Forthcoming in MER issue 314.
In January, I returned to Damascus after 14 years in exile. The last time I had stood in the city’s streets, towering statues of Hafez al-Asad and Bashar al-Asad loomed over the squares. Following the collapse of Bashar Al-Asad’s rule in December of 2024, those statues now lay in fragments—some torn down, others left to decay.
The leader of Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmed al-Sharaa, addresses a crowd at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on December 8, 2024. Abdulaziz Ketaz/AFP via Getty Images
Turning a corner, I caught sight of a new Ministry of Defense recruitment banner hanging in the Umayyad Square. It featured a group of faceless soldiers dressed in black, rifles slung across their chests. Beneath the image, read the words: “To be Part of Syria Security: Enlist Now.” Further down, another poster from the Interior Ministry issued a similar call: “Protect your homeland. Enlist now.”
Gone were the omnipresent images of Asad. In their place stood a new kind of masculine authority—collective, masked and omnipotent. The streets that once celebrated Baathist militarism—parades, victory speeches, statues of the eternal leader—are now filled with anonymous enforcers: Security forces associated with the new transitional government’s administration are present in all main city squares in Syria.
In my book, Romanticizing Masculinity in Baathist Syria: Gender, Identity, and Ideology, I wrote about the hegemonic masculinity of Asad’s Syria. Hegemonic masculinity is a term coined by R. W. Connell to describe the dominant form of masculinity that sustains patriarchal power by positioning certain masculinities as culturally ideal while subordinating both women and other men who do not conform to this ideal. In the Syrian context, this masculinity was deeply entwined with Baathist hyper-militarism, state violence and the performance of national loyalty.
During the rule of Hafez al-Asad, beginning in 1971, the leader sculpted the Syrian nation in his own image—a father-commander whose authority was both intimate and absolute. Masculinity became synonymous with obedience, endurance and self-sacrifice, with the Syrian male body imagined as the site of martyrdom and duty. His son, Bashar al-Asad, inherited this militarized vision of manhood, rebranding it through the affective aesthetics of romanticized leadership—less austere, but no less rooted in patriarchal power. In both cases, submission to the ruler was framed as an extension of the national body itself: To be a man was to serve, suffer and die for the homeland.
The book also explored how alternative or subordinate masculinities—queer, dissident or cowardly men—were systematically erased or punished. Through visual culture, military training and the cult of martyrdom, the Baathist regime produced not just soldiers, but gendered political subjects. This hegemonic masculinity shaped everything from school textbooks to military parades, encoding the Asad family’s rule into the very fabric of male identity in Syria.
Revisiting this work and questions of how masculinity is performed in light of the regime’s collapse helps illustrate how state authority is constructed and maintained in post-Asad Syria. Today, the Baathist hegemonic masculinity has fractured. New masculinities are visible and contested—some emerging from the ruins of the old order, others forged in the heat of revolutionary struggle. The collapse of Baathist structures, however, has not led to a rupture in gendered power. Rather it has led to the emergence of a Sunni-centric masculine order—one in which sect and masculinity become mutually reinforcing pillars of political authority, particularly within the transitional government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
From Emasculation to Militarized Survival
For many opposition fighters who took part in the war that began following the Syrian uprisings in 2011 joining an armed group was more than an act of resistance—it was an act of reclamation. Personal loss, trauma and humiliation had driven them to take up arms. This emotional terrain gave rise to what I term grievous masculinity: a masculinity forged through wounded honor and the pursuit of redemption.
In recent interviews with fighters reflecting on their experiences in the war, they explicitly described humiliation as a key driver behind their decision to take up arms. Fighters expressed that their masculinity had been ruptured by events such as the arrest of a father, the assault or public shaming of a sister or mother or their own perceived failure to act in moments of threat. For many, joining an armed group became a way to reclaim honor and restore manhood. As one fighter told me: “They arrested my father. They humiliated my mother. When I stood there, unable to protect them, I was not a man. I swore I would never feel that weakness again.” Another, who joined the Free Syrian Army in 2013, recalled: “I had never held a weapon before the war. But the first time I fired, the first time I saw the body fall… something changed. I knew I could never go back. I had become a fighter.”
