Live by the sword

Ahmad al-Sharaa has chosen force over dialogue. Working with Turkey, Russia, and the US to crush the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and reassert Damascus’s authority over the northeast, Syria’s president has made it clear that ambiguous sovereignty will no longer be tolerated. “One state, one army, one flag” is the motto of the hour. His bet is that force, applied decisively and relatively cleanly, can finish what largely performative diplomacy had failed to deliver: a unified Syria.

The approach is Bismarckian. Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian statesman who engineered Germany’s unification, did not wait for consensus among German princes; he created facts on the ground and bullied everyone into accepting them. Sharaa appears to be doing the same. If state sovereignty was all that mattered, the logic would be hard to fault. No government can indefinitely tolerate a rival armed authority controlling a third of a nation’s territory, including its most resource-rich areas. Given the zero-sum logic of the Middle East (and increasingly, the world), armed autonomy is often treated as the prelude to independence.  

Almost a year of talks between Damascus and the SDF has produced statements of principle but slow progress on the practical question of power-sharing i.e. ‘state integration.’ Meanwhile, the SDF further entrenched itself administratively and militarily while adopting maximalist demands at negotiations. A short, sharp military campaign of the kind unleashed ended the deadlock. It serves to deter other would-be autonomists, and allows Damascus to dictate the terms of reintegration.

If it works, Sharaa will be credited with restoring Syria’s territorial integrity in a way that Bashar al-Assad noticeably failed to do after 2011. Most capitals would welcome that. 

But history also suggests a warning. Where unification is achieved through internal war – as in Sri Lanka or Algeria – territorial integrity is restored at the expense of trust and inclusion. Bismarck unified Germany mainly by fighting external wars that strengthened internal cohesion. Sharaa is fighting internal wars against religious and ethnic minorities supported by external powers. This tends to leave enduring grudges that are open for exploitation.  

The immediate risks are obvious. A fight to the finish with the Kurds risks drawing in unfriendly neighbours like Israel and Iraq who don’t want to see an empowered Sunni Arab government in Syria. Reconstruction would be threatened if pro-Kurd members of the US Congress enact “bone-crunching” sanctions, as they have threatened to do. An even more insidious danger is what a victory against the Kurds would mean for the nature of the emerging Syrian state. 

For Syria’s Kurds, the SDF was a guarantee – albeit imperfect – against a return to exclusion by a hyper-centralised Arab nationalist regime. Its military defeat will not dissolve that fear, nor the aspiration of Kurdish independence.  

Mistrust of Damascus will not be confined to the northeast. Other minorities will be watching closely. For them, the rational response is to keep options open, including external backers and standing militias. The Druze’s hardline strategy of decisive break with Damascus and zero compromise stands in marked contrast to the softer Kurdish approach; and ultimately it may be more successful at producing real autonomy.

If all efforts at local autonomy failed, the result could be a country unified on paper but hedged against from within. Coercive unification can succeed, but there is a cost. The ‘fierce state’ would grow stronger but the sense of nationhood, love of country, and togetherness would weaken. 

This is not to defend permanent fragmentation. A Syria split into armed zones, each backed by a foreign patron, is unacceptable. The question is not whether Damascus should reclaim authority, but whether it can do so without undermining an inclusive national identity and peaceful co-existence among communities.

Bismarck’s wars of unification were only the first moves in a longer process of nation-building. What came after – institutions, education, freedoms, social welfare – was what made Germany great. Sharaa may believe he can replicate that sequencing, and perhaps he can. But by choosing force first, and not as a last resort, he has narrowed his room for manoeuvre. Should regional or international circumstances shift, and internal enemies rally, he will have no recourse but to the sword.