Since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, Syria’s center of gravity has shifted from regime-opposition battlefield dynamics to a contest over state reconstitution. Who controls coercive power, how diverse communities and minorities in Syria are accommodated, and whether the interim authorities can turn wartime coalitions into predictable government institutions, remain key in the aftermath of the civil war.
The transition has destabilized the fragmented “two-state Syria” logic that prevailed for years, with the Assad-regime controlling Damascus, the west and key cities, and parallel authorities and militias controlling different regions. However, it is yet to produce a unified political settlement. Instead, Syria has moved into a volatile consolidation phase in which the interim presidency under Ahmed al-Sharaa must simultaneously integrate armed actors, reassure minorities, stabilize the economy, and manage regional pressures that are recalibrating rather than receding.
Two dynamics stand out. First, as the state security apparatus is being rebuilt the government and its power and authority remains centered around Damascus, and localized incidents and clashes persist. Second, the legitimacy of the central government is being challenged: minority communities, local civil society networks, and many municipal brokers are testing whether “post-Assad” Syria means an inclusive transition or a new hierarchy with different symbols.
Integration is the new frontline
The most consequential conflict dynamics in 2025-26 are no longer defined by classic civil war frontlines, but integration bargains, especially where armed formations and local security forces are asked to fold into national structures. In practice, this security integration is proceeding in bursts, often mediated by external actors, and frequently stalled by disputes over command, weapons, and local authority.
In the northeast, the interim authorities have pushed to dismantle the Kurdish-led autonomy that consolidated after 2015. Recent months have seen major territorial and administrative shifts: Damascus regained large areas from the Syrian Democratic Forces, while negotiating an integration track that remains fragile.
Western Syria illustrates the other half of the security problem: rebuilding internal security in a way that prevents revenge cycles while also restoring basic law-and-order capacity. The March 2025 coastal violence, including large-scale killings of Alawite civilians, was a stress test for the interim authorities’ discipline and accountability mechanisms. Since then, the Interior Ministry’s approach has moved toward gradual localization and selective reintegration, including the quiet rehiring of former regime-era Alawi police in parts of the coast and broader recruitment aimed at expanding police station coverage into smaller towns and villages. This raises a dilemma in making minority areas feel safer – should the state bring people into the security forces without proper vetting, thus protecting abuses? Or should the state keep them out with no route back into public roles and you may fuel resentment and new spoilers?
Kurdish bargaining and the ISIS custody problem in the north
The Kurdish front is simultaneously a governance issue, a Turkish security issue, and an international counterterrorism issue. A US-supported ceasefire (announced on January 18, 2026 and then stabilized through follow-on arrangements) and an integration outline foresee Kurdish forces being reorganized into state brigades and Kurdish internal security elements being absorbed under the interior ministry, while leaving open the question of how much meaningful local authority remains.
The outline has been framed around phased deployments into key urban centers, notably Hasakah and Qamishli, the formation of new state-linked units incorporating Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) brigades, and the gradual absorption of Kurdish civil institutions – while core issues such as heavy weapons, command-and-control, and control of strategic border crossings and energy sites remain sensitive.
The same track also points toward the Syrian state taking over responsibility for Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS)-linked detention facilities and camps previously managed by the SDF, shifting custody and site security from Kurdish control to interim government control as part of the wider unification push. This is happening under conditions that are structurally unfavorable for the Kurds: Damascus has regained momentum, Turkey remains hostile to any durable Kurdish self-rule, and Washington’s priority has shifted toward preventing renewed war and containing ISIS spillovers rather than defending the previous autonomy architecture.
Another immediate risk sits in the custody of ISIS detainees and the stability of detention and camp systems. During periods of fighting and rapid territorial change, prison security becomes a national and international security issue, not a local administrative problem. The northeast escalation has coincided with renewed concern about detention instability and the risk of ISIS reconstitution if governance collapses in contested zones. This concern is not abstract: in early 2026, a large transfer of ISIS detainees from Syrian custody to Iraq was carried out in the wake of the government’s offensive and the ceasefire track, demonstrating how quickly the detention portfolio can be displaced across borders when local control arrangements break down.
This detainee architecture is also a marker of US repositioning: Washington has been moving toward treating Damascus as its primary counterterrorism partner in Syria, while shifting the most politically and logistically burdensome detainee portfolio to Iraq in the near term and toward Syrian state custody as integration advances. The interim authorities will face a credibility test in 2026 on whether they can professionalize governance of detention, keep international coordination channels functional, and prevent the northeast from becoming a permissive environment for ISIS networks under the fog of “integration.”
