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Syria’s defence ministry has opened applications for Assad-era soldiers to enlist in the army, reaching across former enemy lines in an attempt to bolster security and strengthen their hold on the country.

The ministry said it had set up an online application for “defectors from the former regime . . . who wish to return to duty”. The 16-part questionnaire asks for biographical details, information about where they served, speciality and “date of desertion”.

For months, the fate of hundreds of thousands of former soldiers remained unclear after the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in December led a rebel offensive that ousted President Bashar al-Assad, bringing the country’s brutal 13-year civil war and his family’s dynastic rule to an end.

Rebuilding the country’s armed forces has since been one of the biggest challenges for Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s new president and former HTS leader.

In the days immediately after Assad’s fall, Israel carried out a major bombing campaign across Syria, levelling weapons depots and military installations.

Within 48 hours, the IDF said it had destroyed nearly 80 per cent of the Assad regime’s strategic military capabilities. The Israeli military has also taken territory in southern Syria as a buffer zone along their border.

Sharaa has said he does not want to start any new conflicts, but staving off potential threats to his power from former regime loyalists and armed factions at home has been a key concern.

In the weeks following the takeover, Assad’s soldiers were asked to show up to so-called settlement centres around the country to turn in their military IDs and weapons, though officials said few weapons were collected.

The new rulers also announced the disbanding of all military groups, including the myriad rebel factions that helped topple Assad, and requested all fighters enlist in the new Syrian security forces.

But rebel fighters have protested, privately and online, against the notion of fighting side by side with former members of the Syrian army, which perpetrated countless massacres and crimes against civilians — even filming and publishing them as warnings against rising up against Assad.

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Syria’s army was disproportionately made up of Alawites, members of the same religious minority to which the Assad family belonged, who were favoured for promotion and other privileges.

Last month, supporters of the former government appeared to attempt a shortlived uprising in Syria’s Alawite and Assad strongholds, prompting a ferocious sectarian crackdown by forces allied with Sharaa.

Sharaa’s attempts to convince armed factions to disband has had mixed results so far. His government signed a historic agreement in March with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led group in north-eastern Syria, mandating the integration of the SDF into the new army. But this is yet to happen.

The US has also demanded that Sharaa exclude foreign fighters, many of whom were members of HTS, from high military ranks as a precondition for partial sanctions relief, which Sharaa desperately needs to deliver on his promise of rebuilding Syria’s shattered economy.