As Hayat Tahrir al-Sham courts Western leaders in its bid to consolidate power and rebuild Syria, two former regime officials have been sentenced to eight years in an Austrian prison for crimes committed during the civil war, while a court in Damascus prosecutes Bashar al-Assad and other senior officials for murder, torture, and other offenses. New analyses in Middle East Policy explore the potential for justice and reconciliation in the new Syria, as well as how to devise a democratic constitutional order in the ethnically diverse country.
Middle East Policy has just published its Summer 2026 double issue. In addition to studies on the new Syria, the journal features incisive open-access examinations of the Iran War, its causes, and its implications, including what lies ahead in the Strait of Hormuz; how Trump’s transactionalism is backfiring; how the Islamic Revolution upended regional security; Iran’s forward defense in Africa; and the effects of the war on Gulf cooperation with the Asia-Pacific. The table of contents of this special double issue is below. If you find this newsletter useful, please forward it to others you believe will benefit. You can register to receive our weekly updates here. And please follow us on the social media platforms X and LinkedIn.
In her study of how to hold former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other officials accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Mariam Bin Ghaith evaluates the effectiveness of systems that have been devised over the past four decades to achieve justice in post-conflict societies. The analysis lays out the comparative strengths and weaknesses:
- Domestic courts: Prosecutions are generally swift and can provide communities with a sense of ownership and justice; however, weak institutions often fall short of international norms and have difficulty protecting judges, witnesses, and defendants.
- International Criminal Court: It has the budget and expertise necessary for war-crimes prosecutions, but maneuvers are necessary to expand its jurisdiction to the Syrian cases; in addition, it is removed from the communities seeking justice.
- Universal jurisdiction: Established legal systems, especially in the West, claim the right to prosecute violations of international law in cases where the country in which the offenses occurred is unable or unwilling to proceed. However, both justice and national reconciliation are best achieved through domestic processes.
- Ad hoc tribunals: These have been used to try war crimes, including offenses committed in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Cambodia. While prosecutions have been successful, the costs are immense, the trials are often drawn out, and the proceedings are far from the affected societies.
After weighing these cases, Bin Ghaith argues for a dual-track approach of trying senior regime officials through a tribunal composed of Syrian and international judges and prosecutors, as well as establishing a truth commission to promote social and political reconciliation. This latter component, inspired by South Africa’s experience, can play a major role in advancing both the cause of justice and the prospects for unifying the country:
The extensive documentation compiled by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic can play a role in supporting prosecutions and establishing an authoritative record of the abuses committed during the 14 years of civil unrest, while a truth commission can encourage lower-ranking participants to disclose information in exchange for limited amnesty and generate recommendations for constitutional and institutional reforms that make future repression substantially more difficult.
Zeynep Banu Dalaman concurs in her free-to-read article that the challenges of building peace lie not just in ending violence but creating an affirmative process that combines institutions, representation, and transitional justice. She argues that while the former regime is responsible for much of the trauma from the civil war, Syria’s new rulers cannot simply move forward but must work to address not just the crimes of the past but the deep divisions of the present.
Dalaman’s analysis is built on interpretations of symbols she encountered on travels through Syria that in many cases represent persistent memories of atrocities that cannot simply be overwritten by new images (see the photos below). The author summarizes the challenge:
The coexistence of pre-2018 symbols, wartime graffiti, and post-2024 memorials illustrates that new governing actors inherited a dense archive of unresolved violence. Although the Syrian interim government and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham were not responsible for earlier state atrocities, their failure to create channels for acknowledgment or inclusion risks reproducing the very silences associated with the Baathist era.
Graffiti in a school garden, Daraa, April 17, 2025
Note: The inscription reads, “Your turn has come, Doctor.” This directly references Bashar al-Assad, invoking fear, accountability, and cyclical justice within a site associated with the origins of the 2011 uprising. Painted on the wall of the school where children were first detained that year, the graffiti revives the memory of defiance that ignited the revolution. Photo by the author.
Graffiti on the same school wall, Daraa, April 17, 2025
The inscription reads, “The Doctor has fled.” Created shortly after Assad’s resignation in December 2024, this new phrase transforms the earlier site of resistance into a declaration of closure and vindication. By overwriting the same surface, the act visually bridges Syria’s two political eras—linking the memory of repression to the emergence of a fragile postwar transition. Photo by the author.
While these symbols suggest a form of healing, Dalaman draws a distinction between such expressions and the sustained effort required by government and civil society to repair and thrive:
Without institutional guarantees for participation, equity, and accountability, post-conflict Syria risks reproducing the same patterns of exclusion that fueled fragmentation in the first place. A sustainable transition requires more than the cessation of hostilities; it demands the dismantling of structural violence, the institutionalization of inclusive governance, and the recognition of memory and justice as integral to political reconstruction. Only through these commitments can Syria move toward positive peace and avoid becoming trapped in a cycle of fragile, incomplete, and reversible recovery.
