Alia Amina Ahmed
Sociologists and psychologists have long studied how disasters and tragedies affect social cohesion. Whether caused by natural events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or political and social upheavals like wars and conflicts, these major shocks shake societies to their core. They disrupt the “social facts, the values and beliefs that form collective consciousness and exert pressure on individuals. When a society is struck by a traumatic event, its stability is undermined, and its shared awareness becomes unsettled.
In Syria, the revolution, followed by years of war, massacres, mass arrests and forced displacement, created profound collective trauma. This shattered cohesion and unsettled collective consciousness, producing recurring behavioural patterns that reveal a desperate search for a salvific power. As no real saviour descends from above, many Syrians projected this hope onto existing powers on the ground; whether external, like Israel, Turkey or the United States, or internal, such as Abu Mohammad al-Julani (now calling himself Ahmad Al-Sharaa).
I call this phenomenon compulsive attachment to the saviour. Collective shocks reshape both political and social awareness, encouraging people to view powerful actors as paternal protectors, even when their histories are marked by violence. This reflects weakness, oppression, and a deep sense of insecurity. The contradiction between recognising these actors’ crimes and needing to believe in their promise of salvation produces denial, justification or selective memory. The need for safety projects onto the “saviour”, thereby reinforcing their image.
The phenomenon has appeared in places such as Suwayda, where some demonstrators recently raised the Israeli flag. This should not be read as a wholesale change in public consciousness or alliance with a historic enemy, but as an existential outcry — a shocking gesture of despair rather than a realistic strategy. For families who have lost sons, whose women were abducted, or whose homes and villages were destroyed, clinging to any power that might be heard in the world becomes a form of protest abandonment.
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The same dynamic has surfaced among supporters of the interim government who rallied behind Al-Julani. Once the emir of al-Qaeda in Syria, he rebranded himself as “President Ahmad al-Sharaa”. For many who suffered from regime crimes, he came to embody a powerful saviour. Selective memory erased his past of assassinations, kidnappings, bombings and secret prisons. Compulsive imagination dismissed these crimes in favour of hope for the present and future.
Rationally, turning to a warlord guilty of atrocities is like fleeing from the fire into the flames. This is both a moral and political paradox. Yet in the psychology of the drowning, one does not question the purity of the straw they cling to. It is an expression of messianic fantasy: the belief that a political or military figure guarantees safety and stability, even when their record shows the opposite.
The saviour image is easily reinforced: “He saved us from the regime,” “At least he is better than the regime,” or “He alone can impose order.” Such justifications sustain the fantasy, even when no evidence supports them.
This saviour complex also extends to regional and international actors. Many Syrians saw Turkey and President Erdoğan as lifelines, despite Turkey’s own violations against Syrian refugees and its war against the Kurds, which spilled over into Syria. The Kurdish YPG, for its part, developed a deep reliance on the United States during the war against ISIS, projecting it as a protector, even though American interests may not align with Kurdish ones.
Regime loyalists were no exception. They clung to Russia and Iran as guarantors of survival, only to be drawn into illusions that yielded little but dependency. The refusal to abandon these hopes shows how deeply rooted this psychological condition is. Fear, trauma, dependency and false hope become entangled, locking society into cycles of division and subordination.
Compulsive attachment to the saviour is therefore not just political; it is psychological and social. The illusion provides comfort and a sense of safety in the wake of collective trauma. But it is ultimately destructive: it sustains dependency and deepens fragmentation.
What Syria needs is not another saviour, but critical awareness and a sober understanding of collective interests. Safety and stability must be built through local, collective mechanisms; cooperation within society, independent institutions, transitional justice, and accountability. By turning pain into resilience, Syrians can rebuild cohesion and create sustainable hope, without waiting for a false deliverance.
