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AFTER 53 YEARS HTSISHTS ISHTS HTSHTSHTSUAEHTS Your browser does not support the element.in power, the house of Assad left behind nothing but ruin, corruption and misery. As rebels advanced into Damascus on December 8th, the regime’s army melted into the air—it had run out of reasons to fight for Bashar al-Assad. Later, Syrians impoverished by his rule gawped at his abandoned palaces. ; some could no longer remember their own names.Now that Mr Assad has fled to Moscow, the question is where will liberation lead. In a part of the world plagued by ethnic violence and religious strife, . The Arab spring in 2010-12 taught that countries which topple their dictators often end up being fought over or dominated by men who are no less despotic. That is all the more reason to wish and work for something better in Syria.There is no denying that many forces are conspiring to drag the country into further bloodshed. Syria is a mosaic of peoples and faiths carved out of the Ottoman empire. They have never lived side by side in a stable democracy. The Assads belong to the Alawite minority, which makes up about 10-15% of the population. For decades, they imposed a broadly secular settlement on Syrian society using violence.Syria’s people have many reasons to seek vengeance. After 13 years of civil war in a country crammed with weapons, some factions will want to settle scores; so will some bad and dangerous men just released from prison. Under the Assads’ henchmen, many of them Alawite and Shia, Sunnis suffered acts of heinous cruelty, including being gassed by chlorine and a nerve agent. are hardly men of peace. Take the dominant faction in the recent advance. Until 2016 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham () was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Its founder, , had fought the Americans as a member of Islamic State () in Iraq under the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani. and Mr Sharaa swear they have left those days behind. If, amid the chaos, such groups set out to impose rigid Islamic rule, foreign countries, possibly including the United Arab Emirates, will bankroll other groups to take up arms against them.Indeed, some of those foreign countries are already fighting in Syria to advance their own interests. In the north, who want autonomous rule. In central Syria, America is bombing camps, for fear the group will rekindle its jihad. Israel has destroyed military equipment and chemical weapons—and encroached deeper into the , occupying more Syrian territory.With so much strife, no wonder many share a fatalistic belief that Syria is doomed to collapse into civil war once again. If it does so, they rightly warn, it will export refugees, jihadists and instability beyond the Middle East and into Europe.But despair is not a policy. At the least, the Assads’ fall is a repudiation of Iran and Russia, two stokers of global chaos. And witness the jubilation in Syria this week: a nation exhausted by war could yet choose the long road towards peace.The essential condition for Syria to be stable is that it needs a tolerant and inclusive government. The hard-learned lesson from the years of war is that no single group can dominate without resorting to repression. Even most of the Sunni majority do not want to be ruled by fundamentalists.The daunting task of attempting to forge a new political settlement out of a fractured country could well fall to Mr Sharaa. As ruler of Idlib, a rebel province in the north, he ran a competent government that nodded at religious pluralism and oversaw a successful economy. However, although he has distanced himself from more radical groups and courted the West, Mr Sharaa has become increasingly autocratic, and had taken to purging rivals and imprisoning opponents.His interim national government, announced this week, is exclusively made up of loyalists. Because it is laying claim to a dysfunctional state, competence and order will go a long way. Yet if Mr Sharaa attempts to run Syria permanently as a giant Idlib—a Sunni fief dominated by —he will fail. Syria will remain divided between feuding warlords, many of them mini-dictators in their own right.Syria will also fail if it becomes an arena for the rivalries of outside powers. It is more likely to prosper if it is left alone. And only if it prospers will millions of refugees choose to return home. That is especially important for Turkey, which is weary of the 3m Syrians living there. As a backer of , it will be hoping for contracts in a thriving country. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, should also understand that the best way to weaken calls for Kurdish self-rule is to create a Syria where the Kurds and other minorities have a voice.The world may not like , but to sabotage the creation of a stable government would risk the poison spreading to Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. America and Saudi Arabia should therefore prevail upon Israel, Turkey and the not to ruin Syria’s chances. If Mr Sharaa emerges as a plausible national leader, the West should be prepared to speedily remove its designation of as a terrorist group.The new Syria has one great gift: it can be rid of Iran and Russia. They spent tens of billions of dollars to keep Mr Assad in power, but the tyrants in Tehran and Moscow proved no more able to sustain despotism in a country that had rejected its despot than the West was able to sustain democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia has failed to realise its imperial ambitions—a message that will echo in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In little over a year, Iran has seen its proxies defeated in Gaza, Lebanon and now Syria. Its benighted influence in the Middle East has shrunk dramatically, possibly opening space for negotiations with the incoming Trump administration.Much will go wrong in a traumatised place like Syria. The effort to rebuild the country is bound to entail a struggle for influence. Its strongmen will need reserves of courage, foresight and wisdom that they have yet to reveal. But before writing off the future, pause for a moment and share Syrians’ joy at bringing down a tyrannical dynasty.
