Panel discussion: Syria After Assad
What lies next for Syria under its new regime?
Dear Subscribers,
Just a quick note to say I’ll be speaking on a panel at the Frontline Club on June 19th. The event kicks off at 7:00 PM.
Would love to see you there come and say hi ! Link is here.
In the six months since Bashar al-Assad's stunningly rapid fall from power in Syria, the country has transformed and set itself on a new path. But while the Assads have fled, many of their henchen remain. Caroline Rose has spent years investigating the criminal networks run by the family and their associates, and has just returned from an investigative trip as Syria's widespread network of captagon production labs is dismantled. Tam Hussein has had unprecedented access to groups of foreign fighters in Syria, and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members now running the country, for more than a decade.
As Syrians attempt to build a new and representative democracy in their country ravaged by decades of oppressive rule, in the midst of crushing economic conditions, can the country's role as the lynchpin of regional crime and smuggling be washed away? Will Assad's former allies so easily relinquish their interests? And are the country's new leaders all they're cracked up to be?
The Host
Leila Molana-Allen is an award-winning roving Special Correspondent for the PBS Newshour, reporting from across the wider Middle East and Africa. She has been based in the region, in Beirut and Baghdad, for a decade. She was named the Shifa Gardi Conflict Journalist of the Year in 2025, is the recipient of the 2024 Kathy Gannon Legacy Award for her reporting, and was honoured with a Peabody Award for her coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.
In late 2024 Molana-Allen crossed into Syria as the Assad regime collapsed, reporting from cities and villages across the country in the days following the fall of Damascus.
The Guests
Caroline Rose is a director at the New Lines Institute, where she leads and produces research on the intersection of defense, security, illicit trades, and geopolitical landscapes with a special focus on Syria and the Middle East. Previously at the institute, Rose served as the head of the Power Vacuums Program. She has also served as an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching a graduate course on the nexus of illicit economies, armed conflict, and insecurity. She is a recipient of the Middle East Policy Center’s 2025 40 Under 40 Awards.
Rose has repeatedly briefed U.S. and allied ministries, intelligence agencies, embassies, and legislative bodies on the captagon drug trade and insecurity in the Middle East, and their effects on U.S. and partner interests. She has authored special reports and advised organizations like the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the European Union, offering expertise on the crime-conflict nexus and synthetic drug trades in the Middle East. She has also testified before the British Parliament, providing expert evidence on the captagon trade in Syria.
John Davison is a journalist covering the Middle East for Reuters news agency. He lived in the region for 10 years - in Baghdad as Iraq Bureau Chief, Cairo as Egypt and Sudan Deputy Bureau Chief, and Beirut as Syria and Lebanon Correspondent.
He has covered, up close, conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Gaza, unrest in Egypt, the West Bank and Lebanon, and investigated the devastating power struggles between rival armed groups, regional states and foreign powers.
Tam Hussein is an award‑winning investigative journalist and writer, currently an investigative journalist for ITV News and Associate Editor at New Lines Magazine. His reporting on jihadist networks, foreign fighters, refugees, trafficking and criminal organizations across the Middle East and North Africa was recognized by the Royal Television Society in 2015, and he earned nominations for the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2021 for his work on modern slavery and in 2022 for his coverage of conflict.=
He is the author of three books—the critically acclaimed non‑fiction To The Mountains: My Life in Jihad; the historical novella Travels of Ibn Fudayl; and the crime novel The Darkness Inside, now optioned by Big Deal Films—and publishes regularly on his Substack, The Blood Rep. He serves as a judge for the NUJ/Orwell Society Young Journalist Awards. Having lived and worked across the region, Hussein knows several regional languages, including Italian, Arabic, Swedish, Bengali, Farsi and Urdu.