustain the Assad government.
If Syria is to have any chance at stability and order—to say nothing of societal harmony and political freedom—it needs a half-full public treasury and the start of a national economic recovery. The Syrian government needs the funds to pay salaries to civilian government employees and security personnel, deliver pensions to retirees, and restore some basic public services. Without that, things will not cohere.
I'm sympathetic to most of the conditions that foreign countries have articulated for sanctions relief and new assistance. Their demands of Syria's new government are, for the most part, salutary. But Syria's economic and humanitarian situation, after 14 years of war, is too dire to be subject to political benchmarks. The country urgently needs a program of economic stabilization. Because a fuller socioeconomic collapse will just make things worse—by every measure. Nothing that outside countries hope to see in Syria will be helped along by deeper poverty and hunger, or by the disintegration of the Syrian state.
—Sam Heller is a Beirut-based researcher, analyst and fellow at Century International.
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A Country in Ruins Needs Reconstruction
The 14 years of war in Syria have left cities and villages in ruins. In my own city, Homs, over half of the neighborhoods have been destroyed, including both everyday architecture and ancient cultural heritage sites. This March, I have been able to visit for the first time after 14 years of exile, like many displaced Syrians returning after the collapse of the Assad government.
Even though the fighting in Homs stopped many years now, the city remains in ruins. Questions of reconstruction have been discussed in many academic, architectural, political and governmental circles, but until this moment, there has been no major reconstruction project.
In the Old City of Homs, all efforts for repair and conservation are led by owners themselves who have no support for rebuilding. Some churches have been rebuilt, such as the Saint Mary Church of the Holy Belt, but across different neighborhoods Homs, most commercial streets, schools and residential areas remain entirely in ruins.
As Syria turns a new page in its history, there are major challenges facing the country amid this political transition. One of these challenges is Syria's future reconstruction and how the country will be rebuilt. While there are some seeds for a more open and hopeful future in the country, residents who have their homes destroyed have no one to support them today. A man whose home was destroyed in Homs told me that "a flower and two don't make Spring." He was referring to the importance of having a holistic and overarching approach toward reconstruction that is not limited to the very few reconstruction projects of locals. But reconstruction today is not possible without political stability, transformational justice and the lifting of the economic sanctions.
—Ammar Azzouz is a research fellow at the British Academy and lecturer at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria.
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The Crisis of Disinformation and Misinformation
Organized online attacks now rank among the gravest threats to Syria's political transition. Over the past several years, we have observed, with increasing clarity, how misinformation and disinformation are being deployed—not merely to mislead, but to discredit civil society actors, distort public perception and erode trust in even the faintest prospects for democratic governance. Syria's path forward, if it is to be real, will demand a public sphere marked by civic engagement, accountability and an informed citizenry capable of holding its leaders to account.
While the fall of the Assad regime has allowed civil society activists greater freedom to express themselves, the online information landscape remains fraught. Propaganda and manipulation—driven by state-aligned media, external actors and opportunistic groups—have deepened societal divisions and made the limited civic space increasingly hostile. Smear campaigns against activists, human rights defenders and citizen journalists do more than silence critical voices and discourage civic participation; they corrode public confidence in the few independent sources of information that still exist for Syrians.
What makes this problem worse is the algorithm of social media platforms, which rewards sensationalism over substance. In this information ecosystem, where falsehoods are used to justify repression, Syrians struggle not just to find reliable news, but also to engage in honest political debates.
Countering this crisis and ensuring the public has access to accurate information requires a coordinated efforts by international allies and technology companies before it is too late.
—Ola Suliman is a Syrian human rights advocate from Homs and a member of the Civil Peace Initiative, a grassroots group working to rebuild trust and counter sectarian violence in post-conflict Syria. She works with The Syria Campaign, where she focuses on amplifying Syrian voices, advocating for detainees and pushing for accountability.
