From Damascus to Kandahar: Change or Repetition?
The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s nearly three-decade grip on Damascus has jolted the geopolitical chessboard. Into the vacuum steps Ahmad al-Shara—better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani—the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Once branded a terrorist by Washington, al-Shara is now being cast by the West, along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as a “harbinger of change.”
The irony is hard to miss. Until recently, HTS was a pariah, formally listed by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization. Today, the group’s leader is being groomed as Syria’s future. His sudden rise says less about Syria’s quest for stability and far more about the way outside powers recycle old solutions in new packaging.
Déjà vu in the Middle East
Al-Shara is not the first jihadist to inherit a state. A glance eastward to Afghanistan reveals a telling parallel. After two decades of war and nation-building, Washington and its allies could not do better than to replace Mullah Omar’s Taliban with Hibatullah Akhundzada’s Taliban.
This is the pattern: external interventions topple one order only to empower another equally fraught. Extremist ideology remains intact, instability endures, and only the names change. In Syria, Assad’s departure may look like revolution. In reality, it risks becoming repetition.
The Euphoria and the Vacuum
When the Assad clan fled and al-Shara entered Damascus uncontested, celebrations erupted. For Syrians weary of decades of brutality, even a former al-Qaeda operative seemed preferable. Liberation, however paradoxical, outweighed moral contradictions—at least in the short term.
But the real shock was geopolitical. Assad’s ouster meant the rollback of Iran and Russia, both of which had invested heavily—militarily and politically—in his survival. Yet Moscow has not fully left the stage. Damascus’s new foreign minister was quickly received in Moscow by Sergei Lavrov, and even granted an audience with Vladimir Putin. Russia still wants a stake in Syria, if not to regain its grip, then at least to shield its interests. Al-Shara, for his part, must now dance between patrons.
A High-Stakes Balancing Act
His challenge is stark. Can Syria avoid becoming the next Iraq—hollowed out by the tug-of-war between Washington and Tehran? Iraq’s fate is a cautionary tale: external rivalries feeding domestic fragility until the state itself unravels.
Al-Shara knows he cannot govern on ideology alone. He must strike a precarious balance: engaging Moscow, placating Tehran, wooing Arab capitals, and keeping the West onside—all while promising Syrians sovereignty and stability. It is a high-stakes gamble, with little room for error.
Lessons From Kabul
The new Syrian regime has not gone unnoticed in Kabul. In 2021, HTS fighters in Idlib waved Taliban flags, hailing the U.S. withdrawal as a model. Their statement was revealing: the Taliban’s “victory” was not just Afghanistan’s—it was an inspiration for jihadists elsewhere.
For Western policymakers, the message should be sobering. These movements are not isolated silos; they watch, learn, and borrow from each other’s playbooks.
Meanwhile, the Taliban have survived—and even thrived—despite sanctions, pressure, and internal rifts between Kandahar’s hardliners and Kabul’s more pragmatic operators like Sirajuddin Haqqani. Between 2021 and 2024, they logged more than 1,300 public diplomatic engagements across 80 countries. China led the way, positioning itself as the Taliban’s anchor, followed closely by Iran and Turkey.
Al-Shara’s Syria has already gone further, boasting over 1,500 declared diplomatic contacts, with Turkey and Qatar leading. The numbers suggest a shared ambition: to normalize themselves through sheer engagement, regardless of their pasts.
Pragmatism and Paradoxes
Like the Taliban, HTS may find that pragmatism buys breathing room. Central Asian states chose commerce over confrontation, engaging the Taliban in exchange for border security. Yet Afghanistan’s other frontiers show the paradoxes of jihadist rule.
Pakistan, once the Taliban’s ideological cradle, is now one of its most bitter critics. Kabul’s refusal to rein in Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has pushed tensions to the brink. Ironically, Islamabad may have had steadier borders under the governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani than under the movement it helped install.
The lesson is clear: even ideologically aligned movements fracture when national interests collide. And if Damascus becomes another Kabul, the costs will not be Syria’s alone.
Tehran, Damascus, and the Taliban: Pragmatism Amid Paradox
On its western frontier, the Taliban face Iran—a state that neither supports them ideologically nor politically, but is pragmatic enough to recognize their relevance. Since the September 11 attacks, the U.S. invasion that followed, and George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech in January 2002, Tehran has cultivated a functional relationship with the Taliban. For both sides, survival in a hostile geopolitical neighborhood demanded it.
Today, the American withdrawal from Afghanistan is seen in Tehran as a strategic windfall. With U.S. troops gone, Iran no longer worries about Western militarization on its eastern flank just as tensions with Israel intensify to the west. The shift allows Tehran to reallocate resources where it matters most.
Bargaining With Power
Internationally, the Taliban have been just as pragmatic. The Haqqani network has kept Hibatullah Akhundzada and his Kandahar-based clerical circle at arm’s length from foreign policy, leveraging security guarantees as a bargaining chip with China, Russia, the United States, and Europe.