“Navigating the tension between external incentives for centralized stability and domestic demands for decentralized authority represents the central challenge ahead,” Dalaman concludes.
Dilan Okcuoglu’s open-access investigation of the potential for federalism in post-Assad Syria takes up this challenge. While the interim government emphasizes the need for unity and has fought to reduce competition with Kurdish and other militias, Okcuoglu contends that the Syrian civil war “deepened intercommunal divisions, making a unified state structure untenable.” Devolving at least some state power to local authorities and minority groups is necessary to establish “a genuinely pluralist form of governance.”
Okcuoglu’s comparative study of federalism in Iraq, Bosnia, and Canada provides some potential models for the new Syria. After an in-depth analysis, she contends that the new Syrian constitution should be based on an asymmetrical federalism that allows ethnic and cultural groups to participate in national governance while enhancing their local security and autonomy through revenue sharing and even constitutionally protected veto powers. “A durable settlement in Syria must therefore move beyond elite bargains to institutionalize protections for vulnerable communities through robust, asymmetrical federal arrangements,” she concludes.
Middle East Policy, Summer 2026
Special Double Issue!
AMERICA’S WAR ON IRAN
Signals, Red Lines, and Collision: The Israel-Iran Spiral and US Intervention
Buğra Sari—open access!
Trump’s Transactional Diplomacy: Breakthrough or Breakdown?
Guilain Denoeux | Robert Springborg—open access!
Between Ideology and Strategy: The Iranian Revolution and the Reconfiguration of Middle Eastern Security
Alabbas F. Alsudani—open access!
Iran’s Forward Defense in Sub-Saharan Africa
Ariel Limanya Limbu | Ronen A. Cohen—open access!
CONSEQUENCES IN THE GULF
Crisis in the Strait of Hormuz: What Lies Ahead?
Gawdat Bahgat—free to read!
GCC-Asia Pacific Energy Nexus: Navigating Shifts in Demand and Geopolitics
Umud Shokri—open access!
Outwardly Strong, Internally Brittle: Dissecting the MBS Regime
Mohammed Ayoob—free to read!
POLITICAL CONVULSIONS OVER PALESTINE
New Political Actors in Palestine: The Digital Efficacy of Gen Z
Abdalraheem S.H. Shobaki | Mahmoud S.H. Shobaki
Between Fatigue and Fear: West Bank Student Solidarity During the Gaza War
Mert Öztürk / Oqab Jabali
Explaining Saudi Arabia’s Inaction During the Gaza War: Why No Oil Embargo?
Mazaher Koruzhde | Eric Lob—free to read!
From Palestine Ally to Zionist Partner: India-Israel Relations, 2014–2025
Yücel Bulut—open access!
REBUILDING AND RECKONING IN SYRIA
A Heuristic Equation of Transformation, Justice, and Violence in Post-Assad Syria
Zeynep Banu Dalaman—free to read!
Federalism in Post-Assad Syria: Toward Durable Peace in a Pluralist Society
Dilan Okcuoglu—open access!
REGIONAL SOCIAL & ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE
Cryptocurrency Regulation in MENA: From Prohibition to Conditional Legalization
Bassant Hassib | Fatimah Ayad
Fallen Cedar: Lebanon’s Debt Diplomacy, 2015–2020
Kevin Rosier
Plastics Pollution in the Gulf Countries: Problems and Policy Solutions
Richard Rutter et al.
Constructing Social Cohesion in Qatar: National Vision, Strategy, and Constitution
Logan Cochrane et al.
THE ATTRACTIVE POWER OF EAST ASIA
Saudi Arabia’s Deepening Engagement with Asia-Pacific Nations
Ghulam Ali
China’s Hajj-Related Infrastructure Diplomacy with Saudi Arabia
Song Niu | Danyu Wang
Chinese-Arab Scientific Cooperation and Effectiveness
Minglian Long, Yijia Luo, Yi Zhang
BOOK REVIEWS
Lynch, America’s Middle East
Reviewed by Yasir Kuoti
Denoeux, Springborg, and Alaoui, Making Aid Work
Reviewed by Naomi Sakr
Momeni, The Presidential Difference and Iran’s Foreign Policy Under Khatami from 1997 to 2005
Reviewed by Mahmood Monshipouri
Bajoghli et al., How Sanctions Work
Reviewed by Bahram P. Kalviri
Donelli, Power Competition in the Red Sea
Reviewed by Riccardo Gasco
Brownlee and Ghiabi, States Without People
Reviewed by İlhan Bilici
Karam, The Middle East in 1958
Reviewed by Elifnur Düzsöz
Uysal, Class, Capital, State, and Late Development
Reviewed by Yusuf Murteza
Greenberg, The Long War of Ideas
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce