‘It's a recipe for one-man rule’: Syria’s new constitution shatters hopes

Last week, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed the country’s constitution for the five-year interim period following the ousting of Bashar al-Assad. The document drew a lot of criticism from several segments of Syrian society for granting the president sweeping powers, promoting an Islamist agenda, and the failure to address the grievances of minorities. 

We discussed the details with Mohammed A. Salih, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute and an analyst of regional and Kurdish affairs. He runs the substack channel Eye on Kurdistan.

Would you consider this new constitution secular?

I wouldn't consider it secular because of two very obvious things in the text. It very clearly states that Islamic jurisprudence is the principal source of legislation. The religion of the president has to be Islam.

I was comparing it with the text of the Syrian constitution from the Assad era, the last one which was issued in 2012, which has a very similar wording. It says that the religion of the president should be Islam. Then it says Islamic jurisprudence is a major source of legislation, but the new one makes it the major source.

You also have to look at it through the context that the president himself, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and his group, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), come from an extremist Islamist background. They ruled Idlib province for several years before overthrowing Bashar al-Assad. If you go back to how they ruled Idlib it's very obvious that their model was an ultra-conservative Salafist, radical Islamist model of governance.

In the weeks after the collapse of the Assad regime, there was this video that surfaced showing the current minister of justice [Shadi al-Waisi] overseeing the stoning of two women on the streets publicly in Idlib. The background calls for a lot of caution.

Ruling Idlib, however, is very different from ruling the entire country from Damascus. Idlib is known to be a quite conservative community in Syria. But Syria is also a very diverse country. There are the Alawites, the Druze, and the Kurds. Places such as Damascus are diverse and metropolitan necessarily conservative societies. There's a diversity of lifestyles in the country and attitudes in terms of the role of religion in public life. So, the question that emerges is whether the current government has plans to replicate some sort of a model similar to Idlib – and even if it wanted to do so, would they be actually able to impose that on the crowd? It has so far refrained from governing Damascus and the rest of Syria as it did in Idlib, which is a positive thing. 

In the latest piece on your blog you quote Rami Jarrah saying that Syria is turning into an Islamic state. Do you agree with that statement? 

Rami is one the liberal voices of the Syrian revolution. He was someone who was involved in the movement since the very early days of the uprising. Again, a lot of it depends on the reality of the struggle between different political and social forces on the ground in Syria. It's a very fateful and divisive matter for Syrians. Those people who are seeking a secular or civic state in Syria are very concerned about this kind of wording in the interim constitution.

There is also something that is really missing from the discussion: the manner of putting together this constitution. Ahmed al-Sharaa declared a constitutional committee on Mar 2, and on Mar 13, the constitution was ready. So in 11-12 days. That amount of time might not even be enough for people to turn in a class assignment.

Having the constitution of a country for which over half a million people have died in order to overthrow the dictatorship, being drafted in such an extremely non-transparent manner without any sort of serious debate or deliberation by a committee that is not really representative of the Syrian society and that was put together by Ahmed al-Sharaa himself, should call for serious concern about his style of governance. This text doesn't represent a departure from the Assad era rule and dictatorship in terms of separation of powers. And in terms of social liberties, it will allow for a more restrictive environment. 

One could also look at it from the other way. You’re saying this kind of wording coming from this particular group is very problematic. But then the text has a lot of emphasis on freedom of religion, of expression, equality among sects, etc. These terms coming from a hardline Islamist organization is rather unusual, isn’t it?

I agree with what you say, for sure. But we also have to look at this in the context of the longest-standing authoritarian tradition of Syria and the broader Middle East. If you actually look at the constitution from 2012 under Bashar al-Assad, it had the word ‘democracy’ four or five times in the text – the current constitution does not even mention that word—this is of course not to say Assad’s rule had any resemblance to democracy.

If someone in 2012 said ‘Oh, let's not worry about Assad’s constitution because it has all these references to democracy, to freedom,’ people would have laughed at them. 

