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Syrian women easy target in Sharaa’s drive to consolidate power
Culture
Syrian women easy target in Sharaa’s drive to consolidate power
Syria’s interim president is balancing Western demands for inclusion with pressure from Islamist hard-liners as he seeks to consolidate power and shed his jihadi past.
Amberin Zaman
Oct 26, 2026
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New female cadets from the new women's police academy attend the first cohort graduation ceremony after completing a six-month training program, in al-Tal on the northern outskirts of Damascus, on Sept. 22, 2026. — Bakr Alkasem / AFP via Getty Images
DAMASCUS — The Syrian interim government led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa quietly imposed admissions rules in late September that bar women from most programs at two new state universities that focus on defense and security affairs. Just days earlier, on Sept. 23, Syria’s First Lady Latifa al-Droubi and Interior Minister Anas Khattab attended the graduation ceremony for the first group of female police officers at the newly minted Women’s Police Academy in Damascus.
The apparent contradiction reflects the precarious balance that Sharaa, formerly the leader of an al-Qaeda offshoot, is seeking to strike nearly two years after he toppled Syria’s long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
Sharaa’s drive for international legitimacy has seen the former jihadi refashion himself as an Islamist moderate eager to become a top Western ally and to pursue a now-shelved deconfliction deal with Israel.
In a sign of his purported openness, the president personally handed his wife her university diploma at Idlib University in September last year.
This September, Syrian pop icon Assala Nasri returned to Damascus to perform at a sold-out concert despite an organized campaign by the Egyptian cleric Hani Dahab for the faithful to shun “this sinful” event. Scores of fellow Salafists signed a petition for the concert to be cancelled altogether.
When the government ignored his wishes, an incensed Dahab dispatched his disciples to the concert venue to prevent concertgoers from getting in. Columns of government security forces held them at bay.
Graffiti declaring “the hijab is mandatory” in Damascus, Sept. 22, 2026 (Amberin Zaman/Al-Monitor)
Critics dismiss such actions as more theater designed to allay Western fears.........
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