Not a frozen crisis. A country in transition.
December 8, 2024, Assad fled. December 23, 2025—you are reading this one year and fifteen days later. The dictatorship that lasted since 1970 ended not with negotiation but with collapse. Russian forces whisked Assad to Moscow. The rebels entered Damascus.
What happens when a 54-year regime disappears? Syria is living the answer.
The portraits are gone. The military checkpoints are gone. The fear of security services raiding your shop—gone. Armed men now wear matching black uniforms with state insignia instead of mismatched fatigues.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, leader of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was declared transitional president in January. An interim constitution came into effect in March—enshrining Islamic law as a main derivation of jurisprudence while promising to protect ethnic and religious minorities.
In November, the UN Security Council removed al-Sharaa's terrorist designation. He has since visited capitals across the Arab Gulf, the United States, Russia, and France. He addressed the UN General Assembly.
The infrastructure is still broken. Two-thirds of water treatment plants are non-functional. Half of pumping stations are damaged. One-third of water towers destroyed.
Over 400 health facilities have faced funding cuts since mid-2025, forcing many to reduce or suspend services. The healthcare system remains fragile.
And the land itself is dangerous. At least 590 people have been killed by landmines since Assad's fall, including 167 children. Syria is on track to record the world's highest landmine casualty rate in 2025.
The diplomatic successes have been offset by violence. In March, Syrian security forces and pro-government fighters reportedly committed a massacre of more than 740 Alawite civilians in western Syria. The Druze have now set up their own de facto government and military in Sweida province.
Syria is not a frozen crisis like Yemen or Sudan—conflicts that grind on without resolution, fading from headlines while the killing continues. Syria is something else: a country trying to become something new while carrying the weight of everything that happened.
Young workers are reuniting with families after a decade apart. People are coming back to rebuild what was destroyed. The hope is cautious—a 19-year-old student praised improvements but asked not to use his family name. The fear is not gone. But neither is the belief that something different is possible.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to integrate into state institutions in March. Not without tension, not without the risk of future conflict—but integration is happening.
In late December, the United States permanently repealed the "Caesar" sanctions. Not unconditionally—Congress required periodic reports on minority rights and counterterrorism. But the economic isolation is ending.
My other crisis pages document suffering that continues while the world looks away. Sudan, Yemen, Haiti, Cabo Delgado—these are frozen conflicts, grinding on without resolution.
Syria is different. Syria is a page about transition. About what happens after. About the possibility that change can happen, even if the change is incomplete, contested, and fragile.
I do not know what Syria becomes. Nobody does. That is why it matters to watch. Not to declare victory or predict failure. To witness what emerges.