On the latest episode of The New Region’s GeoSpace series, host Mohammed A. Salih and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Oklahoma University Joshua Landis investigated parallels between the new government in Damascus under President Ahmed al-Sharaa and the ousted Bashar al-Assad regime, with the Syria expert noting that the state is heading in the same direction as Assad’s regime but this time with Sunni Arabs in power.

“I think the short answer is it’s going to be a Sunni Arab state. That seems to be all the indications,” Landis said, arguing that Sharaa’s government is unlikely to offer inclusion to minorities, such as the Kurds, Alawites, and the Druze.

Since taking power, Sharaa’s government has run into military or political skirmishes with the major minorities in Syria. Security forces have killed over 1,400 Alawites, many of them through public extrajudicial executions; they also entered the Druze heartland in southern Syria, where clashes killed well over 1,000. Sharaa’s government has also been in disagreement with the Kurds in northeast Syria over its ambitions of centralization and the Kurds’ aspiration for some degree of autonomy.

“The Druze… said, 'We don’t trust you. You’ve taken all the power, and you’re not giving us any power. We want some form of federal decentralized government.' And that’s the struggle,” Landis explained, adding that the federal state's approach of sidelining minorities in a push for centralization has been accepted by the US government, who previously sought a more inclusive national framework.

“America has just told the minorities you’re not going to get it. We support Shara taking central power,” said the expert.

Landis outlined that the consequences of Sharaa’s authoritarian rule have already imprinted on the minorities’ views of the new government. “The Arab tribes for the first time in history worked as one… That’s new,” Landis said, warning that the same forces that targeted the Druze in Suwayda may eventually turn their attention to the Kurds.

The Syria expert portrayed a grim projection of the future of Sharaa’s Syria, predicting that "they will smash the minorities, put them under their foot. And it’ll just be a new Syria, much like the old, but with a shoe on the other foot, with the Sunni Arabs.”