Post-Assad Syria: The New Regime Is Already Silencing Dissenting Voices
- Damien Lefauconnier
- 6 déc. 2025
- 9 min de lecture
As the first elections since Assad’s fall have taken place and the new interim president holds a series of diplomatic meetings, journalists and activists in exile are denouncing a climate of repression, both in Syria and abroad, against those who criticize the new government. One of them fled the country in early November after being severely beaten and imprisoned. L'Impertinent was able to speak with him.
November 10, 2025, will go down in history as the day a Syrian president was welcomed to the White House. With a trimmed beard, a keen eye, and a smile on his lips, the man who ended the Assad dynasty received honors never before bestowed upon a leader of the country.
A year has passed since the fall of the regime, which had been ruled with an iron fist by the same family for more than five decades. And, internationally at least, the myth of the jihadist turned liberator—the hope for a stabilization of power after fourteen years of civil war—takes root a little more with every diplomatic meeting. While no one imagines that Syria will change with a wave of a magic wand, expectations are very much present: that the country will become a place worth visiting, that relations between communities will ease, and that the arrival of foreign investors will allow for the revival of a bloodied economy. And, at the very least, that Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who promises to hold a presidential election within a few years, will not replicate the regime of terror imposed for decades by the Assad clan. The testimonies of three journalists and freedom of expression activists cast a shadow over this horizon of possibilities.
“Al-Sharaa considers those who believe in democracy to be infidels”
November 21. Laith al-Zoubi, a leading figure in the anti-Assad opposition and a journalist (for Syrian, Saudi, and Egyptian media outlets, among others), shares a short video of the apartment where he has just found refuge, after being smuggled out of Syria a few days earlier. A sofa, a bed; the shutters appear to be closed. For his safety, his new host country cannot be named. Expelled from Egypt last January after demanding that the Syrian consul in Cairo replace the Baathist flag with that of the Syrian revolution, the man spent only eight months in his country after twelve years of forced exile. According to his account, Laith Al-Zoubi was arrested on September 21 at his family home in the town of Sahnaya (near Damascus) for publicly criticizing the new regime. “I didn’t think they’d come to get me at home. They just told me, ‘Take your passport and your ID card’. This is the new Syria; many activists are detained for no reason, and you have no right to a lawyer,”he asserts. He claims to have spent a week in prison, in solitary confinement.
“On the first day, they really beat me up for at least forty minutes with sticks and pipes—on my back, on my chest—while calling me all sorts of names, like ‘son of a bitch,’ and so on,” explains the activist, contacted via a messaging app. A few days earlier, he had shared photos on social media of his battered body, covered in massive bruises.
Laith Al-Zoubi claims he was deprived of food and water for two days. “On the third day, they told me I wouldn’t be released unless I signed a document stating that I would not criticize this government, nor the Minister of the Interior (Anas Khattab, a former member of the Islamic State in Iraq, and later, in Syria, of the al-Nusra Front and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), nor any minister. I agreed on the seventh day, and they let me return home,”, the journalist testified.
Laith Al-Zoubi was expelled from Syria by the authorities in 2013. Witnessing, from his exile in Egypt, the seizure of power by the founder of the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, he claims he never believed Ahmed Al-Sharaa would transform into a respectable politician. “I call him the Serpent, because he appears gentle on the outside, but he has venom in his teeth. To me, he is still a jihadist and will remain one. He considers those who believe in democracy to be infidels, that they are against Islam,” he asserts.
“We have gone from a secular dictatorship to an Islamic dictatorship”
Laith Al-Zoubi believes that the twelve years of rule by the armed group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham in Idlib province—of which Al-Sharaa was the leader until a successor was appointed—are proof that, little by little, the government will intensify its pressure on the civilian population. “They have carried out numerous executions, for example of people who had engaged in extramarital sex. They have also attacked battalions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA, a revolutionary-style army that fought loyalist forces and jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and HTS during the civil war). They were against the revolution. “I think that today, Al-Sharaa is manipulating Western countries, just as Assad did. We’ve gone from a secular dictatorship to an Islamic dictatorship,” he believes. “This man is very dangerous. As early as 2015, they attacked the Druze minority in Idlib, as well as Sunnis who were against Assad. “Before, we had no problem with the Alawite and Druze minorities,”, says Laith Al-Zoubi.
