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What Syria Do We Want?
We are not just searching for an alternative slogan, but for a state that belongs to all its people—a Syria not merely the Arab Syrian Republic, but the Syrian Republic shattered by the criminal Bashar al-Assad regime.
We seek a new national project that redefines the concept of the state, which has been lost amidst the tyranny of the criminal authority and the chaos of Arab opposition and Takfiri Islamic organizations.
We want a civil, federal, and decentralized Syria, built on a just constitution that recognizes national, religious, and cultural Diversity, guarantees genuine participation in political decision-making—not mere representation or sectarian allocate seats.
The Syria we envision is not one where the security apparatus is recreated in a new guise, nor where Takfiri terrorist organizations are re-created to serve as security quadrants for the past criminal regime. Instead, it should be a modern state founded on the separation of powers, judicial independence, and the guarantee of freedom of opinion and organization.
A state that does not stand above its citizens but exists to serve them and uphold their dignity, administering justice rather than fear, practicing authority as a national responsibility, not as an autocratic privilege.
We want a rule-of-law state where the government is held accountable before the parliament—not a parliament elected or appointed by the head of the executive authority, Ahmad al-Shar’a, which would be trembling at the thought of holding any accountable an minister or any member of the executive authority.
A state whose executive authority is elected by the free will of the people—not imposed under false pretexts as currently propagated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham under its deceptive slogan: "The one who wins the war rules and manages the state."
Everyone knows how Bashar al-Assad’s regime was eliminated to be replaced by Ahmad al-Shar’a, listed on terrorist lists, along with HTS—imposed on Syrians through alliances made between America, Israel, Russia, and Turkey to serve that purpose.
Syria should be governed by modern political logic, not by Takfiri ideology or a state caliphate like the Umayyad Caliphate. It should relate as an equal to the world, building relations based on mutual interests rather than subservience to Turkey and Qatar.
We want a federal, pluralistic Syria that preserves each component’s right to manage its affairs within the framework of a unified homeland. It should protect Kurdish, Arab, Alawi, Druze, Assyrian, Syriac, and other identities, viewing them as assets and treasures of the homeland, not threats to its unity.
All these parties—including the leadership of the SDF forces, the Autonomous Administration, and the Kurdish movement with its various tendencies—must be clearer and more firm in affirming this legitimate demand, as it is the only political and moral guarantee to build a just and balanced Syria.
A state in which no single party or sect dominates; a state that separates religion from politics according to the collective understanding of Islamic Eastern reason, and separates religion from the state as in the modern Western concept.
The new Syria will not be built by Turkey, Qatar, the mentality of the saved sect, or the Wahhabi ideology based on Ibn Taymiyyah’s concepts. Instead, it will be built by the will of the Syrians themselves, who realize that politics is not just power management but the management of differences, and that homeland can only be rebuilt on a new national contract that re-establishes trust among its ethnic and national components—Kurdish, Arab, Alawi, Druze, and Christians.
Dr. Mahmoud Abbas
