Ahmed al-Sharaa is using Syria’s diplomatic revival to tighten authoritarian control and cement one-man rule at home.

In his maiden address to the United Nations General Assembly, Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, urged the international community to lift sanctions. The appearance itself was historic: no Syrian head of state had taken the UNGA podium in nearly six decades, since Nureddin al-Atassi in 1967. Al-Sharaa used the week to stage a whirlwind of bilaterals with world leaders, selling the moment as the relaunch of Syrian diplomacy. Since taking office in December, he has pursued exactly that—an energetic campaign to recast Syria’s image abroad.

The early returns are conspicuous. In July, the United States removed Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—the organization al-Sharaa once commanded—from its list of “foreign terrorist organizations.” In May, he flew to Paris to meet French President Emmanuel Macron, then conferred with senior Saudi officials. The Arab League has likewise extended a warmer welcome to Damascus. Taken together, these gestures have been marketed as the first steps in Syria’s reintegration into global affairs.

But the framing is misleading. The real project is narrower and more personal: to validate Ahmed al-Sharaa as Syria’s singular leader. The regime is chasing external recognition precisely because it can be converted into domestic dominance over a country still fractured by geography, loyalties, and war.

The objective is as old as authoritarian statecraft: convince every ethnic and religious community that this order is permanent—and that their interests are best served by accommodating it. International recognition, in this logic, becomes a lever for monopolizing power. Recent decisions make the strategy plain.

Al-Sharaa has announced parliamentary “elections” in which committees of his choosing will select two-thirds of the chamber. The government dismantled the old police force and is rapidly expanding Idlib’s General Security apparatus, recruiting at breakneck speed. Priority goes to young men from the northern provinces of Idlib, Hama, and Aleppo, where HTS’s support base is deepest. Anas Khatab, the former administrative director of Jabhat al-Nusra (HTS’s antecedent), has been tapped to lead the General Intelligence Directorate.

Another pillar of consolidation is demographic engineering through citizenship. Foreign militants aligned with HTS—roughly 20 to 30 percent of its forces—are reportedly receiving Syrian citizenship and being folded into the military and civil administration. Meanwhile, the judiciary has been purged; countless judges, notably women, have been removed not for professional misconduct but based on minority identity. Cabinet formation is opaque. Al-Sharaa’s brother, Maher, now serves as health minister; key portfolios in defense, foreign affairs, and the interior have gone to trusted loyalists—Murhaf Abu Kasra, Asaad al-Shaibani, and Alem Kiddie. The result is hyper-centralization: real decision-making confined to a circle of five or six around the president.

At the same time, Damascus is leaning into sectarian politics to cultivate what officials call a “homogeneous popular support base” among Arab Sunnis. A narrative of Mazlumiya Sunniya—Sunni victimhood—has been amplified to rally disparate Sunni constituencies behind the government, despite the community’s deep social, political, and regional divides. The new authorities have concluded—swiftly—that sectarianism can be an effective instrument for subduing areas that remain resistant to central control.

The consequences are as predictable as they are corrosive. Sectarian rhetoric and violence have spiked, first targeting Alawites and then spreading to Druze communities. Security forces that nominally answer to the state act with militia-like impunity, especially toward minorities. And when intimidation fails—as with the Kurds—the regime turns to outright coercion and blackmail. The message is blunt: accept assimilation on our terms or face pressure by other means.

Al-Sharaa’s public line is that foreign militaries should keep out of Syria. He regularly condemns Israeli strikes in the south as violations of sovereignty—a stance that, on the surface, is hard to dispute. Yet his own statements betray a striking double standard.

In an interview with Turkey’s Milliyet on September 19, al-Sharaa suggested that Ankara might consider a military operation against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces if they do not fully integrate into the Syrian army by December, pursuant to a March agreement between Damascus and the SDF. Rather than denouncing Turkish interference in an internal Syrian matter, he floated it as leverage against his Kurdish opponents. A leader who courts foreign intervention against his own citizens forfeits any moral standing to lecture others about territorial sovereignty.

In Damascus’s telling, Turkish action is a “national security” issue when Ankara is the actor, but violations of sovereignty are recognized only when Israel is involved. The inconsistency is glaring—and self-defeating. The same tactic helped corrode the legitimacy of the Bashar al-Assad regime, culminating in his exile in Moscow.

Systematically sidelining minority communities—Christians, Druze, Kurds—would lock Syria into long-term instability and drain whatever legitimacy the new order seeks to build. If the aim is national cohesion, the path runs in the opposite direction: toward power-sharing, transparent institutions, and an inclusive politics capable of accommodating fundamental disagreement.

For now, the regime is pursuing a single, ruthless objective: to consolidate control. That choice subverts the democratic aspirations of Syrians across the country and strips meaning from the rituals of elections, cabinets, and courts. If international interlocutors reward this trajectory with recognition and aid, they will not be stabilizing Syria; they will be underwriting a hardening autocracy.

The condition for engagement is clear enough: a genuine course correction. Short of that, the international community should withhold endorsement of Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government—a regime increasingly indistinguishable from the one that preceded it, and no more capable of delivering a durable peace.