Post-Assad Syria: A Transition Shaped From Outside

Authors: Clara Nwadinigwe and Hamd Alkhayat

When Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham launched its final offensive in late 2024, the speed of Assad's collapse surprised almost everyone, which should not have. By the time the blitz began, four of Assad's external pillars had already failed simultaneously. Hezbollah had been decapitated by Israeli strikes between September and November 2024, removing Assad's most effective expeditionary infantry and rendering Iran's logistics corridor into Syria functionally worthless. Russia had already drawn down its Syrian deployment to prioritise Ukraine. Turkey, calculating that a post-Assad Syria served its interests better than a weakened Assad, supplied the green light. The offensive met no serious resistance because there was nothing left to push against.

Nineteen months later, the transitional government has extended administrative control across most of the country, secured broad international recognition, and removed HTS from the UN sanctions list. The March 2025 cabinet included technocrats, civil society figures and representatives from minority communities alongside HTS loyalists. Though HTS retained the most powerful posts, the composition was broader than the caretaker government it replaced. These achievements, albeit significant, are incomplete.

A damaged banner of Bashar al-Assad. Photograph: Bakr Alkasem/AFP

Integration: A Working Model Under Pressure

The most consequential decision Damascus made in the immediate aftermath was to integrate approximately 5,000 foreign fighters into the new national army rather than disarm or deport them. Deportation was unworkable, as most countries of origin refused to take their nationals back. Forcible disarmament risked pushing fighters toward ISIS or other groups hostile to the post-Assad order. So, Damascus applied the model it had developed in Idlib: absorb the fighters, place them under state command, and manage the risks from within.

It has largely worked. The Turkestan Islamic Party — roughly two thirds of the foreign fighter contingent — has maintained strong discipline and complied with military directives. Others have not been as straightforward. Syrian interior ministry officials described Uzbek contingents as operating in “fragmented, mafia-like ways.” Islamic State is exploiting these fault lines actively. The group is recruiting within the new army, framing al-Sharaa’s governance as a betrayal of jihadist principles.

The Periphery

Two territorial disputes define the outer limits of Damascus’s control.

In the northeast, the January 2026 ceasefire with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces produced a framework for gradual integration. The handover of Kobani’s administration on 18 May is the most recent concrete step. But multiple deadlines for a broader deal have already passed, and the underlying tensions have not been resolved.

Suwayda is the more acute problem. Druze militias operating under a self-styled National Guard are receiving material support from Israel. Former Assad regime officers hold leadership positions within the formation. Drug trafficking from Suwayda toward Jordan surged sharply after the National Guard consolidated control of the province in July 2025, prompting multiple rounds of Jordanian airstrikes on Captagon infrastructure in the area. The Druze leadership is in regular contact with SDF commanders — both positioning themselves as alternatives to Damascus’s authority. On the coast, Alawite resistance figures have been in communication with both, suggesting a peripheral opposition coalition is forming across geographic and sectarian lines.

Exiled Assad regime figures in Lebanon and Russia continue to finance anti-government factions on the coast. The fighting there persists at a low level, enough to complicate Damascus’s diplomatic relationships with Beirut and Moscow without threatening the government’s hold on power.

Israel: The Expanding Footprint

Israel’s role in post-Assad Syria extends well beyond Suwayda. Within hours of Assad’s fall in December 2024, Israeli forces launched a large-scale ground operation, seizing approximately 350 square kilometres of Syrian territory including the UN-monitored demilitarised zone and parts of western Daraa and Quneitra. Over the following 48 hours, Israeli jets launched at least 350 airstrikes targeting Syrian military infrastructure — the opening of a campaign that has since recorded nearly 1,000 strikes and over 1,600 ground incursions between August 2025 and May 2026.

The stated rationale has shifted between counter-terrorism, Druze protection and demining, but the infrastructure tells a different story. In early 2026, Israel announced a $1.7 billion border barrier along its Syrian and Jordanian borders. The Sijil Centre’s analysis of the project concluded it was less about demining and more about constructing AI-managed smart borders using sensor networks, drones and ground-based robots. Israel’s Defence Minister has been equally plain: “We will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon.”

The two dynamics are connected. Israel destroyed an estimated 85 percent of Syria’s military capabilities in December 2024. That destruction is the primary reason Damascus cannot challenge Israel’s southern footprint and also the major reason Damascus needs Russia to rearm.

Russia: Defeat Converted into Dependency

The Russia story in post-Assad Syria runs in the opposite direction to how it is usually told. Moscow did not lose Syria; rather, it repositioned. When HTS launched its final offensive, Russian forces stepped back entirely. Russia’s calculation was straightforward: preserve the bases, lose the client.

With 85 percent of Syria’s military destroyed by Israeli strikes and Turkey cautious about supplying heavy weapons for fear of provoking Israel, Damascus had few options. Al-Sharaa has visited Moscow twice since taking power. Syria has received an estimated 12 million barrels of Russian Arctic crude since early 2025, delivered by sanctioned tankers to the Baniyas terminal. Hmeimim Air Base is being converted into a Syrian army training facility staffed by Russian advisers. Tartus naval base remains operational. In return, Russia provides oil, grain, diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council — and the prospect of military hardware that no one else will supply.

Al-Sharaa avoids a decisive alignment with any geopolitical camp while convincing rival regional and global powers that they still have something to gain from Damascus. In April 2026, he welcomed Ukrainian President Zelensky to Damascus, days after Russian cargo ships docked at Syrian ports. The contradiction is deliberate. Syria no longer has the luxury of anchoring itself within a single geopolitical camp.

