Syrian MPs hold cautious hope for a democratic future

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Lina Aizouqi is one of six women elected to Syria’s new interim parliament.

Sitting in her dimly lit apartment as pickup trucks full of government gunmen prowled the streets outside, one of Syria’s new MPs dreams of a country where the security forces could be trusted and a feisty legislature keeps the government in check.

Instead, Lina Aizouqi fears she will struggle to be heard when she takes her seat as one of just six women, and one of only 10 representatives of religious minority groups, in Syria’s new interim parliament.

The men with guns on the streets of her hometown of Tartus are Sunni fighters, many of them veterans of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the ultraconservative Islamist militia that President Ahmed al-Sharaa led until seizing power last December. Cruising