Damascus Gambit

Washington’s courtship of Syria’s former jihadist-turned-president reveals how swiftly geopolitics can turn enemies into partners.

America’s foreign policy in the Middle East has always had a flair for reinvention. Its latest experiment in welcoming Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa into the global coalition against the Islamic State may be its boldest yet. Barely a year ago, the United States branded the man a terrorist and placed a bounty on his head. Today, he is feted at the White House as a reformer and ally.

The announcement that Syria will join the 90-nation coalition against jihadist remnants marks not merely a diplomatic thaw but a full-blown reversal. Of course, sanctions on Syria had already been suspended earlier this year by President Donald Trump during his Middle Eastern tour. The Caesar Act, Washington’s chief sanctioning instrument against the Assad regime, has been frozen.

For Washington, the calculus appears simple. The Islamic State’s embers still glow across the Syrian desert, and America’s appetite for direct military engagement has long waned. Al-Sharaa, once the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham - an offshoot of Al-Qaeda - commands the tribal networks and battlefield experience that Washington now finds useful. To the Trump administration, he is a man hardened enough to impose order where American soldiers no longer tread.

Syria’s long agony, however, gives this new partnership a darker resonance. Thirteen years after the uprising that began in Daraa in 2011, the Assad dynasty is gone but the wreckage endures in form of a hollowed-out economy, a fractured state and a society scarred by sectarian mistrust. Into this vacuum stepped al-Sharaa, a onetime insurgent who now sells himself as a moderniser intent on rebuilding a shattered country. Despite speaking of a “new era” of reconstruction and reconciliation, violence still flares between Bedouin and Druze militias, and reports of killings of Alawite minorities continue to emerge from Syria.

The United States has walked this path before. In the 1980s, it armed Saddam Hussein to counter Iran, only to confront him later in Kuwait. Two decades ago, Muammar Qaddafi was courted as a partner against terrorism, before NATO warplanes toppled him. In Iraq, insurgents were rebadged as ‘Sons of Iraq’ and paid to police the peace they had once shattered. Will the rehabilitation of al-Sharaa fit this pattern of short-term utility trumping long-term memory?

Al-Sharaa’s transformation from jihadist commander to President owes much to timing. After breaking with Al-Qaeda, his forces emerged as the dominant power in north-western Syria, combining Islamist rhetoric with bureaucratic pragmatism. When the Assad regime collapsed, he was well-placed to seize control. Since then, his government has sought legitimacy through cautious engagement with the West, while still tolerating elements of the old militias.

For the Trump administration, lifting sanctions and restoring diplomatic ties is not so much a reward for reform as a bid for influence. By drawing Damascus away from Tehran and Moscow, Washington hopes to anchor a new balance of power in the Levant. In theory, a ‘normalised’ Syria could act as a buffer against both Iranian expansionism and jihadist resurgence. But that vision rests on an untested assumption that al-Sharaa’s ambitions align with America’s, and that his past will not resurface when interests diverge.

Rehabilitating a former jihadist to stabilise a war-torn state is a gamble steeped in irony. The United States once found in Egypt’s Anwar Sadat a partner who recast the Arab world’s relationship with the West. But where Sadat inherited institutions and a functioning state, al-Sharaa presides over rubble. Reconstruction will demand not just money but legitimacy.

The rapprochement may yield tactical dividends in form of intelligence sharing, coordination against residual Islamic State cells, perhaps even movement toward peace with Israel. But to airily speak of a “new era” in such a fraught landscape is to forget how easily old ghosts can return.

Whether this partnership heralds stability or merely rehearses another cycle of betrayal will depend not on the promises made in the Oval Office, but on whether Syria itself can finally break free from the gravity of its own past.