These experiences of emasculation—failing to shield one’s family, witnessing women being dragged from homes in nightgowns or being publicly beaten by police—formed recurring motifs in the narratives of those who joined the armed struggle.
Another described the shame of hiding while regime forces slapped his sister and threatened to take her as punishment for his absence. “I felt like a coward. I felt I had no right to be called a man,” he told me. These experiences of emasculation—failing to shield one’s family, witnessing women being dragged from homes in nightgowns or being publicly beaten by police—formed recurring motifs in the narratives of those who joined the armed struggle.
After Asad’s fall, this sense of humiliation and grievance has played out in the actions of former resistance fighters in their dealings with the former regime. Following the collapse of Asad’s forces, for example, victorious opposition factions celebrated their triumph by ridiculing their former oppressors. The regime’s army, once perceived as an unbreakable force, was mocked with new names: “Jaysh Abu Shihata” (The Army of Sandals), and “Jaysh Abu Kulthun” (The Army of Underwear), both references meant to emasculate and degrade Asad’s soldiers. These nicknames were more than insults. They were an assertion of dominance, a symbolic stripping away of the power once held by the Baathist military machine. The forces that had long enforced submission now found themselves publicly ridiculed, their masculinity questioned and diminished.
On my recent visit to Damascus, I met former regime commanders—men who had once stood at the pinnacle of Assad’s masculine hierarchy. Uniformed, armed, unquestioned, they had embodied the Baathist model of power. After the regime’s fall, the new leadership announced a nationwide reconciliation process, opening reconciliation centers across major Syrian cities. Former regime officers were instructed to surrender their weapons and hand over their military IDs. They were told they would be contacted later to receive new documents formalizing their defection status—though no clear information was provided about whether they would be reinstated, monitored or abandoned. This process left many in a state of limbo: neither enemies nor fully integrated citizens.
Not all former regime officers accepted their defeat with resignation. Some, deeply complicit in the regime’s most brutal operations, knew they had no future in a reconciled Syria. On March 6, 2025, remnants of Assad’s security apparatus—referred to as the fulul—initiated a series of coordinated attacks in Syria’s coastal regions, including Latakia, Tartus and Hama.
Socks mocking former president Bashar al-Asad and the regime forces for sale in Salhiyya, Damascus on January 29, 2025. Rahaf Aldoughli.
The attack sent shockwaves through Damascus, triggering immediate calls for retaliation. Mosques and city squares became platforms for mass mobilization, with fiery speeches urging people to rise against the remnants of the fulul. The term fulul, borrowed from the Egyptian post-Mubarak lexicon to describe the old regime, is new to Syria’s political discourse. It emerged after the fall of Asad to describe former regime commanders with histories of atrocities who had repositioned themselves in the war’s shifting power dynamics. More than mere remnants of the old order, the fulul had embedded themselves in illicit economies, leveraging smuggling, extortion and war profiteering to maintain influence.
In the days that followed the attack, undisciplined armed groups, some claiming affiliation with the new leadership, launched a wave of revenge-driven assaults, killing up to 1,169 civilians, among them 103 women and 52 children. 218 public security personnel were also killed during these events, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Just as the remnants of Asad’s forces framed their resistance in terms of survival, these opposition militias framed their actions as necessary for securing Syria’s future. The logic of militarized masculinity has not disappeared. It has shifted actors, giving rise to new cycles of sectarian violence.
Revolutionary Masculinity
If the collapse of the Baathist order shattered the hegemonic masculinity of the state, the victors of the revolution did not merely dismantle the old structures of power, they replaced them with a new vision of masculinity forged during the years of armed revolutionary struggle. In this emerging order, the revolutionary fighter is the archetype of manhood. His authority is not inherited like that of the Baathist officer. It is earned through endurance, combat and ideological commitment. As one central commander in the new ruling security forces put it after interim president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, announced the integration of armed groups in his victory speech on January 27, 2024, “We did not take power; we earned it. This is not just a government. It is our revolution. Our struggle. To be a man in Syria today is to be a revolutionary. There is no separation.”
