Five months after its liberation from the police state of Bashar al-Assad, Syria sometimes looks like a country in civil war. Sectarian clashes have turned into street battles with rockets and mortars. In the southern province of Suweida, local leaders have denounced the new Syrian government as a band of terrorists, and they fly the flag of a Druze statelet that flourished a century ago. The country's new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has tried repeatedly to reassure Syria's religious minorities, saying he wants peace and pluralism. He won some unexpected relief on the economic front yesterday, when President Donald Trump, who is visiting the Gulf states, agreed to drop all American sanctions on Syria. But he seems unable to remedy the structural flaws that have fed the violence of recent months. His fledgling state is too centralized, and too dependent on former jihadists he cannot control. In March, Sunni Islamist gangs massacred Alawites on the Syrian coast, in attacks that left...
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