Druze autonomy pressures and Israeli leverage in the south
In the south, the conflict dynamic is less about separatist control maps than about communal self-defense, center-periphery bargaining, and external leverage, above all from Israel. Clashes in Suwayda in mid-2025, triggered by local conflict between Druze fighters and Bedouin armed groups and compounded by the arrival of government forces, ended in ceasefire arrangements brokered through local notables, but the episode underlined a structural vulnerability: Damascus’ attempt to project authority can quickly become entangled with communal fears and regional intervention.
Israel has explicitly framed southern Syria in demilitarization terms and has tied that posture to protection claims regarding the Druze, while also deepening its footprint in and around the buffer zone.
What matters politically is the direction of travel inside Suwayda: since the July 2025 violence, talk has shifted in parts of the Druze leadership away from negotiated disarmament toward autonomy or even secession, with some voices explicitly floating an Israeli-backed protection model. Even if the scale and operational details of such support are contested, the strategic effect is clear: Suwayda offers Israel a low-cost lever to complicate the interim authorities’ claim to sovereign monopoly over force in the south, while offering local Druze actors an external backstop that reduces incentives to accept a purely centralized settlement. This dynamic also hardens the center-periphery bargaining problem: once local security becomes tied to external deterrence, Damascus faces higher costs for both coercive entry and negotiated compromise, and local actors have fewer reasons to trade arms for promises.
Top-down transition raises concerns about potential abuse of power
The interim authorities have pursued a top-down transition architecture: a national dialogue process that has produced broad, non-binding outcomes, followed by a constitutional declaration signed in March 2025 that sets a five-year transitional phase. Suspicions start with a mechanism that concentrates authority in the presidency with limited enforceable checks, creating a “goodwill” model of transition in a country where fear of arbitrary power is the defining political memory. The declaration can function as an interim constitution, but it remains amendable by the executive in ways that keep the legal order contingent rather than settled.
This interacts directly with a form of local agency that remains largely under-scrutinized. In many areas, post-2024 stability has also depended on local brokers, religious networks, municipal intermediaries, and community mediators, who have de-escalated disputes, translated state policies into locally acceptable practice, and negotiated pragmatic arrangements from the ground up. As a result, stability has been produced de facto through local power configurations rather than delivered via a uniform national template.
The risk is that local agency becomes a substitute for rights rather than a bridge to them. Where security actors are not disciplined and where chains of command are blurred, predation returns quickly: “post-Assad” does not automatically mean “post-abuse”, especially in zones where armed governance predates the transition and accountability channels remain weak.
In contrast, public expectations are not primarily shaped by the formal architecture of the transition, but by everyday experience of governance – whether security provision is predictable, whether services improve, and whether arbitrariness visibly declines. In 2026, the interim authorities will be judged less by the symbolism of transition and more by whether Syrians experience a measurable reduction in arbitrariness and violence, and an increased access to livelihoods.
The reconfiguration and constraints of external actors
Three external dynamics are shaping what is feasible inside Syria. Turkey’s posture toward Kurdish armed structures continues to narrow Damascus’ room for compromise on decentralization in the northeast. Any arrangement perceived as supporting durable Kurdish autonomy risks provoking Turkish escalation or sustained coercive pressure. Israel’s south-focused demilitarization agenda and its willingness to strike targets linked to Syrian military posture add a second, different constraint: Damascus can either accept a degraded sovereign role in the south or risk repeated confrontations that it may not control.
The third is Western policy positioning. The United States has played a visible role in de-escalation and integration efforts in the northeast, but the practical direction of travel is toward supporting reintegration into a unified Syrian state – conditioned on restraint and on minimizing risks around ISIS detention and minority reprisals. The most important variable for 2026 is not whether Western actors “endorse” Damascus, but how conditionality is applied: whether sanctions relief, reconstruction support, and diplomatic normalization are tied to concrete governance benchmarks, minority protections, and accountability for abuses.
Indeed, foreign engagement is beginning to re-open, but mainly through targeted, conditional support rather than a full reconstruction package. The European Union has used the Brussels donors framework to mobilize assistance for transition and recovery, committing nearly €2.5 billion for 2025-26 at the 9th Brussels Conference (17 March 2025), alongside humanitarian and early recovery funding. A parallel track is emerging through international financial institutions: Saudi Arabia and Qatar cleared Syria’s arrears to the World Bank/IDA, restoring eligibility for new operations, and the World Bank has since confirmed re-engagement plans focused on basic services, public institutions, and infrastructure support.
At the country-level, Qatar has positioned itself as a key energy backer, including support linked to reviving Syria’s gas corridor and power supply via cross-border arrangements. Turkey, for its part, has already moved into operations by starting (and scaling) gas deliveries to Syria – an arrangement tied to electricity generation and financed in part by Qatar. Saudi Arabia has also complemented this with a new wave of large investment deals, including energy and water-linked agreements. This signals a broader Gulf push to anchor early recovery mainly through infrastructure commitments.
