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Original article: https://theconversation.com/syria-doubts-increase-over-new-regimes-commitment-to-womens-rights-and-inclusivity-249305
The capture of Damascus by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the collapse of the regime of Bashar al-Assad last December sent shockwaves through Syria’s political landscape, heralding an unprecedented shift in power. The rise to power of HTS, formerly the Al-Nusra Front, is a litmus test for assessing whether militant Islamist organisations can evolve through state-building.
At the heart of transforming Syria must be the development and safeguarding of women’s rights. This will prove a revealing lens through which to measure the sincerity of HTS’s professed reforms.
But so far a stark disparity has emerged between their rhetoric of inclusivity and reality. This appears to involve perpetuating entrenched institutional practices of patriarchal conservatism.
After seizing Damascus, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa took pains to project an image of inclusive governance. He claimed: “Syria is a nation of many identities and beliefs, and our duty is to ensure they coexist peacefully within a just system.” He highlighted that 60% of university students in the city of Idlib are women, and portrayed HTS as a moderate force that values women’s roles in society.
Yet interviews with senior regime figures as well as policy decisions and governance practices expose these statements as hollow. Instead they suggest a deep-seated commitment to hardline religious conservatism.
The new administration’s official spokesperson, Obaida Arnaout, said recently that appointing a woman to a role in the ministry of defence would not “align with her essence, her biological and psychological nature”. This was framed as acknowledging women’s suitability for other roles, but it ultimately reflects a deeply conservative, patriarchal attitude.
Likewise, the appointment of Aisha al-Dibs to lead the office for women’s affairs initially appeared to signal progress. But her first few statements suggested a regressive agenda.
Blaming civil society organisations for “rising divorce rates”, she vowed that “the constitution will be based on Islamic Sharia”. She added that she would “not allow space for those who disagree with my ideology”.
Al-Dibs’s vision of empowerment appears to be rigidly conservative. It effectively reduces women’s roles to family, husband and domestic priorities.
These two examples highlight in HTS what appears to be a strategy of commandeering state institutions to enforce a radicalised version of Islam, a key trait of political Jihadism.
The new HTS-backed justice minister, Shadi al-Waisi epitomises this trend. In 2015, as a judge in the northern city of Idlib – at the time under the control of the Al-Nusra Front – he was recorded on video ordering women to be executed for adultery. An HTS representative has since dismissed this as “a phase we have surpassed”. But Al-Waisi still argues that since most people in Syria are Muslim, religious Sharia law should take priority.
As far as women’s role in the judiciary is concerned, a statement from Arnaout casts doubt on whether they will be allowed to continue to act as judges, a hard-won right under the Assad regime. In 2017, 30% of judicial posts were occupied by women.
But in an interview with Lebanese TV channel Al-Jadeed in December 2024, Arnaout said: “Certainly, women have the right to learn and be educated in any field, whether in education, law, the judiciary, or other fields, but the job has to suit her nature.” She added: “For a woman to assume a judicial position, this could be examined by experts, and it is too early to talk about it.”
Education policy has also become a key battleground. The new administration has introduced sweeping reforms. These include dropping evolution and big bang theory from science and changing the history curriculum to reflect a more Islamic slant.
Education minister, Nazir Al-Qadri, has downplayed these revisions as “small deletions and corrections”. But the changes reveal a deliberate effort to embed conservative radical Salafi ideology.
Beyond the classroom, HTS’s hardline policies pervade public life. Women are segregated on buses, strict dress codes are heavily propagated. Meanwhile building new mosques is taking precedence over rebuilding war-torn infrastructure.
HTS’s unwillingness to embrace genuine pluralism suggest the regime is more interested in rebranding its ideology than in reforming it.
Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs/UPI Credit: UPI/Alamy Live News
Diplomatic promises and realities on the ground
While determining how to engage with the HTS regime, other countries need to be aware of this. They must act in the knowledge that rhetoric of inclusivity appears – at present at least – to be simply that: rhetoric. Firm pressure from international stakeholders such as the United Nations will be needed to hold HTS accountable to a transition to a fully inclusive new system of government.
A conference held in Paris on February 13 and attended by representatives of a broad range of Arab and European countries underscored the international commitment to this principle. Delegates produced a joint statement that called for: “A peaceful, credible, orderly and swift inclusive transition … so that a representative and inclusive governance that represents all components of Syrian society and includes women from the onset can be formed.”
The explicit mention of women and inclusive representation in this statement stands in stark contrast to the reality of the transitional process. Just a day earlier, on February 12, the appointed preparatory committee for the upcoming National Dialogue Conference, which will thrash out a new “political identity” for Syria, revealed the limitations of this commitment.
While the seven-member committee includes two women, five members have strong ties to Islamist movements and three of the seven are directly linked to HTS.
The committee’s composition notably fails to represent Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious communities, with no Kurdish, Alawite, or Druze representatives. This raises questions about the genuine commitment to inclusive governance in the transition process.
The contradiction between HTS rhetoric and its actions on diversity and inclusivity, especially when it comes to respecting women’s rights, is not just a domestic issue but a critical test of its global standing.
The new regime’s treatment of women and its enforcement of conservative ideology in violation of legal and human rights expose its broader intentions. Failing to address these signs risks condemning Syria to a repressive future.