📰 Syria and the “Alternative Authority” Project in the Middle East

In analysing the syrian-election-process-risks-deepening-division/" class="smart-internal-link" title="⚔️ Kurdish official warns current Syrian election process risks deepening division">current syrian and broader Middle Eastern context, it becomes essential to examine the structural difference between the notion of the “state” and the condition of an “alternative authority” that emerges in its absence. A state consists of governmental institutions and administrative bodies responsible for managing public affairs, upholding constitutional law, and implementing civil agreements that bind citizens into a unified republic. An “alternative authority”, by contrast, refers to entities that assert power and control—armed forces, financial, ideological, popular, or geostrategic—in place of a functioning state. These bodies operate as de facto governments in areas where state institutions have collapsed or retreated, managing affairs without necessarily possessing the expertise, legitimacy, or institutional frameworks required for statehood.

Critically, such alternative authorities do not seek to build a genuine state. their existence depends on the absence of the state, and any severe move towards state-building would render them obsolete. As such, they often entrench their power through mechanisms of repression, sectarianism, intimidation, and institutional decay, cultivating a political and societal environment in which their presence appears both necessary and unchallengeable. In fact, the Paradox of Alternative Authority When an alternative authority entrenches itself, it does so not as a transitional arrangement but as a permanent condition.

It mimics the appearance of statehood without adopting its foundational principles or responsibilities. This phenomenon is precisely what we have observed with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in syria in latest years. Since 2018, following the collapse of regime structures in Idlib province, HTS has operated as an alternative authority, filling the vacuum left by the Assad regime’s retreat. as per available evidence, the international powers involved in the Syrian crisis facilitated the creation of a governing body—the Commission—to manage the Idlib region and prevent mass displacement towards Turkey and beyond. Rather than establishing a emerging or transitional state, this structure became a prototype of entrenched authority based on control rather than governance, employing tools of coercion, ideology, and patronage to administer a fragmented population.

This model of rule, rooted in the absence of the state rather than the building of one, soon expanded. By late 2024, the powers shaping Syria’s future greenlit the replication of the Idlib model across the country. HTS entered damascus, and its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, took the reins of the central administration. What followed was the nationwide application of the “alternative authority” model: a calculated effort to institutionalise statelessness as the emerging normal. …