Post-Asad Syria: the actors at play
Remaining questions and the general picture in the northeast
This essay focuses on the general situation following the fall of Bashar al-Asad, particular in the north and east of Syria. A subsequent post will focus specific incidents and territorial developments largely pertaining to the SDF/SNA/Turkey conflict.
On December 8th, 2024, the regime of Bashar al-Asad evaporated. In the early morning hours the Syrian dictator of the last twenty-four years fled to Moscow via Russian aircraft, leaving the capital and entire country to jubilant crowds and several rebel coalitions. The significance of this date within modern Syrian history cannot be overstated; it is arguably only rivaled by April 17th, 1946, the day the last French soldiers left what had been the Mandate of Syria, and November 13th, 1970, when Bashar’s father Hafiz al-Asad launched his ‘Corrective Movement’ coup and seized power from fellow Ba‘th party rivals.
While the fall of the regime ends the central conflict within the Syrian civil war, the country remains divided between four primary actors – three of which are nominally allied under a broad opposition umbrella.
The first and most significant of these is Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former al-Qa‘idah affiliate led by Abu Muhammad al-Julani or Ahmad al-Shar‘, which initiated and oversaw the offensive that broke the regime. Prior to November 27 HTS and its allies were confined to the Idlib pocket of northwestern Syria, administered by the HTS-controlled Syrian Salvation Government (SSG). Idlib was protected by Turkey via military outposts established as part of a deconfliction agreement with Russia, however HTS’s relationship with Turkey is somewhat ambiguous.
Given HTS’s role in the events of the past two weeks and its power compared to other opposition groups, it has taken upon itself the role of unifying Syria and forming a new government. This has initially taken the shape of the transitional “Syrian Caretaker Government” (Hakumat Tasrif al-A‘mal) headed by SSG technocrat Muhammad al-Bashir and intended to last until a new government is created in March 2025.
Next is the Syrian National Army (SNA), a collection of approximately 30 militias based in northern Aleppo and the ‘Peace Spring’ region of northeastern Syria, bound together by Turkish patronage and oversight in addition to past antagonism with HTS. SNA areas are effectively controlled by various Turkish state bodies affiliated with the Turkish Presidency, the Ministry of the Interior, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), and the military, though officially administration is handled by the Syrian Interim Government (SIG). SNA factions vary greatly in terms of size, influence, and the role they play in non-military affairs.
Roughly these can be divided into several trends: (A) those closest to Turkey, often with pre-SNA ties to MİT and some connection to Syria’s Turkmen population, including Furqat al-Hamzah, Furqat al-Sultan Murad, and Furqat al-Sultan Suleiman Shah, (B) al-Jabhah al-Shamiyah, a faction local to A‘zaz and the northern Aleppo countryside that in the past has acted the most independently of Turkey, (C) factions of fighters originally from Syria’s eastern provinces, now banded together under the name Harakat al-Tahrir wa’l-Bina’, (D) Jaysh al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman, two factions originally from the Damascus suburbs that were displaced to northern Syria in 2018, (E) smaller, less influential factions with roots in the early rural Idlib and Aleppo insurgencies. The complexity of the SNA is largely due to the power individual commanders hold over factions and the competition and ensuing infighting this has caused.
Many of these groups took part in the HTS-led offensive that sparked the collapse of the regime, while an overlapping subsection used the opportunity to launch an offensive outside of HTS-control, primarily targeting the Syrian Democratic Forces in the Aleppo countryside.
The last primary opposition actor is the “Southern Operations Room,” made up of militias from Syria’s southern Dara‘a province. These groups reconciled with the regime in 2018, via a Russian-facilitated process that intended to bring the region under the central government’s control. While this succeeded in ending organized rebellion it created a chaotic security situation in which frequent clashes broke out between militias affiliated with Russia, with Iran, or with various branches of the regime’s military, security, and intelligence forces. With the regime collapsing in early December, a number of these groups used the opportunity to form this Southern Operations Room, quickly seizing Dara‘a and Quneitra, before advancing on Damascus from the south and entering the city before HTS. Ahmad al-Shar‘/al-Julani met with various leaders from Southern Operations Room on December 11th in a bid to unify ranks, however this has yet to bear fruit.
Finally, there are the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the alliance led by the ethnically Kurdish YPG militia that have largely maintained a neutral position with regards to the opposition vs. regime conflict. As of December 8th, the SDF controlled all of Syria east of the Euphrates river apart from Turkey/the SNA’s Peace Spring region, in addition to several isolated neighborhoods in Aleppo city, parts of the Manbij region and other stretches of the Euphrates’ western bank, including the towns of Maskanah and Deir Hafir in eastern Aleppo, the city of al-Taqbah and some of the surrounding countryside in al-Raqqah governorate, and ostensibly some towns and cities in Deir ez-Zour, including the provincial capital. Areas under SDF control are governed by the affiliated Democratic Autonomous Administration (DAANES) and policed by the Internal Security Forces, commonly known as the Asayish. Since then the western and southern edges of the DAANES have been frayed by an SNA offensive targeting Manbij and by protests, withdraws, and defections of Arab partner forces occurring several areas around the Euphrates River Valley.
The SDF has been in Turkish (and, by extension, SNA) crosshairs since Turkey’s direct intervention into Syria in 2016, due to the YPG and its parent PYD political party being a local outgrowth of the international Kurdish movement as headed Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). While Turkish Syria policy was initially aimed at regime change in Damascus, several pivotal events in the 2015-16 period sparked a dramatic shift in priorities. Since then, Turkish policy has focused on preventing the further influx of Syrian refugees into Turkey, creating and developing relatively safe Turkish and opposition-control areas to deport Syrian refugees into, and eradicating the SDF and DAANES project, or at the last removing it from areas directly on its borders.
