When Syria’s civil war ended in December 2024 with the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, hundreds of thousands of civilians still had arms. Over the nearly 14 years of war, armed groups have proliferated, ranging from a wide range of rebel groups in the northwest and pro-regime military and paramilitary forces in central and central Syria, to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast and a complex network of militias across the south. And let’s not forget ISIS and al-Qaeda.
In this context, the task of demilitarizing society and reunifying the country poses a truly formidable challenge for the Syrian interim government. Indeed, the process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of armed groups while establishing new military and security sector reforms is at the heart of Syria’s transitional state-building project. Several days of violent clashes last week between government forces and the Self-Defense Forces in Aleppo have highlighted the consequences of failing to resolve integration challenges.
As a first step in December 2024, al-Assad regime forces were quickly disbanded and a process of position adjustment began. This allowed all former soldiers (both officers and conscripts) to register using their national ID and apply for release to civilian life or re-enlist in a new military.
Thousands of men across the country have chosen to engage in this reconciliation process to clear their names and start new lives. But thousands of others abstained, particularly in coastal areas dominated by the Alawite minority. Many of those who avoided this process integrated into rural communities, but hundreds eventually formed rebel factions that carried out low-level attacks against government forces, culminating in a large-scale coordinated operation on March 6 that killed more than 100 government officials and sparked a week of chaotic and brutal violence that left more than 1,000 people dead.
In the months since then, thousands of former regime officials have been trained and joined new security forces across Syria. Despite this, the fighting continues, with financial support not only from Russia but also from prominent members of the al-Assad regime in exile in neighboring Lebanon.
This not only continues to undermine Syria’s ability to mend relations with Lebanon and Russia, but also complicates the geopolitical position of these countries in the wider region, which stands directly behind the new Damascus government in hopes of turning Syria into a hub of stability and prosperity.
Meanwhile, Syria’s interim government is also seeking to rebuild the Ministry of Defense (MOD), which includes an army, navy, and air force, and the Ministry of Interior (MOI), which includes a state public security directorate and dedicated “counterterrorism,” counternarcotics, and cyber units.
During this period of transition, the Ministry of Defense emerged as an umbrella uniting a wide range of armed opposition groups. All former rebel groups have effectively disbanded, but some remain in more or less form, making up about 20 divisions of the army. These factions with long-standing ties to Turkiye, particularly the Syrian National Army (SNA) faction based in northern Aleppo, appear to have benefited from greater military support and arms supplies than other factions previously based in Idlib. Some leaders have controversial pasts, including unresolved international sanctions designations for violent crimes and corruption.
In the early stages of Syria’s transition, the Ministry of Defense was the force tasked with responding to security challenges and securing territory through checkpoints and field deployments. This was not an effective ‘post-war’ approach to security, and the ministry’s serious deficiencies in discipline, cohesion, and command and control were replaced by gross errors of judgment and restraint – most notoriously on the coast in March 2025, but also in Suweida in July, when MoD forces intervened in bloody clashes between local Druze and Bedouin communities.
Until late 2025, the Ministry of Defense took a backseat to internal security, replaced by the MOI, whose public security forces were given responsibility for local security across the country.
Unlike MOD’s divisions, MOI’s units are dominated by newly recruited soldiers from across the country. Although the MOI’s specialized forces remain dominated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) personnel, the relative lack of previous faction affiliation in the broader public security forces has led to significant improvements in some of the most difficult environments.
Indeed, Syria’s coastal region transformed from the most consistently dangerous and deadly region of the country in the first half of 2025 to the most stable and least violent region by the end of 2025, despite continuing low-level insurgency. That is almost entirely due to MOI’s assumption of security responsibilities and months of efforts to engage with local communities and build trust.
The most strategic challenge facing Syria’s transition today lies in the unresolved territorial dispute with the Kurdish-majority SDF in the northeast and in the Druze-majority Suweida province in the south. In both regions, armed groups have presented themselves as an alternative to Damascus’ rule, and both have sparked persistent tensions and conflict.
The U.S. government has worked intensively to facilitate and mediate negotiations to achieve the integration of the Self-Defense Forces into Syria, but these negotiations have not yet borne fruit. Tensions have been extremely high for weeks as multiple deadlines for such an agreement have passed.
Late on January 5, an SDF drone attack on checkpoints manned by government forces in the eastern countryside of Aleppo set off a spiral of hostilities that ended in the expulsion of SDF-affiliated militias from the city’s northwestern districts by January 10. This latest battle dealt a blow to integration negotiations, but also highlighted the consequences of their failure. The realistic prospect of hostilities escalating to the eastern Aleppo front line could lead to a complete halt to negotiations.
Tense confrontations continue in Suwayda following July’s violence that left more than 1,400 people dead. Druze militias have united under the “National Guard”, which receives support from Israel. The dominant role played by former al-Assad regime officers within the group’s leadership led to a more than 400 percent increase in drug trafficking to Jordan, triggering the Jordanian airstrikes in late December, according to data collected by Syria Weekly Media.
Persistent reports of sectarian violence within the National Guard and an increase in extrajudicial attacks against Druze figures seeking to criticize Suweida’s new de facto authorities suggest that the current situation will not bring stability.
It is in Suwaida where geopolitics has proven to be most serious. Israel’s support for the Druze authorities presents a direct challenge not only to Syria’s regime transition, but also to Jordan’s security, regional support to Damascus, and the desire of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration for Syria’s new government to assume national control.
Suwaida’s de facto Druze leader, Hikmat al-Hijri, is also in regular contact with SDF leaders in northeastern Syria, and both sides sometimes appear to be coordinating their positions on Damascus. Meanwhile, Alawite groups along the coast, including protest leader Ghazal Ghazal, are also in contact with both the SDF and al-Hijra factions in a bid to unite behind a political vision against Damascus.
After all, Syria’s process of resolving the insurgency challenge is inherently political, tied to both the civil war and the tensions and challenges arising from the regime transition itself. The fact that the majority of the international community has united behind the Syrian Interim Government has helped provide time and space for the disbandment and consolidation of armed groups and combatants across the country. However, as long as geopolitical challenges to the transition remain, the integration process will remain incomplete and a source of instability.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
