In late 2024, Syria’s army, exhausted by 14 years of war and stripped of much of its capacity, buckled as the state it served crumbled around it.
The force that had kept Assad in power for over a decade, with crucial backing from Russia and Iran, was unable to halt an offensive initially intended to push back the frontline, which then rapidly snowballed into an advance on the capital, Damascus.
In the aftermath of the overthrow of Assad, Syria’s transitional government has set about rebuilding state institutions and a ruined country. This includes the Syrian army.
In the year and a half since, the transitional government, formed by the strongest rebel faction that spearheaded the collapse of Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has embarked on a journey to unify Syria’s myriad factions into a professional, institutionalised force.
Yet, despite that effort, Syria’s recent history has thrown up several stumbling blocks that weigh on the government’s ability to create a coherent national force.
The HTS ‘nucleus’ of the new Syrian army
Like much of Syria’s initial caretaker government, Syria’s military formation has been centred on an HTS core, most notably represented by Murhaf Abu Qasra, the former head of HTS’s military wing and now Syria’s Defence Minister.
Qussai Jukhadar, a Syrian researcher, explained to The New Arab that this core was the result of two dynamics within HTS prior to Assad’s fall: military discipline and institutionalisation.
“For example, violations against civilians in Idlib were very small in number compared, for example, to Afrin, which was controlled by the [Turkish-backed] national army,” he said, adding that the national army factions would often fight each other.
“As an organisation, [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] had a military college; it had artillery and tank specialisations; it had signal/communications; and it had military planning,” Jukhadar added.
“So we can say that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham became the nucleus for the entire army.”
Sixteen days after the collapse of the Assad regime, the new government announced the dissolution of all rebel factions and their merging into the Ministry of Defence following a series of discussions with rebel factions.
Unifying and professionalising the new army
On 29 January, a victory conference was held with the participation of an array of rebel factions that participated in the offensive against Assad, which saw the outlining of key policy positions, including a reaffirmation from all factions of their own dissolution into the state.
It was after this point that the factions decided on how to integrate into the state, which Jukhadar described as a “slow transition.”
“They brought them in as factions, then they gave them numbers, then they placed brigade commanders and division commanders from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham over them, and then they started distributing specialisations to the military divisions,” he told The New Arab.
This, alongside the weening out of veteran fighters for recruits, was aimed at homogenising the factions, moving them away from identities formed during the war.
Since then, Syria’s government has undertaken numerous efforts to professionalise the army, including through international collaboration with its neighbour Turkey, which signed a bilateral defence agreement in August 2025 to help train, equip, and reform the new Syrian army.
This led to a batch of Syrian officer cadets travelling to Turkey for training, with Saudi Arabia also taking in cadets for training.
Its international partnerships have seen Syria’s military coordinating with US Central Command in its shared mission against Islamic State (IS) cells in the country, and in May it took part in Turkey’s bi-annual EFES multinational military exercises.
Like much of Syria’s initial caretaker government, Syria’s new military structure was built around an HTS core, drawing on the group’s discipline and institutional experience developed before Assad’s fall. [Getty]
In March, al-Sharaa issued two presidential decrees establishing the Syrian University for Security Sciences and the National University for Defence Sciences. The latter integrated several institutions of military education, including the Higher Military Academy, the Air, Naval, and Military colleges, and the Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technology, among others.
The move was aimed at further developing research and training programmes for Syria’s officer corps, allowing for specialisation and establishing higher educational pathways.
However, Kheder Khaddour, a non-resident Scholar at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, said the importance of the new academies is yet to be determined, citing a lack of information on their resourcing or curriculum.
“They [the government] want a new Syrian army that’s a professional army. But what is the doctrine of this army, what is the curriculum inside it? All of these are not clear, to be honest,” he told The New Arab.
“What could be interesting here is who is going to train them,” he added, noting that the academy and Syria’s military are likely to have international partnerships that will define its doctrinal focus.
He cited Turkey, already a partner of Syria’s military, Russia, Pakistan, the Gulf States, and Jordan as potentially influencing Syria’s doctrine, with its posture towards both Israel and Iran also likely to be a determining factor in defining doctrinal questions.
The legacy of war: A confederal army, with local identities
Amid the ongoing effort to institutionalise the army, Khaddour noted several key dynamics from the war that have reemerged, stifling efforts to institutionalise the military factions into a unitary, national army.
