The Case for Hama as Syria’s New Capital
Syria’s national capital should be relocated from Damascus to Hama to preserve the gains of the revolution
The building of a new state after fifty four years of rule by the Assad regime is creating seismic reconfigurations across the landscape of power and society in Syria.
The new government is hard at work in Damascus grafting revolutionary institutions of governance on to what is left of the state, but they have not been left to monopolise post-Assad political reconstruction in Syria. Within hours of the overthrow of the regime, various individuals and groups embarked on the road to Damascus to lay their claim to a stake in Syria’s new configuration of power. Those who remained in Damascus (regardless of their position on the regime) are also seeking their position in the new landscape.
In all the excitement over Syria’s political future, dangers lurk that threaten the gains of the revolution.
Post-Assad Syria will face an inexorable pull towards the status quo, such are the nature of incentives: those who supported and/or benefited from the Assad regime are incentivised to support the status quo, and those who opposed the regime may also be incentivised to support the status quo (sans Assad) insofar as maintaining it would bring greater benefit to them than supporting the roadmap for reform led by the most powerful revolutionary umbrella faction Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham and its leader Ahmad Al-Shara.
The objective of the Syrian revolution was not limited to the toppling of the regime, but extends to the creation of a new state and society. The ‘state’ under the regime was less a state and more a family mafia headed by the Assad dynasty that relied on networks of patronage, submission, and fear to run Syria. State institutions largely existed ‘on paper’, were rife with dysfunction and corruption, and decisions were arbitrary and based on rank (by loyalty to the regime), or wasta (nepotistic clout, again, by virtue of proximity to the regime).
After fifty four years of Assad rule, the political culture of Assadism has become deeply embedded in the country’s fabric, but Damascus fares the worst as the national capital and heart of the political regime of Syria. This political culture threatens to persist into the post-Assad era and hinder Syria’s path to reform.
A true reconfiguration of power in Syria will require the creation of a new political culture, which is most easily achieved through the geographic dislocation of networks of power and patronage rooted in the political culture of Assadism. Therefore, the new government should consider moving Syria’s national capital from Damascus to Hama where a new political culture closer to the ideals of the revolution may flourish and provide the foundation for new political institutions underpinning the Syrian state.
Capital relocations have occurred throughout history to achieve the geographic dislocation of power of the old regime. In the 8th century, the Abbasid dynasty overthrew the Umayyad dynasty and founded the city of Baghdad as the new capital of the Caliphate away from Damascus. In the 17th century, France’s ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV built the palace of Versailles away from Paris to reconsolidate power in the monarchy and away from the feudal nobility. After World War I, the Turks established Ankara as the capital of the new Turkish republic after the Ottoman capital Istanbul was occupied by British and allied forces. In all three cases, the geographical dislocation of power allowed for the creation of a new political culture to serve as the basis of a new polity.
The Problem with Damascus
This is an extremely controversial suggestion. Damascus is not just the administrative capital but the cultural and intellectual capital of Syria and arguably the wider Levant region. It is also one of the oldest cities in the world. Damascus holds a special status in the consciousness of the Syrian, Levantine, and Arab peoples. For reasons of prestige as well as logistical challenges moving Syria’s national capital to a smaller city like Hama may seem unconscionable. However, both Damascus and Syria would arguably benefit from this policy.
The first problem is political culture. Central Damascus was not transformed by the events of the revolution like other major Syrian cities. The city was enveloped in a cultural and political bubble that set it apart from the rest of the country and their troubles. The closest the revolution came to Damascus was in its suburbs: Douma, Jobar, Yarmuk, Darayya, and others, which were put under siege and levelled to the ground, its residents expelled to other parts of the country or abroad. Throughout the past thirteen years, ‘life’ in central Damascus continued in an alternative reality - until December 8th 2024.
While many were restricted in supporting the revolution owing to the veil of fear imposed by the regime, another fact is that central Damascus as the heart of political power in Syria was filled with regime loyalists and beneficiaries. Over the past fifty four years, many loyalists were rewarded with land and property in Damascus by the regime as part of a policy of social engineering. For Damascus’ culture to begin its healing process, there would need to be space for introspection, the creation of a new culture, and the removal of loyalists and beneficiaries from the social fabric of the city. Centring post-Assad Syria’s reform in Damascus risks including these elements in this process and subverting it in favour of the status quo where they retain their privileges, prestige, and overall culture.
The second problem is that the centralisation of political power and decision-making in Damascus is an increasingly large geopolitical security risk. While Damascus is the geographic heart of the Levant, it is the southernmost major city of Syria, with the Israeli army a stone’s throw away in the Golan Heights. Centring Syria’s state institutions near the border with a hostile, rogue state that has proven its willingness to engage in unjustified aggression and biblical-scale destruction creates great security risks to Syria’s administration. Should Israel decide to launch a war of aggression against Syria, Damascus is the first line of defence. If Damascus is destroyed or occupied, this would severely degrade governance capacity throughout the country.
