People attend the Friday prayers at the Abdullah bin Abbas Mosque in Aleppo, Syria, less than two weeks after opposition forces led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) toppled president Bashar al-Assad. Photo by Bilal Al Hammoud/EPA-EFE

Some caution, however, has started to emerge after a jubilant population welcomed the HTS rebels with open arms.

Assurances by Sharaa, who dropped using his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, and started using his real name, have eased their fears. Today, he appears more moderate and has distanced himself from his jihadist past, when he joined al-Qaeda to fight the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

For most Syrians, who fought the Assad regime for 14 years, the most important is to preserve the country’s unity, engage all constituents to form a unity government where the many ethnic and religious communities are represented and fulfill people’s aspirations for a civil state.

Soulaf Rahwanji, a 48-year-old theater director and founding member of “Women Leaders” Institution, joined some hundreds of people who gathered at the Umayyad Square in Damascus on Thursday to make their voice heard.

“We came just to say that we want a democratic, civil rule that excludes no one … with total separation of religion and state,” Rahwanji told UPI in a phone interview from Damascus.

She explained that the gathering was not against the HST, which took temporary control of the country after the ouster of President Bashar Assad, but came in response to some incidents and “manifestations” of possible Islamic rule that provoked some fears.

“We just wanted to express how we love Syria to be … a country for all and not to become an Islamic state,” she said, citing for example the appointment of a Sheikh (religious scholar) as a head of the Justice Palace in the city of Homs, where women judges were reportedly asked to wear the Muslim veil at work.

Rahwanji confirmed, however, that she didn’t hear “anyone asking women to put the veil, even in the state institutions.”

Restaurants and nightclubs in Damascus are serving alcohol as usual, according to media reports. People have resumed their normal life without any constraints.

At Thursday’s gathering, the participants engaged in free Hyde Park-like discussions joined by an HTS armed man who made a point to assure them, saying he was “against sectarianism,” according to Rahwanji.

Samer Dahi, head of research at the Nation Building Movement in Damascus, explained that the failure to engage not only the civil society, but also the other opposition groups, in the post-Assad transitional government raised fears that they could be excluded from the political process.

Mohammed Al-Bashir, a little-known figure who held the position of minister of development and humanitarian affairs in the HTS Salvation Government in the rebel-controlled province of Idlib in northwest Syria, was tasked to lead the interim authority until March 1.

“There is a strong determination to build a political system for all in Syria,” Dahi told UPI by phone from Damascus. He stressed the need for “international pressures” to put the political process on the right track and secure the participation of all the Syrians.

An international roadmap for a peace process in Syria has been in place since 2015, when the Security Council adopted Resolution 2254, proposing a 12-month interim phase that would end with a final settlement.

Assad had consistently refused to engage in the U.N.-led political process to end the bloody conflict that began with peaceful protests on March 15, 2011, and escalated into a full-scale violence. More than one-half million people were killed and 12 million displaced, including 7.2 million forced to move internally for safety.

When Sharaa took over, he promised to rebuild state institutions to ensure the forming of a “strong and efficient” governance system, as well as framing a new constitution. However, the priority, he said, goes to security and meeting the basic needs of an impoverished population. Assad indeed left Syria in ruins.

Mona Ghanem, a Syrian opposition politician who lives in Denmark, said there were indications of “non-inclusion” since the beginning of the transition phase.

“It is clear that we are heading toward monopolizing power,” Ghanem told UPI. “Sharaa’s assurances did not assure me. We don’t want to hear what he is saying, but to see his actions.”

She was referring to reports about “sectarian vengeance,” targeting the Alawites; appointment of Muslim religious figures as governors and holding group Muslim prayers in universities. She expressed fears that such limited incidents and approach could become systematic.

“We are not against being religious but against political Islam and [imposing] an Islamic rule,” she added. “The people will not accept that he [Sharaa] rules the country alone. … Political division could lead to military division and the fear that the country plunges into another civil war.”

Ghanem acknowledged, however, that Sharaa somehow managed to control the security in the country, but called for engaging qualified people to run it properly.

“I hope we are mistaken in making such remarks … as we are longing for long missed stability,” she said.

The transition government is preparing to convene a meeting in the coming few days to launch a comprehensive national dialogue, according to Al Arabiya TV quoting Syrian media reports Friday.

The meeting, which will attract political groups, civil society representatives, independent figures and representatives of the military factions, is to focus on the transitional phase and the mechanism to manage state affairs in the coming period.

Only 12 days have passed since the ouster of Assad on Dec. 8. Observers say fixing a country after decades of brutal rule that left it in ruins and exposed it to the ambitions of many countries is no easy task.