Darin Khalifa

But aside from that, I think the group is pretty much a group of specialized technocrats who signal to the Syrian population, but also to the outsiders,

I do think the over focus on what he's signaling to the West misses how much he also cares and is receptive to internal pushback and feedback. So a lot of the decisions he has been making, not just since he became president, but also when he was ruling,

northwestern Syria for the last few years came as a result of him trying to pursue this balancing act between kind of signaling to the outside world, not just the West, but also the Arab world, Turkey, and the region, and being responsive to internal domestic pressure on a lot of things. But it is understandable that Western media cares more about what he's signaling to the West.

But again, he's, I think, has been has shown a lot of political savviness in terms of this balancing act.

Yeah, I mean, he's been having an extended fallout with some of the hardliners. This hasn't just manifested in the last few months. But again, it's been years of this gradual kind of shift away from the more hardline jihadist colleagues, base, kind of people operating out of his base as well. So he's not very receptive to pushback from the hardliners, or he hasn't been yet.

But you're absolutely right to point out that we're seeing a lot of muttering from the more hardline elements, but also the populist elements who are saying, you know, he is rewarding former regime ministers and he's rewarding minorities who in their views have sided with the regime instead of rewarding like the overwhelming majority Sunnis in Syria.

But thankfully, so far, we have not seen him cater to them.

It is Shara signaling one more time that he has moved away from his jihadist past. He hired a very impressive bunch of people, not just in the diversity of their ethnic and sectarian backgrounds, but also their political affiliations. We're seeing former ministers that were serving under the Assad regime.

We're also seeing symbols of the Syrian revolution, including the former head of the Syrian civil defense, who is adored by millions of Syrians as... symboling the Syrian revolution and the resistance, if one can describe it as such. I mean, the new cabinet is quite diverse, yet pretty weak when it comes to the gender diversity. It's only one woman.