Scramble for Syria

Between 3 and 4 December the Security Council visited Syria with the stated aim of building mutual trust. The travel report made clear what that trust was needed for. It noted that the Council had “expressed its hope to finalise an agreement on the reconfiguration of the United Nations presence in Damascus” — a move that would enable the UN, “with all its instruments, lessons learned, and expertise, to stand at the side of the Syrian people.” The phrase ‘all its instruments’ meant, above all, the UN’s political role, whose credibility among Syrians is fundamentally damaged.

Recently, that reality was articulated bluntly by Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Shaibani in a documentary on the country’s liberation aired on 21 December 2025. Reflecting on the decisive days before Bashar al-Assad fled and his regime collapsed, Shaibani described an exchange from 7 December 2024, when the rebel blitzkrieg dominated discussions at the Doha Forum in Qatar. UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen had also been present.

“I received a call from Pedersen’s office,” Shaibani said. “He was trying to convince us that a political solution with the regime was the best option and that we must find a way forward, claiming that the regime had agreed to Resolution 2254. At that moment, I both laughed and became angry.”

Several senior diplomatic sources with direct knowledge confirmed to Syria in Transition that Pedersen’s office had indeed conveyed to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that Assad had agreed to implement Resolution 2254 — and that the claim was false. Whether this was deliberate fabrication or a diplomatic white lie is perhaps beside the point. Arab and Western diplomats alike described Pedersen as by then unable to grasp the importance of the moment.

“As the regime’s collapse accelerated in ways that left little room for misinterpretation, Pedersen clung to the premise that had shaped his tenure: that Assad had to be part of any political solution because no alternative was conceivable,” one diplomat told Syria in Transition. Indeed, for nearly two years, Pedersen and his office had failed to reconvene the Constitutional Committee, a body that had not meaningfully deliberated a single constitutional article since its creation in 2019, invoking unreasonable Russian objections while allowing Moscow and Damascus to use the process as political theatre. Now, as tens of thousands rebel forces marched on Damascus, he appeared to believe that Russia might yet pressure Assad into a miraculous change of heart at the eleventh hour.

Responding to Syria in Transition, the Office of the Special Envoy confirmed that it had contacted Hayat Tahrir al-Sham but denied that Bashar al-Assad had accepted Resolution 2254, insisting that “there was no intention on the part of the OSE to suggest otherwise.” As long as perceptions of reality diverge so fundamentally on a matter this consequential, a productive working relationship between the OSE and the government in Damascus — this one or any successor — is difficult to envisage.

It is therefore unsurprising that the transitional government came to view Pedersen and his office as hostile to the revolutionary project and its vision of state-building. After Assad fled, Damascus reopened almost overnight to the international community. Physical presence quickly became a marker of relevance and influence. Delegations rushed in, embassies prepared to reopen and international actors recalibrated their engagement.

Against this backdrop — and at a moment when the Trump administration is applying unprecedented pressure on the United Nations to reform, cut waste, or else — the Secretary-General reached for what looked like an easy win. Relocating OSE fully to Damascus could be sold as proof that the UN was finally getting serious about efficiency, exactly the signal donors wanted to see as the organisation slid into a genuine financial crunch. Inside the system, the logic quickly took on a life of its own: cheaper duty stations, smaller footprints, measurable savings. What made perfect sense in New York, however, looks very different in Damascus, where politics, not spreadsheets, are driving the moment.

From the outset, the new authorities in Damascus gave Pedersen and his team the cold shoulder. Yet the problem ran deeper than personalities. Resolution 2254, the legal basis of his mandate, remains legally binding unless the Security Council replaces it, and the prospect of hosting an Office of the Special Envoy operating under a resolution that remains formally unimplemented is perceived as a Trojan horse by Damascus. Relocating the OSE to Damascus under the 2254 framework would inevitably reopen a set of transitional obligations and power-sharing logics in which the regime has no interest.

Crucially, Resolution 2254 avoids defining who constitutes the Syrian government or the opposition, thereby legitimising a broad range of Syrian actors, from the Autonomous Administration in the northeast to political representatives in Suwayda, as stakeholders entitled to participate on an equal footing. No amount of diplomatic assurances can override what the text itself permits and empowers. That logic directly challenges President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s claim to supreme authority during the transitional period. For Damascus, the core issue is the mandate itself.

Following Assad’s fall, the unresolved mandate question was quickly obscured in New York by institutional maneuvering. Different parts of the UN system advanced overlapping proposals — transitional action plans, coordination frameworks, and ultimately a so-called “strategic assessment”. Each of these efforts were shaped by internal hierarchies, turf between the political and development pillars, and budgetary self-preservation. What was largely absent was a serious reckoning with the central question: the nature of the political role, if any, the UN could credibly play in Syria under an unchanged mandate.

Nearly a year on, the relocation of the UN political mission remains “under consideration,” despite its implications for the entire UN presence in Syria, where political, humanitarian, and development pillars are meant to operate in concert. The Security Council has largely avoided the issue. While there appears to be a general inclination to see the mission based in Damascus, no clarity exists about what it would actually do there beyond technical cooperation that could just as easily be carried out by the Resident Coordinator and the UN Country Team, without the political ambiguity or diplomatic theatre that accompany a special political mission.

Damascus’s position, by contrast, is straightforward. It argues that the transitional steps envisaged by Resolution 2254 have already been completed with the establishment of the People’s Assembly. It may tolerate narrowly defined, political technical assistance from the United Nations, but it explicitly rejects any role in domestic mediation. This stance effectively nullifies the mission’s very purpose. And as long as Resolution 2254 remains the operative mandate, even a limited UN role is suspect.

Mandates outlast assurances. If the Security Council does not wish to midwife a wasteful mission, it must confront obvious questions that it has deferred for a year. Does it expect the United Nations to play a meaningful role in shaping Syria’s future and anchoring a credible, inclusive transition? And if so, under what mandate, toward what political end, and with what measure of success? Until those questions are answered plainly, there will be much process and little policy, and, beneath the surface, the scramble for Syria will continue.