When Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa officially assumed power after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in January 2025, he pledged to preserve “civil peace,” rebuild Syria’s military and security institutions, and restore state authority after years of fragmentation and civil war. It was an appealing proposition. Under Assad, weak state control and ungoverned territory allowed jihadist groups like the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) to seize and hold ground. At the same time, Iran exploited eastern Syria’s porous borders to sustain a land corridor to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Restoring coherent state authority offered a credible path toward long-term stabilization of Syria and the region.
But Syria’s ongoing transition reveals a dangerous contradiction. As Damascus consolidates military and political authority, some of the policies intended to strengthen the state risk weakening its ability to secure it. Chief among them is the marginalization of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US-backed force that spent the last decade dismantling ISIS’ territorial caliphate, governing former jihadist strongholds, and building the intelligence networks that kept eastern Syria from sliding back into insurgency. As the SDF has lost operational control over key terrain in the northeast following clashes in January 2026 with Damascus, resurgent ISIS cells, escaped jihadist detainees, and Iran-backed Iraqi militias are taking advantage of a growing security vacuum.
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Giran Ozcan is the fellow for Kurdish affairs at the Jewish Institute for National Security in America (JINSA). Prior to JINSA, Giran was the founding executive director of the Kurdish Peace Institute. He previously worked with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) at its overseas representative offices and served as the HDP Representative to the United States of America between 2017 and 2021. He graduated from the University of Warwick with a degree in sociology and worked at the Center for Turkey Studies in London between 2011 and 2016. He was a founding editor of The Region, an online news outlet covering the Middle East.
Jonah Brody is a policy analyst at JINSA. His research interests include Middle Eastern geopolitics, counterterrorism, and Turkish foreign and security policy. Jonah holds an MA in International Security from Sciences Po Paris, a BA in History from the University of Tennessee at Martin, and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Comparative Politics from Sciences Po Toulouse. He previously worked at the National Democratic Institute on the West and Central Africa portfolio and has interned at the Hudson Institute, the European Army Interoperability Centre, and the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism. His writings have appeared in The Hill, RealClearDefense, The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, and Modern Diplomacy.
Rena Gabber is a research associate for JINSA Senior Fellow John Hannah. She formerly worked as a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focusing on Arab-Israel relations. Rena graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service with a degree in International Politics in May 2024.
Read the full piece in the National Interest.