This sentiment encapsulates how hegemonic masculinity in post-Asad Syria is now fused with the revolution itself. Unlike the old model, where hegemonic masculinity was demonstrated through submission to the state, the new masculinity must be proven through acts of resistance, participation in battle and a willingness to die for the cause. One opposition fighter expressed this sentiment in stark terms: “This rifle is not just a weapon. It is me. It is my dignity, my revolution. Without it, I am nothing.” Through the revolutionary struggle, masculinity was defined by these fighters, not by the hierarchical structures of a rigid state. Masculinity was rather synonymous with survival, with the ability to endure suffering and with the willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice.
This revolutionary masculinity is not only about individual valor, it is deeply embedded in the collective experience of fighters. The shared suffering of war has fostered a new kind of masculine kinship, one that can supersede tribal, ideological or even personal ambitions. Fighters refer to one another as ikhwa fi al-dam (brothers in blood), reinforcing a sense of belonging that is both emotional and existential. Drawing from my interviews with fighters in northern Syria, it became clear that many see themselves as more than just political actors. They are guardians of the revolution, its protectors and in some cases, its only remaining legitimacy. One commander reflected on this role: “The revolution is not over. We may have won Damascus, but our war is not finished. We are here to make sure it is never betrayed.”
This conviction highlights how revolutionary masculinity extends beyond the battlefield into governance, justice and everyday interactions. Those who fought and bled for the revolution see themselves as its rightful stewards.
But this model of masculinity—built on competition, personal sacrifice and armed legitimacy—carries its own risks. Fighters who once operated in loosely coordinated factions, driven by battlefield brotherhood and ideological fervor, now struggle to navigate a system where political survival depends on allegiance to a single faction. Upon becoming interim president, Al-Sharaa, formerly the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), sought to consolidate control by integrating various armed factions into the Ministry of Defense. While full-scale clashes have not yet erupted between former rivals, deep-seated grievances persist among fighters—particularly those from the Syrian National Army (SNA), who now find themselves under the authority of HTS figures they once distrusted. The process of military integration has been characterized by a lack of professionalism, an opaque chain of command and the prioritization of loyalty over competence.
Fighters who once operated in loosely coordinated factions, driven by battlefield brotherhood and ideological fervor, now struggle to navigate a system where political survival depends on allegiance to a single faction.
A former SNA fighter, now serving in the Ministry of Defense, voiced his unease in an interview in February 2025: “We fought together against Asad. But some of us fought for Syria, and others fought for their own power. HTS took control by force, and now they tell us to trust them? How can we forget what they did?” Another rebel-turned-administrator in Damascus described this tension, “We fought together, but now we are fighting for influence. Everyone believes they deserve to lead because they sacrificed the most. But war does not teach you how to govern.”
The process of military integration has been marked by opacity and favoritism, reinforcing a militarized hierarchy of trust. Positions within the new security apparatus have been allocated based on loyalty to HTS rather than professional expertise, with senior military positions even being given to non-Syrians, exacerbating resentment among former opposition fighters who had envisioned a more pluralistic military command. Many fighters still view their weapons as personal guarantees of security in an unstable order. One Ministry of Defense official admitted in an interview, “My rifle is my only guarantee of safety, and its price has been paid in blood. I’ll serve under the new government, but I will never give up my weapon. After 14 years of revolution, I won’t accept being sidelined or betrayed.” These interviews suggest that Syria’s transition remains precarious.
This broader crisis of trust and legitimacy is also a crisis of masculinity. In the evolving choreography of Syrian power, al-Sharaa’s own performance of masculinity operates through layered and shifting codes—military, religious and civic. His staged entrance into the Aleppo Citadel after the fall of the regime in December 2024, clad in military dress, drew from both historical and cinematic imagery of the “conquering man”—a masculinist iconography evoking Baathist aesthetics and Islamic conquests. The adoption of the title al-Fātiḥ (the Conqueror), in addition to referencing territorial victory, invoked a symbolic dominance over fragmented masculine claims to power.