These two problems mean Damascus suffers from a lack of geographic and cultural space to enable the city to reform itself and once again lead Syria and the wider region.
The Case for Hama
Why is Hama a suitable replacement for Damascus as Syria’s national capital?
Hama was Syria’s original stronghold of anti-Assad sentiment going back to the 1970s when Hafez Al-Assad first took power. Hama’s resistance to the regime culminated in the 1982 armed revolution in Hama which was brutally crushed by Assad senior, with tens of thousands reportedly killed and much of the city razed to the ground – a blueprint for what would come later under Assad junior. Hama’s resistance to the regime returned in 2011 with the start of the Syrian revolution. Huge marches were held in the city and some of the first instances of the revolutionary flag being waved (in fact the pre-Baathist nationalist flag of Syria) occurred in Hama.
Owing to Hama’s geographic location in the heart of the country and its long history of resistance to the Assad dynasty, these protests were quickly crushed and the regime’s security apparatus imposed itself on the city on a scale comparable only to that of Syria’s two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo.
Throughout the revolution, even though the city remained under Assad’s firm control, many of the city’s sons fought under revolutionary forces. Indeed, with the liberation of Syria, many officers in the new Syrian state and army hail from Hama, including the current minister of defence, Marhaf Abu Qasra and chief of staff, Ali Nur al-Din al-Nassan. Their return to liberate Hama on December 5th saw forty years of repressed anti-Assad sentiment explode as its residents took to the streets to celebrate this long-awaited moment.
Hama’s history makes it far less likely to be affected by regime loyalists and beneficiaries who are incentivised to maintain the status quo. Instead, the city’s networks, relationships, and ideological alignment are strongly in support of the revolution’s objectives, and make it an ideal ‘petri dish’ for a new political culture in Syria. Hama also benefits from being at the geographic heart of Syria, connecting the western coast, eastern desert, and northern and southern Syria. This makes Hama an ideal location not just to defend in case of military conflict, but also to establish state control over the wider country. Finally, Hama’s population is just under a million people, nearly three times less than Damascus’ population at 2.5 million people.
Hama’s geographic centrality, the prominence of its people and their revolutionary sentiment since the 1970s, and small geographic size make it an ideal city from which to build a new political culture, to concentrate state institutions, and to re-establish the sovereignty of those institutions over the rest of the country.
What About Aleppo?
Aleppo may be brought up as a suitable replacement for Damascus instead of Hama as Syria’s national capital. Aleppo is Syria’s economic capital and will return to that position once again as Syria’s economy gets moving.
The problem with Aleppo is that the city suffers from many of the problems Damascus does, albeit at a smaller scale. Much of Aleppo (particularly its western districts) also existed in a cultural ‘bubble’, remaining firmly under regime control as districts in the east and north of the city were being razed to the ground and its residents expelled.
However, the real risk with Aleppo is that of ‘over-concentration’: pooling administrative and economic functions in one city would lead to adverse effects with regards to urbanisation, jobs’ creation and concentration, and the muddling of political and economic networks of power and influence.
If the objective is to mitigate the perverse incentives created by the political culture of Assadism in the new Syrian state, Aleppo would pose similar problems to Damascus and inhibit this process.
A New Syria Needs a New Political Culture
Rebuilding the Syrian state requires a new ‘officer class’ capable of creating new institutions. This class will be drawn from new networks of power and patronage bred in a different political culture than what prevailed under the Assad dynasty.
The political culture of Damascus may inhibit these developments as the old networks of power and patronage grown in the ‘petri dish’ of Assadism and its political culture remain in the city and are disincentivised to support, or at least not oppose, reform in the new state. There are many options to deal with this issue, but perhaps the most effective is a geographic dislocation of power by moving Syria’s capital from Damascus to Hama.
This proposal may seem drastic and/or futile, but it remains a viable option should Damascus’ political culture prove intractable to reform. Even if Damascus were to no longer be the administrative capital of Syria, the city will remain her cultural and intellectual capital. It would also relieve the significant political pressure now bearing down on the city to lead a post-Assad Syria when much of her own cultural fabric and political culture remains sullied by fifty four years of Assadism. Damascus needs time and space to heal and reclaim her former glory.
I hadn't even though about the political aspect, but I had the same idea just from a geostrategic perspective. If Syria controlled the Golan heights, then maybe the proximity to Israel could be overlooked as Syria would have easily defensible land in the face of an Israeli attack. Even then however, the strength of the Israeli air force would still mean it makes more sense for the capital to be further from the border.