The first 100 days: is Syria laying the necessary groundwork?

To assess progress, it is first essential to recognise the magnitude of the collapse that al-Sharaa and his ministers have inherited. Syria is not merely post-conflict; it is post-state. Nearly every public system—economic, legal, military, administrative—has been degraded, politicised, or cannibalised for survival. The task is not reform. It is reconstruction at the most elemental level.

Start from scratch

Many key institutions are either brittle or non-existent; the bureaucracy is fragmented and underdeveloped; security structures are only partially unified; the military lacks discipline, logistics, and a coherent command; and public trust has been decimated by decades of repression, impunity, and state predation. These realities mean that even well-intentioned reforms are hamstrung from the start.

Ministers operate with limited authority, unreliable revenue streams, and weak implementation capacity; coordination mechanisms are underdeveloped; international assistance is modest and fragmented, and internal weaknesses have shaped the government's early performance, leading to reactive improvises responses rather than the execution of a coherent plan.

What is sorely missing is a unified national strategy—a political and administrative framework to guide ministries, align priorities, and define what success looks like. In its absence, the ministries have been left to operate in isolation, launching initiatives disconnected from a common roadmap. Inter-ministerial coordination remains inconsistent, and in the absence of a robust central planning body, the government has defaulted to short-termism and optics-driven politics.

Living for the now

Essential areas of reform—civil service revitalisation, institutional accountability, public-sector governance—have seen little progress. Much of this is due to both a lack of a shared administrative doctrine and a shortage of executive leadership. Too many ministers lack the political authority or technical skills to drive systemic change. As a result, a bureaucratic culture of 'big announcements' has taken hold: press releases, public events, and symbolic decrees now act as poor substitutes for measured planning or impact assessments.

Sweeping reform in the first 100 days was always unrealistic in a state emerging from near-total institutional collapse, but this period could still have signalled a meaningful break from the past, had a clear sense of strategic direction been forthcoming, outlining how the transitional government intends to rebuild and govern differently, with empowered ministries with real authority and tools, all embedded in structures of transparency and accountability.

Nobody thought this would be easy, but at the same time, vanishingly few think it can wait. If Syria's transitional authorities hope to convert symbolic legitimacy into durable governance, they must pivot from optics to substance. The first 100 days may not have defined Syria's future, but they have illuminated what must change to build a more credible and coherent path forward.