Since 2019 Turkey’s desire to pursue this latter policy goal was obstructed by the presence of Russian and American forces within SDF territory, neither of which wished to see the SDF disempowered. The Russians entered these areas in October 2019 as part of a chain of events kicked off by US President Trump’s aborted withdrawal. The Russians developed a relationship with the SDF as they hoped to eventually facilitate some sort of deal between the SDF and the regime that would see these areas nominally return under the control of Damascus, however this never materialized in part due to Bashar al-Asad’s aversion to compromise.
The Russian presence on the ground in eastern Syria has consisted of several small outposts manned by Military Police deployments as well as a large deployment of forces to the al-Qamishli airport, which was under the control of the regime until last week. These were intended to deter Turkey from further offensives against the SDF, though deterrence actually functioned via diplomacy. It’s unclear how many Russians remain in northeastern Syria; there have been various reports of evacuations throughout the past week.
For the Americans the YPG, and later the SDF, have been their primary partners on the ground in the war against the Islamic State since the Battle of Kobani in 2014. Soon after that the US began to establish military bases inside SDF-controlled territory. Currently there are nine US bases in these areas, all concentrated on the eastern side of SDF-territory following the aforementioned events of 2019, during which Russian forces actually took over some US bases abandoned in the west.
Islamic State cells still operate within parts of now SDF-controlled territory, in particular central Deir ez-Zour around the city of al-Busayrah, the southern al-Hasakah countryside, and parts of al-Raqqah. Additionally, IS was long able to use the rugged and sparely populated Syrian desert west of the Euphrates, formerly under regime control, as a space to regroup. This continued IS activity is a reason why the US is still in Syria. The main reason, however, is the presence of thousands of Islamic State fighters in prisons run by the SDF and Asayish, in addition to tens of thousands of Islamic State family members in detention camps such as al-Hol and al-Roj.
The US has never offered political recognition to the DAANES and likely never will, as it seeks to avoid involvement in shaping a post-Asad Syria and does not want to create a Kurdistan Region of Iraq 2.0 affiliated with enemies of its NATO ally Turkey. That said the Americans are currently incentivized to protect the SDF to some degree to avoid the deterioration of its security capabilities, at least until some sort of solution for the issue of IS prisoners and families emerges.
The fall of Asad lifts a massive albatross off Syria’s neck, allowing for a future other than indefinitely frozen conflict, Sednaya, sanctions, and pariah statehood. However, enormous questions remain, notably what happens to HTS’s current designation as a terrorist organization by the US, UK, Turkey, the EU, and the UN, in addition to other countries. Given HTS’s post-Jihadist, Islamist ideology there are also a number of very pressing concerns regarding how such will relate issues of democratic representation, legal protections for religious and ethnic minorities, and women’s rights, among others. There’s the dreadful state of the economy across the country, the reliance of millions on international aid, and the increased pressure that desired return of untold numbers of Syrian refugees from abroad will bring. Meanwhile Israel, Syria’s predatory and unrestrained neighbor to the southwest, has escalated its infringement of Syrian sovereignty via a ground incursion in areas adjacent to the occupied Golan Heights and airstrikes targeting military hardware stored at formed regime bases around the country. Then there are the even more immediate questions, pertaining to how Syria is to be unified at the most basic level…
How will HTS approach the SNA, the SDF, and the South when it comes to its stated intention of creating a functioning, centralizing government? While HTS has established its interim government, large parts of the country remain outside its hands. In order to achieve its state formation goals HTS will have to incorporate these actors, either through negotiations and compromise, or by coercion and force, though this could spark broad political antagonism.
The SNA and SIG have a historically hostile relationship with HTS. They are made up of many figures who have gained significant extra-legal power over the years. Furthermore they are empowered via the extensive Turkish support they receive and the deployment of thousands of Turkish soldiers throughout the territory under their control. What role Turkey plays in the process of unifying the rivaling opposition components will be key. That said the SNA and SIG lack strong institutional coherence and it’s feasible that certain SNA factions as well as SIG politicians and SIG-affiliated local councils could defect to HTS/Damascus.
As an outgrowth of the Kurdish movement, securing legal recognition and protection for Syria’s Kurds, as well as guaranteeing the return of Kurds to their homes in areas like Afrin will be key issues for the SDF in any potential negotiation. Some form of regional autonomy will likely be brought up as well though this might be a harder bargain. The continued attacks of the Turkish state and its SNA proxies are likely an incentive to come to some sort of deal with HTS, with whom the SDF currently has a more neutral relationship. In recent weeks both Turkey and various SNA factions have repeatedly voiced their desires to eradicate from Syria “separatism” and “terrorism,” their standard euphemisms for the SDF. Currently there is a temporary ceasefire between the SDF and SNA in effect, demarcated along the Euphrates river, and reportedly facilitated in some capacity via American negotiations with Turkey. However it seems unlikely the US would forcefully stop further Turkish encroachment in these areas far to the west of American military presence, particularly given the current administration’s lame duck status. The SDF might seek to rely on continued US presence to avoid coming to a final agreement but this would be short-sighted.
As for the opposition groups in the South, these are the least unified and institutionalized as they only just re-entered the opposition last week and lack the support of an outside actor. They are also located the furthest from the areas I’ve covered here over the years so I can not speak to the local dynamics there.
A fine report, Alexander. Keep them coming.