This performance extended into Damascus, where on January 27, al-Sharaa stood before armed factions—including Baathist-affiliated ones—to theatrically announce their dissolution. That moment re-centered legitimacy not in a party or ideology but in his singular male body. The optics of this event—his language, his attire, his posture—did more than project authority; they redefined sovereignty through gender. The ruler became the man who could disarm other men, absorb their legitimacy and overwrite past masculinities with his own.
This rebranding continued through high-profile international interviews, where al-Sharaa presented himself as a moderate Damascene Sunni—calm, technocratic, suit-clad and clean-shaven. In a domestication of his past as a Jihadist leader, in these interviews he exhibits a strategic moderation. His masculinity remains anchored in public religiosity—mosque-building, Quranic recitation in universities and, most strikingly, the March 31 Eid prayer held in the Square of the Unknown Soldier—a space once synonymous with Baathist-military nationalism. This act reclaimed a former regime icon, embedding it in a new religiously coded, Sunni-centric sovereignty.
Al-Sharaa’s hybrid masculinity—militant yet diplomatic, pious yet modern, Sunni but not Salafi—is not merely stylistic. It is a calculated reterritorialization of masculinity itself, designed to address multiple audiences at once: global, domestic, civilian and military. Like the post-revolutionary Cuban archetype of el hombre nuevo, he fuses ideology, image and affect to stage a break with the past—while selectively inheriting its power.
Masked Masculinity
This changing masculine order has also played out in the everyday realm of the city.
During my recent visit, I saw men clad in black, masked and fully armed, standing like shadows in the main squares of Syria’s cities. These men belong to the new al-Amn al-‘Amm (general security forces). But they are more than security enforcers—they are the manifestation of a new spatial order, one where power is exercised through the anonymity of force. The Syrian regime was once reliant on the spectacle of heroic, militarized masculinity—where officers and soldiers stood as visible embodiments of state strength. Syria’s new rulers assert control through a hyper-visible faceless, dispersed presence.
Fighters in SNA groups during operation Deterrence of Aggression against Bashar al-Asad. Northern Syria, December 3, 2024. Fieldwork photo by the author’s research fixer. Shared courtesy of the author.
By enforcing its presence through the anonymous security figures, the new leadership fosters an environment of controlled unpredictability. The silent, masked figures embody the potential for violence at any moment. This masked masculinity thrives on ambiguity. The covered faces erase individuality, creating an army of indistinguishable enforcers who represent the state without being identifiable as individuals.
A central commander in the new security apparatus described this new all-encompassing authority: “We do not rule through speeches or images. We rule through presence. The mask reminds people that we are everywhere, that we do not need to show our faces to control the streets.”
The widespread use of masks is not only a psychological tool to instill fear but a response to a fundamental weakness: the acute shortage of security personnel. According to a commander in the Ministry of Defense, the new leadership lacks the manpower to maintain its grip through sheer numbers, forcing it to rely on masked enforcement to amplify the perception of omnipresence.
In April 2025, Syria’s General Security Forces issued a new directive banning its operatives from wearing masks in public unless on special assignment. This ban appears to mark an attempt to professionalize the appearance of the state, perhaps under pressure from international observers and internal demands for legitimacy. The enforcement of this rule, however, has been selective. In practice, the mask persists—but now it is hierarchized. High-ranking or elite units, especially those tasked with counterinsurgency or political enforcement, continue to wear masks. The visual shift signals an emerging division between everyday security personnel (visible, accountable) and specialized forces (anonymous, exceptional).