The meeting with Vladimir Putin—an ally of Assad, whom Al-Sharaa visited in Moscow last October—is also, for the activist, a very bad sign for the future. “Do you know what the Russians did to us? They bombed us. I lost two cousins in airstrikes (starting in 2015, the Russian military supported the loyalist army). Soon, Al-Sharaa will attack the Kurds, the integration agreement (for the Kurds within Syrian society) will be scrapped, and he will use the tribes and Islamic State fighters to do so,”, he asserts.
The journalist is full of examples that, in his view, will turn Syria into “a regime like Iran’s.” One such example is the arrest of lawyer Mazen Arja last June (an event reported by the NGO Syrian Network for Human Rights), “who was detained and tortured for over sixty days while trying to find a political solution with Druze militants. “He, too, was forced to sign a document stating that he would not criticize the new government,” Al-Zoubi asserts. Or, for that matter, the appointment to a government-affiliated “committee for civil peace” of Fadi Sakr, former head of the “National Defense Forces” militia, which fought for the Syrian regime throughout the civil war. A man accused of war crimes and released last June.
The voice message sent last October by his father to Hazem Dakel is unequivocal: he must “stop supporting the Druze pigs” or else he and his family will be murdered, turned “into kebabs.” When contacted, this Syrian exile in Sweden agreed to be interviewed after the information circulated among the diaspora and on the internet.
“My family lives in the province of Idlib; one day they (pro-government militiamen) came and made these threats. My father was very afraid and told them he didn’t share my views,” explains Hazem Dakel, whose supposed offense is having spoken out publicly on social media. “After the atrocities against the Alawites and in the Suwayda region, I was among those who condemned the crimes against Syrians. We had all seen the videos of systematic abuses: the murders of young men, young women being abducted, elderly religious figures being humiliated. “How can someone who calls themselves a ‘revolutionary’ justify this kind of behavior?” asks the journalist, whose online posts mostly cover Swedish news.
“I took the threat very seriously; I’ve cut back on my social media activity and am more careful about what I say. But it wasn’t just one threat: I’ve received dozens of similar messages, insults, harassment, and explicit death threats. Many of my colleagues are targeted in the same way (he gives us names that we will not disclose, ed.). A pro-government Syrian journalist living in the Netherlands frequently takes screenshots of my posts and publishes them with comments like ‘your opinion?’,” he explains.
Kidnapped in Idlib province in 2014, the journalist, who worked for Syrian television and print media, managed to flee with his family and is among the 1.3 million Syrians who have found refuge in European countries. He now works for Swedish public broadcasting and has no plans to return to his home country. “Many Syrians living in Europe are very concerned. They understand very well that the new regime is not necessarily more peaceful, more democratic, or more tolerant than the Assads. The threats to civil rights, minorities, journalists, and opposition voices are still very real. They have simply changed form,” says Hazem Dakel.
“Even outside Syria, fear, polarization, and networks of intimidation continue to haunt us”
“The whole world is celebrating Assad’s fall, but many of us fear that authoritarianism, extremism, and political violence have not disappeared. The fact that this government is led by someone with a jihadist past should raise serious questions,” the journalist asserts. “For the first time in sixty years, a Sunni leader is governing Syria. Some say: ‘Yes, they aren’t good people, but they’re like us, they resemble us’ (about 75% of the Syrian population is Sunni; the Assad family comes from the Alawite minority, a branch of Shia Islam). Others say: ‘What do you expect him to do? He inherited a destroyed country,” he explains.
Hazem Dakel asserts that very real pressure is being exerted, outside Syrian territory, on members of the diaspora, including a Syrian NGO based abroad (when contacted, the organization avoided sensitive questions; we are withholding its identity). “This illustrates the level of intimidation and the hostile environment surrounding independent civic actions and any criticism of the new authorities. In theory, Syrians in exile can speak freely about current developments. But in practice, no—not without consequences. Even outside Syria, fear, polarization, and networks of intimidation follow us,” says Hazem Dakel.