If you also look at the method that Ahmed al-Sharaa has followed since December, he has shown that he does not really care about democracy. He put together a committee to organize this national dialogue conference, where supposedly the representatives of different communities and political forces were to come together and debate the best way forward for the country in the transitional period. It was a committee basically made up of individuals who were either part of the HTS, or non-threatening to it. The conference itself was exclusionary. Ahmed al-Sharaa has shown a clear preference to exclude organized political forces, politically from minority groups, from the transitional period, except his own HTS.

People should realize that the stakes are very high and that this particular document is the most critical product or moment in the transitional period of the post-Assad era. It was produced in the most non-transparent and exclusionary way given lack of serious debate for such a crucial document.

How unfavorable is this document for the Kurds in Syria?

It's very unfavorable for the Kurds. There was so much disappointment that I have sensed in my own conversations with people in the Kurdish political parties in Syria, and also in the reactions on social media. The Kurds have been severely oppressed since the very beginning of the post-independence Syrian state in 1946. This document maintains the name Syrian Arab Republic. In 1958, the word Arab was added to the official name of the Syrian Republic during its union with Egypt. 

There was a lot of hope on the part of Kurds that the post-Assad revolutionary government would be different because there had been also quite significant progress within the Syrian opposition in terms of developing a more sympathetic understanding of the Kurdish grievances and plight in the country. Especially around the mid-2000s onwards, and particularly after the 2011 uprising, the Arab segment of the Syrian opposition had come to realize the gravity of the conditions under which the Kurds lived in the country. The Kurds were deprived of any recognition of their language, of their cultural identity. The Kurdish language was illegal. Kurdish cultural, practices or activities such as the Kurdish New Year were all illegal under Assad’s rule, even though at times tolerated in a highly restrictive manner. 

There was this hope that the new Syria would be different, that it would acknowledge the existence of Kurds, respect at least the use of the Kurdish language as one of the official languages in the Kurdish majority parts of the country, if not as a national, official language following Arabic.

A lot of people find it very unfortunate that this constitution came right after the agreement that was signed on 10 March by Ahmad al-Sharaa and General Abdi of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which signaled some sort of openness on the part of Damascus to address historical Kurdish grievances. This constitution puts all of that hope to rest. It is very vague in terms of recognizing the diversity of the Syrian society. It does not have any guarantees for the Kurds that their language would be recognized.

This document retaining the official name of the state as an Arab Republic, not mentioning specifically any ethnic groups in Syria apart from Arabs, and not guaranteeing the use of languages other than Arabic. So it is a huge disappointment to the Kurds. A lot of them feel that the current government is going to continue the legacy of the Assad regime with the Kurds.

The constitution states that al-Sharaa will appoint one-third of the members of parliament. But who will appoint the rest?

The rest will be appointed by a committee that will be formed by al-Sharaa himself. Again, it’s very instructive to look at how he has approached this whole idea of forming committees to do things. How a committee was put together very hastily to organize the National Dialogue Conference. We again have seen his way of putting together a committee to draft the constitution.

It's basically a committee of loyalists or those who don’t have the political clout to challenge him. So, it’s probably not unfair to assume that this committee for appointing the two-thirds of the future parliament members would be a committee of people who will not oppose Sharaa’s orders and that the remaining two-thirds of the parliament members will most likely be, again, people who will be loyal to him or non-threatening at best. 

By now it should be very obvious how he operates in terms of appointing these committees, what kind of people he appoints to these committees, and what outcome one can expect, except if there is a serious public and political backlash that would force him to change his approach.

Taking all of this into consideration, are you saying that the signing of this document is a move by al-Sharaa and his group to solidify their grip on power?

Absolutely. That should be the main takeaway. I'm actually very much shocked that this has not been paid much attention to.

A lot of people are refraining from being critical of al-Sharaa. They try to find whatever silver lining there might be in this constitution. But I think just looking at the overall thrust of this document, given al-Sharaa’s personal track record, his group's track record, and the Syrian state's authoritarian tradition, it's unfortunately very clear that this document is not going to be a rupture with the Assad era model of governance. The constitution allows all power to be concentrated in the hands of one person. It's a recipe for one-man rule.

That’s very unfortunate and tragic given that more than half a million Syrians have sacrificed their lives for something better. This document is definitely not something that respects and honors the tremendous sacrifice that was made by the Syrian people. (DT/VK)