Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is widely hailed as an Islamist radical gone moderate. The plaudits reflect not the real strength of Syrian democracy but international players’ belief that he can keep order.

You might think that Syria had entered a new era. Speaking to the United Nations’ General Assembly on September 24 — the first Syrian head of state to do so in six decades — interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa was widely hailed as a new leader addressing the country’s structural problems. Yet internally, the picture is much more contradictory.

October 5 saw the country’s first elections, following decades of dictatorship and fourteen years of war. Yet the process remained under the tight control of the new authorities, with political organizations banned and only individual

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