One year of Sharaa’s Syria as supporters celebrate one year of the fall of Bashar al-Assad

Many Syrians gathered in major cities on Monday to mark the first anniversary of the fall of the Assad dynasty that had ruled the country for five decades. But not everyone was celebrating in the country.

Over the past one year, thousands of Syrians have been killed in sectarian violence that President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government has failed to tackle. In fact, his administration has been accused of tacitly supporting sectarian killings.

For example, March 2025 witnessed massacres in western Syria in which around 1,700 Alawites were killed — the community of ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad. These killings were attributed to pro-government armed groups. There has been little to no evidence that these groups have been punished for their actions.

In similar waves of violence, Druze minority members have also been attacked. Israel has used such violence as a pretext to conduct airstrikes inside Syria at facilities of Sharaa’s government.

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In any case, democracy remains a distant dream for Syrians as Sharaa has declared that elections would not be held before 2029. He has said that five years of ’transitional period’ under his government is a must to set up institutions, laws, and a new constitution in Syria before elections could be held.

But many Syrians still took to streets and major squares to celebrate. Festivities in several major cities included fireworks lighting up the sky, music blaring from cars, and the country’s new flag waving from balconies, according to The New York Times.

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Hoardings with slogans like ‘One country, one people’ and ‘The dark era is over’ had been put up in an apparent effort to remind people of the dictatorship that they had ousted last year. Sharaa joined the celebrations at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus before sunrise.

“No challenge, no matter how great or heavy, will stand in our way. No obstacle will deter us. We will face every challenge ahead,” said Sharaa.

Irrespective of the promising tone, there are concerns if Sharaa —a former jihadist— can steer Syria into a democratic future or whether he even wants to do it. The tacit acceptance —if not support— of systematic violence against minorities suggests he either lacks the ability to contain such violence or the intention.

In a reminder that Syria remains fractured despite Assad’s ouster, the Kurdish administration in the northeast banned any public commemoration on Monday. It is not that Kurds were Assad’s allies. Their rejection of celebrations is rooted in the fact that Sharaa’s Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and other Turkish-backed Islamist groups, had waged a war against not just Assad’s regime but against Kurds as well.

Alawites and Druze are not the only minorities that are wary of Sharaa’s regime. Kurds are wary of him and his Turkish backer, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well, who has made no secret of his disdain for Kurds.