The Reconstruction Question

On 12 May, a coalition of 27 Syrian civil society organisations released a transitional justice roadmap proposing special courts, reparations and institutional reform. The Syrian Network for Human Rights went further, releasing a reintegration framework that identified economic alternatives as a central prerequisite for sustainable demilitarisation, alongside justice and security sector reform. Fighting has become the primary livelihood for thousands of young Syrians with no civilian skills. Without viable employment, disarmament will not last.

The external picture is moving faster than the domestic one. Qatar’s UCC Holding, alongside Turkey’s Kalyon and Cengiz, has closed the two largest infrastructure deals in Syria’s post-war history — a $7 billion energy agreement covering 4,000 MW of natural gas and solar capacity across four provinces, and a $4 billion Damascus International Airport redevelopment with construction already underway on Terminal 2. DP World signed an $800 million 30-year port concession at Tartous. Qatar’s early positioning was not accidental. Doha maintained sustained engagement with Syrian opposition figures throughout the civil war, building the relationships and conviction that allowed it to close contracts while others were still conducting due diligence.

Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan with Syria's Ahmed al-Sharaa

Turkey’s position is particularly striking in its contradictions. The same Turkish companies — Kalyon and Cengiz — closing reconstruction contracts in Damascus are part of a construction sector with deep ties to Ankara. Their advantage is not only political. Geographic proximity, an established supply chain into northern Syria built during the conflict years, and a shared Islamist political background between Ankara and al-Sharaa’s HTS have given Turkish firms an operational head start that Gulf and Western contractors cannot replicate quickly. Turkey simultaneously backs SNA factions in the northwest that complicate Damascus’s integration efforts and leads the largest closed reconstruction deals in the country. Ankara is embedding itself in Syria’s future through both military proxies and commercial contracts.

The headline investment figures require context. Al-Sharaa has cited $28 billion in total committed investment. But according to the head of Syria’s Securities and Financial Markets Commission, Syrian businesses held over $100 billion abroad at the start of 2024, and very little of it has returned. Remittance inflows estimated at $4 billion annually in 2025 are financing household consumption, not reconstruction. The reason is not sanctions. It is uncertainty about where the transition is heading. Gulf engagement is calibrated rather than collective. Qatar has construction underway on both the energy and airport deals. Saudi Arabia pledged billions across aviation, telecommunications and water but disbursement remains limited relative to headline figures. The UAE signed a $2 billion MoU for a Damascus metro system that remains at framework stage. Each GCC state is operating on its own timeline, shaped as much by domestic priorities as by appetite for Syria. American capital faces a different constraint — the relationships and on-the-ground presence that Qatar and Turkey built during the conflict years do not yet exist. The actors closing contracts are those with prior conviction and presence built long before Assad fell.

The investors making early progress are not moving alone. Diaspora Syrians with international business experience are bridging the gap between foreign capital and the Syrian market, providing the local knowledge, relationships and compliance structures that outside investors cannot build quickly. In a market still short on legal certainty and enforceable guarantees, co-investment with established local partners is less a preference than a prerequisite.

Levant Foresights Risk Matrix

Actor	Risk	Likelihood	What it means
Damascus	Territorial reach outpaces administrative capacity	Medium-High	Creates space for spoilers in under-administered areas
Foreign Fighters	ISIS recruitment gains traction inside army units	Medium	Puts US certification at risk; reopens sanctions question
SDF / Kurds	Integration talks collapse; fighting resumes	Medium	Northeast agricultural region back in play as conflict zone
Druze / Suwayda	Israel-backed militia becomes permanent fixture	Medium-High	Fragmentation stops being transitional and becomes structural
Turkey	Backs SNA factions to retain leverage regardless of Damascus integration	High	Northwest stays fragmented indefinitely
Israel	Southern buffer expands and becomes permanent	High	Syrian sovereignty permanently compromised; regional actors forced to respond
Russia / Assad Network	Coast financing continues uninterrupted	Medium-High	Low-level instability sustained; Moscow leverage preserved

Who Is Gaining

Actor	How	What they are extracting
Qatar / UCC	Closed contracts, construction underway	First-mover advantage in airport, energy and port infrastructure
Turkey	Reconstruction contracts and military proxies simultaneously	Commercial dominance and political leverage over Damascus's integration process
Russia	Re-entered through rearmament dependency	Hmeimim and Tartus secured; oil relationship established; military advisory presence restored
Al-Sharaa	Balancing multiple patrons without committing to any	Extracting military, energy and capital from competing powers while preserving strategic autonomy

Outlook

Damascus enters the second year of its transition with more legitimacy than it had at the start. International recognition has broadened, administrative control has extended, and the apparatus of the Assad state has been dismantled without the country fracturing completely. But legitimacy and control are not the same. The transitional government’s authority remains contested at the margins. Suwayda is not a peripheral problem. The northeast is not a settled question. The coast is not pacified. Each of these theatres has external actors with resources and interests invested in keeping them unresolved.

The foreign fighter arrangement has held for now, but it was designed as a short-term solution to an immediate problem, not a permanent architecture. As the transition matures, the tensions within it will too. ISIS understands this and is positioning accordingly.

On reconstruction, the civil society frameworks released in May 2026 signal that Syrian institutions are thinking seriously about what comes next. But the reconstruction story is already more differentiated than most assessments suggest. Patient capital with prior conviction is closing. The louder, richer bidders are still at the MoU stage. A defeated power is buying its way back in through dependency. And Turkey is doing both simultaneously — closing contracts and maintaining proxies — embedding itself in Syria’s future from two directions at once.

Syria’s future is not being decided in Damascus alone. It is being shaped in Suwayda, in Ankara, in Tel Aviv, in the northeast, and in Doha and Moscow as much as in Washington. Damascus can influence those variables. It cannot control them.

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