Syria's fate is hanging in the balance between a peaceful and stable democratic future and backsliding to possible civil war.
The country finds itself at a crossroads, where the willingness of the EU and the international community to help is crucial. The situation is fragile, and interference in Syria’s internal affairs by neighbouring countries does not serve its interests.
For the time being, we are receiving mixed signals from the new transitional government. Its president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has declared his wish for inclusive democracy. But his decisions speak another language.
He has put in place presidential powers, including the right to suspend democracy, with insufficient protections for minority ethnic and religious groups or checks and balances on his powers.
Recent months have seen appalling sectarian attacks in western Syria against the Alawi minority and, more recently, against the Druze in Suwayda in Syria’s south.
Thousands have been killed. And there is disturbing evidence of government involvement in the killings, verified by international human rights bodies and the UN.
Despite promises to hold those responsible accountable, there has so far been no accountability. There are unresolved issues with my autonomous region in the northeast of Syria (AANES or Rojava), and occasional attacks on our defence forces, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), by armed groups associated with the government.
Meanwhile, women and Christians are harassed and intimidated in the streets of Damascus and other towns. Women are still not protected by law. They are also being kidnapped and raped away from the eyes of the media, and this transitional phase raises many fears about what future awaits us as Syrian women.
A culture of religious conformity is being imposed bit by bit on Syria’s diverse peoples. This slow and unpopular transformation is often invisible on the "international radar."
This won’t work to build long-term peace and stability in Syria
Women and minorities need safety and protection, as well as respect for our gender and for our separate beliefs and traditions. As we have learned in northeast Syria, without strong women in leadership positions, there is no peace and there is no development.
Unless minority groups are deliberately given a central and not marginal voice in their own government, accountable to them, they will be excluded and repressed, with violence too often the result.
Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has been feted in New York. This reflects the international community's interest in supporting Syria’s transition. And it is right that Syria, at last free of the Assad dictatorship, should rejoin the international community. But the transitional government in Damascus needs to hear a clear message from the international community.
The protection of women and minority groups must be the central concern of the Syrian government, not the Islamification of our culture, government and laws.
How can this practically be achieved?
It’s not complicated. A new constitution must give real power to Syria’s regions—and thus its diverse communities—and to women.
The term for this is decentralisation: a system similar to many European countries, where the regions govern themselves except for a limited range of powers—defence and international relations—which are granted to the central government.
In the EU, this is also called subsidiarity: decisions are taken by citizens on local and regional levels, as close to where they are as possible, and not by a distant capital.
Women’s and minority human rights must be explicit and constitutionally enshrined at every level. Since the agreement in March this year between the transitional government in Damascus and the military commander of the Kurdish autonomous region of northeast Syria, my region has been pushing for negotiations to discuss and, we hope, agree on such a constitutional solution.
We have tabled specific proposals to Damascus and shared them with international partners. But there has been no response.
The transitional government has not engaged in this very necessary and urgent discussion—perhaps fearful that its vision of a centralised state with Islam as the sole source of law will be threatened, or perhaps because of negative and unhelpful pressure from outside states. We don't know why, but it raises our concerns.
No one pretends that achieving consensus will be easy
It will take compromises from all sides. But Syria’s future is not for one leader, or one ethnic or religious group, to decide.
I have talked with other leaders of minority groups in Syria—Druze, Alawite and Assyrian. They too want negotiations to start. They too want a decentralised Syria.
Because, above all, they believe that their protection and security can only be guaranteed when they are given autonomy to run their own affairs within a single, unified Syrian state. No one is arguing for secession.
We need the international community to step up its support. Instead of vague words about democracy and human rights, we need firm pressure on the transitional government to sit down with Syria’s other ethnic and religious groups, including my own—the autonomous administration of the northeast—to hammer out a constitution that works for and protects everyone, that reflects Syria’s true composition as a state of many ethnicities and religions, and of true equality for women and men.
It is right to give a new government time and space to get things right. We too want the post-Assad transition to succeed, and for the future of Syria to be decided by the Syrians themselves, without interference from any foreign powers, in a way that meets the aspirations of all.
But massacres and extrajudicial executions in minority areas, and the creeping domination by one ethnic group and one version of Islam, do not foreshadow a promising future.
We do not have the luxury of wasting time. We must work to get Syria through the current bottleneck towards an agreement on a decentralised—and therefore stable—Syrian state. Any excuses for delaying this process cannot be tolerated.
