PRIO Cyprus Centre Visitng address: 52 Arsinois, 1010 Nicosia Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation | Competence Center MENAPeace & Security, Cyprus Branch,20 Stasandrou, Apt. 4011060 Nicosia Cyprus Email: peace.mena@fes.de POLICY BRIEF 01 2025 Syria’s Transition at the Crossroads: Will the New Syria become a Pillar of Stability or a Source of Turmoil for the Region? Re-Imagining the Eastern Mediterranean Project www.prio.no/cyprus ISBN: 978-82-343-0664-8 (Online) Like the sudden melting of a“frozen revolution”, the 14-year-old resistance against the Baathist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad celebrated a belated success. In December last year hope returned to Syrians for a life free of fear and oppression despite the fact that the agents of change were not the ones many had wished for. Although the honeymoon with the new Islamist rulers is over, Syria is not anymore a doomed country where time seemed to stand still. It has become dynamic. Overnight, Syria was turned into a key component of the transforming architecture of the Middle East that started on 7 October 2023 with Hamas’ attack on Israelis and Israel’s military backlash against Hamas and Hezbollah. The new macro­picture of the region is now void of the Iranian dominated Shia Crescent once reaching from Teheran to Beirut and displays instead a Sunni axis from Turkey in the north to Syria in the south, affecting domestic arrangements in Lebanon, Iraq and even the Palestinian territories. In the centre of events, the new rulers in Damascus are faced with a plethora of challenges against New Syria’s unity, stability and territorial integrity. Brief Points: • In December, Syria was suddenly turned into a key component of the transforming architecture of the Middle East that started on 7 October 2023 with Hamas’ attack on Israelis and Israel’s military backlash against Hamas and Hezbollah. • Syria’s new rulers are facing a plethora of challenges in an effort that can be viewed in three phases of transition: stabilization, pluralization and democratization. Each phase has its own imperatives and dangers. • The Islamist-dominated government is well aware of bad examples that they do not intend to repeat: Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia. • By trying to avoid a downward spiral, the new rulers are facing the tightrope balance between stability and legitimacy. The entire region would profit from a success of this rare experiment. Carsten Wieland PRIO Cyprus Centre