Met in France, Tarek (the first name has been changed) admits that he has struggled with his voluntary disappearance from social media since the fall of the Assad regime. During the civil war, and despite receiving incessant death threats, he had continued to remain active in the public sphere—working with NGOs, journalists, and media outlets, and speaking at conferences. The journalist, who has collaborated with numerous media outlets in the Middle East, now speaks of an “invisible threat” at an unprecedented level.
“Some Sunnis are calling for the killing of moderate Sunnis, and now they have French citizenship”
“You can feel this threat, but you can’t touch it. Many Syrians and journalists are afraid. Even here in Paris, some Sunnis are calling for the killing of moderate Sunnis like me, Alawites, Druze, and Kurds. And now they have French citizenship. I’m thinking, for example, of (name withheld, ed.) an interpreter working in French government agencies: he spreads hate speech against moderate Sunnis, Druze, Kurds, and Alawites, and he lives in Paris. It’s possible that someone might come up to me on the street to hit me, to punish me,” explains the journalist.
Tarek fears that the new ruler of Damascus will lock Syria into a new dictatorship, copying the power structure that allowed the two successive dictators to remain unchallenged. “Hafez Al-Assad’s brother, Rifaat al-Assad, controlled the army. His nephew, Rami Makhlouf, controlled the economy. Now two brothers of Jolani/Al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the nom de guerre of Ahmed Al-Sharaa) are in the government; they control the economy, investments, and the affairs of the Presidency (Maher Al-Sharaa is Secretary-General of the Presidency; Hazem Al-Sharaa, according to a Reuters investigation, is reportedly in charge of an economic committee tasked with steering the restructuring of the Syrian economy). One of his cousins and brothers-in-law is mayor of Damascus (Maher Marwan. These claims were confirmed by journalist Ali Al-Karmli on the independent Syrian media outlet 7al.net. Al-Karmli adds that Marwan is suspected of acts of torture). “So it’s the family; it’s exactly the same phenomenon,” Tarek asserts.
The journalist also cites a third brother of the interim president: Jamal Al-Sharaa, whose name appears in a Reuters investigation. Before being barred from commercial activity last August by Ahmed Al-Sharaa himself, Jamal reportedly ran “various businesses, including import-export and tourism companies,” for several months. He “had become a fixture in the lobbies and restaurants of high-end hotels, where he would arrive in a black Mercedes S-Class sedan with tinted windows and no license plates,” the news agency reports.
“You can’t trust someone who belonged to that damn Al-Qaeda for twenty years”
Tarek is keen to debunk the myth of the happy return of a million Syrians (according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR) to the country since Assad’s fall. “And where are they returning from? From Lebanon, from Turkey, where they face racism and oppression. I’ve been in touch with Syrians living in European countries. Moderate people who wanted to put their qualifications and experience to use. They were turned away and threatened. Those who return home realize the extreme poverty people are living in, and that corruption is still rampant at the highest levels,” he says.
“Syrians are seething because they realize that transitional justice has been forgotten (notably to prosecute Assad’s accomplices). Some support Jolani, not because they like him, but because they’re afraid Assad will return. To me, it’s a Sleeping Beauty (sleeping beauty, a fairy tale, ed.).
Al-Sharaa might be a new Assad. You can’t trust someone who was part of that damn Al-Qaeda for twenty years,” Tarek asserts.
In early October, the first parliamentary elections since Bashar Al-Assad’s fall were held. An indirect election (via electoral colleges) in which one-third of the seats were filled at the discretion of the interim president. In some provinces (Suwayda and a Kurdish-controlled area), the election was postponed or canceled, leaving 21 of 210 seats vacant.
According to the UNHCR, more than 4.5 million Syrians still live abroad. They did not participate in this election, which was intended to be a first step toward democracy after more than fifty years of dictatorship.
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