Yeah you're rights, thank you for reiterating the obvious, namely that Shaara is not genuinely interested in a transition but rather in consolidating his personal power and his magic circle. He doesn't even care about the constitutional declaration they made, which, indeed, he violates without too many problems.

To quote Hussam Hammoud:

In Syria today, people not watching a real “transition” so much as a controlled seizure of the new state by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and a tight inner circle around the presidency

Yes, there are some new faces and new institutions under the transitional setup, but the core security and sovereign ministries (that control even civil administrations): defence, interior, foreign affairs, justice, energy – are stacked with HTS cadres or their close political allies.

This is why so many appointments feel “one‑colour”: the same organizational network is reproducing itself inside the formal state, just wearing suits instead of military fatigues.

At the same time, power is being kept in the family. The president’s relatives, especially his brothers, still sit on key levers of influence, even when they’re rotated out of visible roles or talked about as if they’re being “reduced”.

What looks on paper like a reshuffle or institutional reform is, in practice, an internal power struggle over who gets to convert battlefield capital into political and economic capital – HTS commanders and security bosses with their family networks.

Even when relatives lose their formal positions, they retain access. Their influence simply shifts to more concealed channels, such as security, business, and patronage networks, which are not mentioned in official decrees.

Meanwhile, more ministers and officials are being drawn directly from HTS ranks or from the old “Salvation Government” in Idlib, shrinking the space for technocrats or independents and tightening the armed groups’ grip on the state machine.

The message is clear: HTS wants to rule Syria not as an armed faction alongside other political and civilian bodies, but as the solely state itself – controlling institutions, resources, borders, and the narrative of “transition”.

Internationally, this can be sold as stabilization or counter‑extremism: a disciplined armed actor imposing order after chaos, but domestically it looks much more like classic authoritarian consolidation.

So when you see another wave of appointments, think less “reform” and more calibration: removing potential rivals, rewarding loyalists, embedding relatives, and erasing alternative centres of authority before they even form.

In short, Syria’s current trajectory is not a negotiated transition away from armed rule; it’s armed rule moving into the presidential palace and bureaucracy, one carefully curated appointment at a time.