Syria After the Revolution: Now Comes the Hard Part

He will likely never have a sweeter moment in his life. Here was the victorious conqueror in one of the greatest temples in the lands of Islam, on ground once trod by Caliphs like Muawiya and Sultans like Saladin. Abu Muhammad Al-Joulani – real name Ahmed Al-Shar'a – spoke on December 8 at the glorious eighth-century Umayyad Mosque in Damascus in humble gratitude to God at the fall of the tyrant Assad and the restoration of Sunni Muslim rule to Syria after almost 60 years. Syria was ruled since 1966 by Alawite strongmen, first Salah Jadid, and then the Assads, father and son.

These Alawite rulers were able to come to power through the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and especially through the Syrian Army. A hundred years ago, when France had a League of Nations Mandate over Syria, they began to build a colonial army. They favored "the martial races," better fighters and more loyal than the Sunni Arab Muslim majority. In Syria, that meant the Druze and the even more populous Alawites, a syncretic amalgam of paganism, Shi'ism and Christianity, traditionally a despised heretical underclass. When Syria became independent in 1946, the army was still filled with Alawites and would essentially remain so until December 2024. Syria needs a new army that reflects both the country's Sunni majority and its diversity.

Although Ahmed Al-Shar'a was the key architect of the fall of Assad, he and his organization were not the only ones to bring it about. They provided the spark and the startling string of initial victories, but in the end, others rose up in the Syrian south and east to help finish the wounded beast off. Al-Shar'a is the most powerful, most important of these victors but he and they now face a daunting task. So far, he has handled the military offensive and the political transition extremely well, but now the difficult work begins.

The greatest fear is not so much that Syria will now be an Islamic state but that it will be a failed one (it already had many of the characteristics of one under Assad), not tyrannical but chaotic. The danger is as much or more that anarchy will prevail rather than Shari'a Law will.