Thank you for having me today. It's an honour to join you all.
Sixteen months in, Syria's transition is going better than could reasonably have been expected, given the extremely difficult circumstances in which it is taking place. However, there have been tragic setbacks along the way, and the challenges ahead are immense. Achieving durable stability will require further course adjustments by the country's new leadership and increased support from the international community.
First is the good news. Syria's people and new leadership have, to a great extent, managed to hold their country together. That's no small feat, given what they have lived through. Over 14 years of civil war, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were killed and more than 13 million were displaced. That's more than half of the country's pre-war population, and it includes some six million who became refugees outside of the country.
The former Assad regime ruled and fought with extreme brutality, and it deliberately exploited fault lines between communities in this diverse country. Extremists among rebel ranks did too, contributing to a vicious cycle of polarization and radicalization on both sides of the conflict. In late 2024, as opposition forces advanced and the Assad regime collapsed, many wondered if the country would fragment or plunge into new cycles of civil war. That hasn't happened, thanks to the incredible resilience of Syria's people and commendable, albeit incomplete, steps by Syria's new leadership to steer toward reconciliation rather than vengeance.
I'll speak in a moment to challenges and shortcomings, but it's worth underlining that Syria's abrupt shift from horrific, seemingly intractable civil war to a post-war transition is itself a massive collective accomplishment. As a result, Syrians are beginning to return home. Some 1.5 million have travelled back to Syria from abroad, and another 1.8 million Syrians displaced within the country have returned to their homes.
The new leadership's success thus far in building international credibility has been a key factor generating positive momentum and mitigating concerns about their jihadist roots. The pragmatic foreign policy pursued by President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Minister of Foreign Affairs Asaad al-Shaibani has notched some critical wins. These include sanctions relief from the U.S., Canada and other western countries; the removal of terrorist designations previously imposed by the UN Security Council; and the forging of a broad, diverse network of constructive diplomatic relations, including key support from western countries in the gulf, while reducing tensions with Russia and China.
These successes have helped stabilize the transitional government, even as it struggles with limited bandwidth and insufficient diversity—a point I'll address further in a moment—but there have also been deeply painful failures, particularly during the first eight months of the transition. More than 1,300 people, mostly Alawites, were killed in March 2025 when government forces, responding to insurgent attacks, committed massacres against civilians—