Syria has stepped up intelligence-sharing with the US in an attempt to boost ties with Washington and relieve pressure from Israel, a security source said after joint raids were carried out against ISIS.
Information provided by Syrian intelligence was behind last week’s raids on 15 ISIS weapon caches in the outskirts of Damascus and southern Syria. The US Central Command stockpiles were destroyed in the “combined operation”.
It was the second joint operation between the US and Syria’s new government to be made public, after US special envoy Tom Barrack signalled that the arrest of an ISIS operative near Damascus in October was also carried out co-operatively.
Mr Barrack met Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara in Damascus on Monday to discuss “recent developments in the region”, official Syrian media said.
Last month, the US announced Syria had joined the international coalition against ISIS, marking a milestone for a government with a militant past seeking to become a Washington ally. The country was in the orbit of Iran and Russia before rebels led by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a former affiliate of Al Qaeda, ousted the former Assad regime a year ago.
A security source in Jordan whose work is focused on Syria said the ISIS weapons sites that were hit were mainly along an axis stretching east from the Damascus suburbs of Ghouta to the Badia desert region, as well as near the province of Sweida in southern Syria. Government forces, the source said, have been tracking a relocation of ISIS elements from the Badia into more urban areas and provided Washington with the co-ordinates through Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate and the Defence Ministry.
The Intelligence Directorate has also started compiling a database on foreign fighters in the country, regardless of their loyalty, the source added. They said the database would include “their names, mobile numbers and everyone they associate with, even their wives and their relatives.”
Syria houses thousands of foreign fighters, some of whom had fought on the side of HTS in the 2011 to 2024 civil war and are now in the national army. Others belong to ISIS and other militant groups that were rivals to HTS. The database “doesn’t mean” the new authorities will “move against their own” but helps present the new security apparatus as “aware and in control”, the source said.
“One way the Syrian side is dealing with a lack of trust from the Americans is to present themselves as an indispensable reservoir for information,” they said.
The operation against ISIS took place a day before Israel killed at least 13 people in the Syrian village of Beit Jinn, during a raid Israel said targeted members of Jamaa al Islamiyya, a militant group supportive of Hamas. A Syrian source said the attack faced more resistance than previous Israeli incursions in the area, resulting in six Israeli soldiers being wounded.
However, the episode may have enhanced the position of President Al Shara, after US moves for a security deal between Israel and Syria faltered. “He can now point out to the Americans that a local resistance will develop if both Washington and Israel don’t rely on him to stamp out militancy,” the source said.
On Monday, Syria’s Interior Ministry said security personnel had killed two ISIS members during operations in Idlib that also resulted in several arrests. The ministry said the operations were part of a “continuous campaign to track terrorist organisations” and dry up their sources of funding.
Waiel Olwan, head of information at Jusoor For Studies, a political research centre in Damascus, expected the counter-terrorism raids, whether carried out solely by the government or jointly with the US, to “spread across Syria”, now that co-ordination with the anti-ISIS coalition has become “high-level, public and official”.