Even as the mask becomes less visible in official street patrols, its symbolic and cultural life continues. In markets across Damascus, Idlib and Aleppo, the mask has been repurposed and commodified—sold in shops alongside military-style clothing, tactical vests and headbands bearing revolutionary slogans. It circulates in social media images, poster art and street fashion, especially among young men who see in it a legacy of both resistance and rule. On Telegram channels and platforms like X, Eid greetings are often circulated in the form of posters featuring masked men—typically dressed in black, holding Qur’ans or standing before mosques. The masked figure, once associated primarily with insurgency or rebellion, is now reframed as a righteous guardian of order and faith. Such imagery sustains the symbolic life of the mask beyond the battlefield. Moreover, it encodes a vision of postwar masculinity anchored in religiosity, surveillance and moral rectitude. What began as a tool of anonymity has become an aesthetic of power—one that merges revolutionary iconography with postwar authority.
Women and the New Masculine Order
The masculinization of political space is visible in Syria’s Political Transition, where despite the rhetoric of a “new Syria” under Ahmad al-Sharaa’s interim leadership, the inclusion of women in the political process remains more symbolic than structural. Al-Sharaa’s government has made some gestures toward gender inclusivity, such as meeting with Syrian-American women’s delegations and acknowledging women’s sacrifices in his speeches. But there is no systematic plan to engage women politically. Instead, women’s participation in governance remains marginal.
One glaring example is the National Dialogue Conference—a congregation of almost 1,000 participants held in February 2025 that was tasked with shaping Syria’s transitional roadmap. Women’s representation in these discussions never exceeded 20 percent, often falling below that mark. In various legislative and security committees, their presence has been even more negligible, reinforcing the perception that governance remains a male-dominated sphere.
Part of this reluctance to integrate women into leadership stems from the composition of Syria’s new ruling elite. HTS’s militant hierarchy, deeply embedded in the security sector, creates a political environment where overt initiatives for women’s political leadership risk backlash. Many appointments within the Ministry of Defense and key government positions have prioritized loyalty to HTS’s leadership circle, ensuring that institutional control remains tightly within the hands of former revolutionaries rather than opening space for diverse governance.
In various legislative and security committees, their presence has been even more negligible. The cabinet announced in March 2025 reflected this imbalance starkly: Only one woman was appointed among 23 ministers, reinforcing the perception that political power remains a male preserve.
Indeed, while revolutionary masculinity—built on sacrifice, armed legitimacy and battlefield loyalty—continues to dominate the security apparatus, it is now paralleled by the rise of technocratic masculinity. This new form of masculine authority draws on the aesthetics of professionalism: men in suits, soft-spoken administrators and policy-focused experts, who project an image of calm, competence and rational governance. Yet even this technocratic veneer is gendered. It functions as a legitimizing frame that maintains elite male control while appearing modern, inclusive and efficient. It enables men like al-Sharaa to perform distance from jihadist or militarized pasts, even as their power is rooted in those very networks.
Women, by contrast, remain on the political periphery—not because they lack capacity, but because neither revolutionary nor technocratic masculinity requires their inclusion to legitimize itself.
This dual performance—the fighter and the reformer, the conqueror and the administrator—expands rather than displaces hegemonic masculinity. It creates a flexible model of power that can circulate across ministries, television interviews, mosque inaugurations and security checkpoints. Women, by contrast, remain on the political periphery—not because they lack capacity, but because neither revolutionary nor technocratic masculinity requires their inclusion to legitimize itself.
The exclusion of women from the political process is not unique to Syria. As studies on post-conflict transitions have shown, societies emerging from war frequently default to masculinist structures of governance, where political legitimacy is tied to battlefield experience or institutional continuity rather than than democratic representation. In such contexts, women—who often played critical roles in sustaining wartime resistance—find themselves pushed to the margins once governance structures solidify. Syria’s current trajectory suggests that its transition will follow this same exclusionary pattern.
Thus, while al-Sharaa’s leadership claims to mark a break from the authoritarian past, its gendered foundations remain entrenched in the very structures the revolution once sought to dismantle. The challenge ahead is not just about rebuilding Syria, it is about redefining who gets to participate in that rebuilding.
[Rahaf Aldoughli is a lecturer in Middle East and North African Studies at Lancaster University.]
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