Consolidation, fragmentation, or managed decentralization
In 2026, Syria is likely to oscillate between partial consolidation and localized crisis management rather than move cleanly toward either full stabilization or renewed civil war. The direction of travel will depend on whether the interim authorities can turn integration deals into disciplined institutions, and whether key communities see the transition as rule-based rather than arbitrary.
One plausible path is pragmatic consolidation: Damascus keeps expanding administrative reach, gradually professionalizes the security sector, and converts integration deals into workable chains of command. Violence does not disappear, but it becomes more containable: flare-ups remain local rather than systemic, and governance disputes become negotiable rather than existential. This pathway can deliver a degree of stability nationally and reopen external economic channels, but it still leaves the legitimacy question unresolved if political inclusion remains limited and accountability is selective.
A second path is a patchwork of uneven reintegration, in which Syria is neither fully reunified or divided. The new administration in Damascus is present in key locations and institutions, but control and legitimacy remain negotiated locally, so governance works unevenly and, as such, crises recur at the margins. In the northeast, this does not look like a Kurdish bid to preserve the old autonomy model; it looks like incomplete integration. The SDF is partially absorbed and partially displaced, state units deploy into key nodes, and civil administration is formally folded into Damascus, yet command-and-control, local security practices, and community trust remain unresolved. Turkey’s pressure keeps the ceiling low on anything that resembles durable Kurdish self-rule, while Damascus struggles to deliver predictable policing and enforceable guarantees quickly enough to replace the previous order.
The result is neither autonomy nor full reintegration: authority is negotiated locality by locality, and the northeast remains vulnerable to shock (e.g., ISIS activity, local unrest, clashes triggered by arrests, conscription, or disputes over checkpoints and resources). In the south, the dynamic could be different: for the Druze, the issue is less a project of formal autonomy and more an immediate security bargain – preserving local self-defense and community influence over policing in Suwayda, especially as Israel’s “protection” posture creates an external backstop and raises the costs of reintegration on Damascus’ terms. Under this scenario, Syria accumulates local “exceptions” that do not close: each crisis reinforces the logic that peripheries must self-insure, and each flare-up becomes an opening for external actors to manage outcomes at the margins rather than allow a durable national settlement.
A third path is managed decentralization as a stability bargain. This would require the interim authorities to move beyond presidential decrees and toward enforceable constitutional guarantees that protect minorities’ linguistic and cultural rights, define local governance competences, and build credible checks on executive power. It would also require consistent vetting of armed commanders and meaningful accountability for abuses, including by allied formations.
A fourth path is authoritarian restoration under a new branding. A major security shock (e.g., an ISIS prison break, a successful assassination, or large-scale communal violence) could shift the transition from consolidation to securitization. The leadership could likely respond by tightening control, narrowing civic space, and formalizing a more closed political order justified as necessary for stability. This could still reduce short-term disorder, but it would deepen the legitimacy problem and increase the likelihood of longer-term resistance, especially in minority areas and in zones where armed integration remains contested.
Across all scenarios, the performance of the economy will remain an accelerator of division and conflict. Without improvements in services, employment, and access to basic goods, coercive bargaining will dominate because material insecurity fuels recruitment, criminal predation, and communal protection logics.
What space remains for the United Nations in Syria
The United Nations retains formal legitimacy as the only broadly recognized multilateral platform for Syria, but its leverage is constrained by the reality that the transition is being driven by armed consolidation and regional bargaining rather than a comprehensive negotiated settlement. The core UN political track, associated with the constitutional process and inclusive transition expectations, has repeatedly struggled for the past decade to shape facts on the ground when key powerholders can proceed unilaterally.
The space that remains is specific and operational. First, humanitarian coordination and protection monitoring remain essential, especially during integration-related displacement or renewed local clashes. Second, the UN can still anchor minimum standards on detention, due process, and civilian protection, including around the northeast’s ISIS custody system – an area where technical coordination can sometimes move even when politics cannot. Third, the UN’s credibility in 2026 will depend on whether it can support accountability mechanisms that Syrians view as real rather than symbolic, particularly after episodes of sectarian violence and documented patterns of detention abuse.
Despite the optimism in the aftermath of the overthrow of Assad, Syria’s future and the role of international actors – including the United Nations – in rebuilding it, remains uncertain.
Jusaima Moaid-Azm Peregrina is a Syrian-Spanish researcher and lecturer at the University of Granada, specializing in Public International Law, International Relations, and Middle Eastern studies. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences, with her dissertation focusing on UN mediation in the Syrian conflict. Her work encompasses conflict resolution, international mediation, political dynamics, and the inclusion of marginalized groups, including civil society, in peace processes. She also coordinates projects at the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies and has published extensively on the intersections of conflict, governance, and societal inclusion in international contexts.