“The Syrian military scene, from someone from outside receiving it like myself, is sort of a military confederation. This is what we see now,” he said.
Khaddour explained that before the collapse of Assad, Syria’s military personnel would serve away from their local areas, representing the nation and serving the state.
“It’s necessary [that] the army must be a national army. A national army needs the officers to be outside their place of origin. Here what is happening is the opposite.”
This is because Syria’s myriad of armed factions, who had been displaced from across the country to the rebel-held northwest, returned to their local areas following the fall of Assad and set up roots, giving them local dimensions.
Analysts who spoke to The New Arab identified two serious dangers for Syria’s future: military fragmentation leading to separate areas of control, and the concentration of power producing Assad-era practices. [Getty]
“This is the only way to prevent the collapse,” Khaddour said, explaining that the country’s fragility after Assad’s fall forced al-Sharaa’s hand to allow armed factions to return to their localities, rather than deploying them elsewhere across the country to represent a national army.
“The dynamic of the returnees itself forced Sharaa to follow this approach.”
The integration of units from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which on Tuesday dissolved itself into the Syrian state, is also emblematic of this confederalism, Khaddour noted.
Although there is an integration process, with four Syrian army brigades being created from the SDF’s military branch, these soldiers will be stationed in Syria’s northeast, where the SDF previously governed.
“This is against the logic of a national central state,” he said. “Instead of making a deal with SDF leaders to remain in their areas, you have to make a deal with them to be part of the Syrian military and to serve elsewhere.”
Meanwhile, Syria’s plethora of foreign fighters are being tightly controlled by Syria’s military, according to Qussai Jukhadar, who told The New Arab that it “appears they are being moved around and distributed carefully so they are not grouped together with fighters from other factions”.
“There is not much information about them, partly because they have not caused many problems. I also think this is deliberate, so as not to raise concerns among European countries and the United States.”
Despite the presence and continued existence of local identities, Jukhadder said that the integration process was moving smoothly. “Even when disagreements arise, they are being resolved through dialogue,” he told The New Arab.
This includes the removal of commanders from three formerly Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) units at the request of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The commanders are under international sanctions following their human rights abuses during the war and fought battles against the SDF.
Yet, despite holding the factions together, creating a national institution is expected to take years, with Khaddour using the analogy of Syria’s burgeoning officer corps as an example of the pace it will take.
“You need the military academy to graduate new officers, and if someone joined the military academy at 18 years old, until he becomes a mid-rank officer, he needs at least 10 years.”
Looking ahead, Khaddour expects the local identities of Syrian factions to become stronger. “Time is not in the hands of Sharaa; it’s in the hands of the factions, in the hands of locals.”
Moving away from Assad’s legacy
Yet, institutionalisation and professionalisation are essential for Syria’s future stability.
In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Assad, two bouts of fighting, one on Syria’s coast and the other in Suweida, saw sectarian massacres targeting Alawite and Druze civilians, with units of Syria’s disparate army taking part.
Investigations from the government placed blame on lone personnel, citing a lack of institutional oversight, though a UN investigation described both incidents as being systematic.
Kholoud Helmi, a non-resident Fellow at TIMEP, told The New Arab that within Syria “there is a widespread desire for a military that protects the country and its people rather than the authorities”.
She said that people wanted a military that is professional, politically neutral, accountable to civil authorities, reflects Syria’s diverse community, and refrains from political involvement or acting as an internal security force.
“Above all, Syrians need to feel safe in the presence of the military, rather than threatened by it,” Helmi said.
To do this, Syria’s military needs a transparent vetting process to weed out those who committed crimes against humanity, alongside the integration of members of rebel factions as individuals rather than units, professional training on human rights law, and legal enforcement when those standards are broken.
Helmi also noted that the announcement of unification doesn’t necessarily mean that a unified army exists, noting that alongside the retention of commanders, financial networks and ideological affiliations may also persist.
She identified two serious dangers for Syria’s future: military fragmentation leading to separate areas of control, and the concentration of power producing Assad-era practices.
“The real measure of reform is whether Syrians, regardless of their political position, ethnicity, religion or region, can encounter the military without fear of arbitrary arrest, humiliation, disappearance or retaliation.”
Oliver Mizzi is a journalist at The New Arab
Follow him on X: @OllyMizzi99 or on Bluesky: ollymizzi99.bsky.social
Edited by Charlie Hoyle