On 8 December 2024, after an eleven-day offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham from Idlib, opposition forces entered Damascus and Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow. More than five decades of Assad family rule, and a war that began in 2011 and killed hundreds of thousands of people, came to an end. For millions of Syrians it was a liberation.
In January 2025 Ahmed al-Sharaa was named transitional president. A Constitutional Declaration in March set a five-year transition, a transitional government replaced the caretaker cabinet, and a new People’s Assembly, chosen indirectly with one-third appointed by the president, first met in July 2026.
The transition has also been marked by violence: mass killings of mostly Alawite civilians on the coast in March 2025, clashes in Suwayda in July 2025, repeated Israeli strikes and incursions, and fighting with the SDF in early 2026, before the SDF announced its merger into the national army that August.
Internationally, Syria returned faster than almost anyone expected. Most sanctions were lifted in 2025, the UN removed al-Sharaa from its sanctions list, and in August 2026 the United States removed Syria from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The economy is moving again, with SWIFT reconnection, a new currency and billions in announced investment. But the World Bank puts reconstruction at about $216 billion, roughly ten times Syria’s 2024 economy, and poverty remains widespread.