It happened too fast.

Nobody—neither the West’s analysts nor the Arab street’s coffee shop prophets—predicted it. The fall of Bashar al-Asad in a matter of 11 days (Nov 27 – Dec 8, 2024) felt like a strange dream. Or a well-rehearsed play. Maybe both.

In the end, it wasn’t the Syrian people who reclaimed Damascus. It wasn’t the widows of Aleppo or the orphans of Homs. It wasn’t the exiled poets, the broken rebels, or the dusty boys with slingshots and shattered voices. No. It was Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Yes, that Ahmed al-Sharaa—a man whose resume reads like a warlord’s confession. Former Al Qaeda. Salafi strongman. Rebranded darling of Western diplomats. And now, the new ‘liberator’ of Syria.

In Washington, London, Brussels—they cheered behind their curtains. The narrative was ready. “Moderate Islamist defeats dictator.” Headlines practically wrote themselves. Some quarters of the Muslim world, weary from decades of Asad’s dictatorship, also celebrated. They called it ‘divine justice’. Some even called it a ‘miracle’.

But social constructivism warns us not to take these labels at face value. In International Relations, social constructivism is the theory that identities, interests, and even realities themselves are not given but are socially created through discourse, interaction, and perception. It reminds us that identities are not fixed; they are performed, narrated, and legitimated—often by the powerful and for the powerful. Ahmed al-Sharaa’s ‘moderation’ was not discovered; it was constructed. Stitched together in press briefings, reinforced through think tank briefings, and sanitized in policy memos. His redemption arc was not written in the sands of Syria, but in the footnotes of foreign policy white papers.

There was a time when he proudly sported the nom de guerre “Abu Mohammad al-Julani (Golani),” a name meant to symbolize his identity as a man under occupation, a man of resistance. The name itself was a statement—a constructed identity signaling solidarity with the occupied Golan Heights and, by extension, with every oppressed people. But now, Golani discards even that name. No longer does he invoke the image of an occupied fighter. No longer does he want to carry the burden—or the expectations—that the name once implied. His new image demands a sanitized identity, one acceptable to Western palates and regional collaborators alike.

And miracles? They don’t come dressed in military fatigues and imported ideologies. Miracles don’t call off resistance in the face of an occupying regime just a few hills away in the Golan. And real liberation doesn’t begin by handing over more Syrian land, more sovereignty, more dignity.

Because that’s what happened next.

Not a single bullet was fired by Golani toward the Golan-occupiers.

Not a whisper of defiance. Not a single solid declaration of intent to reclaim the soil that still bleeds with the memory of past wars. Instead, what we heard were new chains being forged—only this time, in the name of religion. In the name of God.

And in an act that stung the very soul of Palestine’s struggle, the new regime in Damascus expelled the Palestinian resistance forces that had long found refuge in Syrian soil. Not even the fig leaf of diplomacy was used. It was swift, symbolic, and devastating. A regime claiming to be born of struggle had evicted the very symbols of resistance from its heart.

Why? Because the new regime needed to construct itself as “responsible.” As “modern.” As “acceptable.” But acceptable to whom? Certainly not to the martyrs of Sabra and Shatila. Not to the children of Jenin. Not to the mothers of Gaza.

No. It was acceptability in the eyes of Western states and regional power brokers. Constructivism tells us that state interests are shaped by social interaction and the pursuit of recognition in a global system of norms and expectations. And Golani’s Damascus wants a seat at the grown-up table. But to sit there, you must first shed the moral burden of resistance.

Repression, though, was not left behind.

The Alawites. The Rafidis. The Christians. The undesirables. They felt the iron fist of “liberation” before they could even comprehend the irony. It was brutal. It was fast. And it was all too familiar. Not unlike the elegance of Istanbul’s self-styled sultan, whose bark about Gaza had, for over a year and a half, grown louder even as his bite faded to nothing.

We remember his speeches, don’t we? Fireworks of rhetoric. Oceans of tears on screen. Every summit, a stage. Every camera, a pulpit. But when it came to action—real action—he proved himself nothing but the ever-barking erDOGan. And now, his disciple in Damascus is barking too. But never at the occupier—always at the voiceless.

From a constructivist lens, this is not simply hypocrisy; it is identity mimicry—the adoption of the performance of statehood while abandoning its foundational narratives. Syria’s new regime wants to “belong”—not to the oppressed, but to the system that oppresses. And to do that, it must erase the stories, the solidarities, and the symbols that once made it dangerous to the status quo.

Golani’s Syria is not post-Asad. It’s post-resistance. It’s an autopsy of a revolution reanimated with borrowed breath. It’s the hijacking of hope, wrapped in black flags and political theater.

And amid all this, Gaza still burns.

As the skies above Rafah weep phosphorus and the wombs of mothers bury their own children, the so-called liberators of Syria stand mute. Or worse, they pretend not to see. As if Palestine were not etched into every Syrian wall. As if the Golan did not ache for justice.

But perhaps that was never the plan.

Perhaps this was not about justice at all. Perhaps it was about replacing one gatekeeper with another. One dialect of tyranny with another accent. One kind of silence with another tone.

They tore down the old sign in Damascus. But the face of betrayal remains the same.