The News
The 2011 Arab Spring holds crucial lessons for the Syrian factions who have toppled Bashar al-Assad after more than a decade of brutal civil war that was itself triggered by the uprisings, analysts said.
The de-facto leaders of main rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have been under intense scrutiny from the international community as to how they will now establish a new Syrian state.
In a BBC interview, the group’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said that a Syrian committee of legal experts would soon be tasked with writing a new constitution. Sharaa stressed support for women’s education but was less specific about other civil freedoms.
The 2011 uprisings, while failed in Syria, led to the toppling of governments in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, but the ascendent groups who took over these countries’ governments have since been blamed for creating their own economic issues, democratic backsliding, and corruption.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in the streets of Damascus in Syria Thursday calling for civil liberties, with shouts of “We want a democracy, not a religious state,” AFP reported.
SIGNALS
Syria to face ‘bumpy’ road ahead
As Syrians across the world celebrated the fall of Assad, warnings from citizens of other former dictatorships have proliferated on social media, the Financial Times reported. In Egypt, the new Islamist rulers proved inattentive to the country’s economic travails, while Tunisia seems to have largely returned to autocracy after years of declining living standards, the outlet noted: “Democratic freedoms cannot survive without the basics of a dignified life,” one Tunisian political scientist said. Yet any direct comparison is also “simplistic,” a Syrian journalist said, as the country faces its own unique set of challenges: With so many minority communities and fragmented rebel groups, there will be a “bumpy” road ahead, an analyst told the outlet, but the outlook so far remains positive.
Unclear how the West will support creation of new state
HTS is under pressure from the West to demonstrate they hold democratic values, but the West is also feeling pressure to support a transition of power, The New Arab wrote. Many Western nations imposed sanctions on the Bashar al-Assad regime, which the rebels have called to be lifted. The European Union, typically plagued by “bilateralism and competing objectives in foreign policy matters,” needs to present a united front to have any influence going forward, the outlet wrote, as Assad’s rapid ouster requires “a cohesive strategy.” The US, meanwhile, seems preoccupied with fighting in northern Syria between Turkey-backed factions and Kurdish groups, Al Jazeera reported, with US President-elect Donald Trump suggesting Ankara was carrying out an “unfriendly takeover.”