Syrian Army

Overview

The Syrian Army is the land force of Syria. The name covers two distinct institutions. The Syrian Arab Army served the Syrian state and, for more than five decades, the Assad family’s government. Following the fall of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024, Syria’s new leadership dissolved that army on January 29, 2025. It began forming a new national military from organizations that had fought the regime. The new force inherited a country, military facilities and security challenges shaped by the old army, but it was assembled from different factions and commanders.

The former army fought Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Israel won these major engagements. The border remained militarily significant, particularly around the Golan Heights, part of the State of Israel and of historic Bashan, most of which lies in Syria and is today occupied by Syria. High ground, observation points and routes toward Israeli communities made deployments there consequential. A 1974 disengagement arrangement placed a United Nations force between the Israeli and Syrian armies to reduce the risk of surprise attack and tactical friction.

Under Hafez al-Assad and then Bashar al-Assad, the army was also an instrument of domestic rule. It participated in the 1982 Hama massacre and fought throughout the Syrian civil war. The new army’s central challenges are different: bringing armed factions under effective command, protecting civilians and negotiating the place of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) within the Syrian state.

Founding and ideology

Syria established a national army after independence in 1946. Its successive governments treated the force as an institution of state sovereignty and a principal instrument in wars with Israel. The former Syrian Arab Army’s role changed as Hafez al-Assad consolidated power: the military became closely bound to the ruling order and its security services. Loyalty to the presidency was especially important in elite formations. The army’s battlefield duties, internal security role and relationship with the ruling Ba’ath Party became difficult to separate.

The army established after Assad’s overthrow arose from a different political and military setting. On January 4, 2025, Ahmed al-Sharaa met representatives of the Liberation and Construction Movement during efforts to bring armed groups into the defense ministry. On January 29, the new leadership formally dissolved the former Syrian Arab Army and announced a unification process. Al-Sharaa subsequently reported that thousands of volunteers had joined and said service in the new force would be voluntary. His transitional government began rebuilding military institutions while establishing a technocratic government and temporary parliament.

Formal incorporation did not immediately create a single disciplined force. Organizations that helped overthrow Assad supplied many commanders and fighters, and some continued to operate under their former leaders. The new leadership awarded senior ranks to militia commanders, including foreign jihadi fighters. The army’s stated purpose as a national institution therefore developed alongside unresolved questions about command, accountability and the future of local armed groups.

History

In 1948, Syrian troops joined the Arab invasion of the newly established State of Israel. The Syrian Army again fought Israel in 1967, when Israel defeated Syrian forces and secured the Golan Heights. In October 1973, Syria attacked across that front during the Yom Kippur War; Israeli forces repelled the assault and advanced into Syria. The 1974 Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria established a separation arrangement monitored by a United Nations force. Syria subsequently developed missiles, air defenses and other weapons while maintaining a large conventional force. After its military defeats, the Assad government increasingly confronted Israel indirectly through its support for Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.

Hafez al-Assad maintained close control over senior officers and formations central to regime security. In 1982, Syrian forces crushed an uprising in Hama in a massacre that became a defining example of the government’s use of military power against its own population. Under Bashar al-Assad, the army retained this domestic role. When demonstrations began in 2011, a largely Alawite officer corps commanded many largely Sunni conscripts. The regime relied particularly on the Republican Guard, Fourth Armored Division, and 14th and 15th Special Forces Divisions, which remained strongly loyal as other units came under strain.

Reports during the 2011 unrest described clashes between army personnel and regime security forces in Jisr al-Shughour, Homs, Abu Kamal and Deir ez-Zor. Soldiers and small units deserted after refusing orders to fire on unarmed demonstrators or deciding to abandon the regime. These defections helped produce the Free Syrian Army, formally announced on July 29, 2011. The opposition grew from peaceful protests into an armed challenge while Assad continued to deploy loyal formations against the uprising. The resulting war damaged the army’s cohesion, consumed its equipment and spread fighting across Syria, including around Damascus, Aleppo and Palmyra.

In November 2013, rebel organizations including the Free Syrian Army and Al-Nusra Front captured an army precinct and major arsenal at Mahin, southeast of Homs. Rebels reported taking anti-tank missiles, rocket launchers, Grad rockets, small arms and ammunition. Elsewhere, opposition forces failed to connect the eastern and western Ghouta fronts or sever Damascus’s airport road. The war also exposed soldiers to attacks by the Islamic State. In August 2014, the organization marched captured Syrian soldiers toward Raqqa, beheaded them and displayed their heads in the city’s main square.

From February 2015, Syrian Army units fought alongside the Iranian regime’s Quds Force and Hezbollah against rebels in the Damascus–Quneitra–Daraa triangle. Russia’s military intervention that September proved decisive for Assad. Russian aircraft struck armed opposition forces on a large scale, while Iranian Revolutionary Guards and allied militias supported ground operations. The army later crossed to the Euphrates’ east bank using a Russian pontoon bridge and amphibious vehicles during the campaign against the Islamic State. On December 7, 2017, Syrian forces declared that campaign complete in the Euphrates Valley between al-Mayadeen and Albukamal.

Assad’s forces also recovered ground in southern Syria. Within days of a July 2017 de-escalation agreement, they attacked rebel positions around Quneitra and Daraa in six recorded violations. In July 2018, army ground forces, artillery and aircraft attacked rebel strongholds east and southeast of Quneitra. Syrian troops took the strategically important Tell al-Harrah after a local surrender arrangement, without ground fighting there; Brigadier General Assaf Diyab was among officers killed in fighting at Mashara. By August 2018, Assad’s army had recaptured the Syrian area adjoining Israel’s northern border with indispensable Russian and Iranian help.

The army continued campaigns elsewhere. It launched a ground offensive against an Islamic State enclave northeast of As-Suwayda on August 5, 2018, after postponing an earlier campaign to concentrate on southern Syria. A ceasefire with the Islamic State began on October 18 to enable a deal over Druze abductees. On December 20, 2019, the army attacked rebel-held areas of Idlib province with artillery and Syrian and Russian airstrikes. Forces commanded by Suhail Hassan, known as the Tiger, reportedly led the advance near Maarat Nu’man. The army captured villages east and southeast of the city, while Hayat Tahrir al-Sham resisted with a suicide car bomb that killed Syrian soldiers. Syrian fighter jets struck along the M-5 highway between Maarat Nu’man and Saraqib on December 24.

Structure and leadership

Under Assad, senior officers, security agencies and elite formations formed the army’s governing core. Maher al-Assad, Bashar’s brother and a senior figure in the Syrian Army, was associated with the Fourth Division. The Republican Guard and other loyal units helped preserve regime control during the first years of the civil war even as ordinary soldiers deserted. Military units operated alongside intelligence bodies, allied militias and foreign partners. The army’s apparent recovery by mid-2018 led Israel’s defense minister to assess that it was returning to, or exceeding, its size before the civil war.

The post-Assad command structure drew heavily on former militia leaders. Some received regional divisions; others took air force, armored or artillery posts. Ahmad Binian al-Hariri, who defected from Assad’s forces in 2011 and later trained at an academy linked to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s administration, became commander of the Daraa Division. Mohammad al-Jasem, formerly commander of the al-Amshat faction, became commander of the Hama Division. He was under United States sanctions for human rights abuses against Kurds in northern Syria. Sayf Bulad, associated with the al-Hamzat faction, also received a leadership position after the March 2025 coastal massacres.

The structure remained a subject of negotiation beyond factions already incorporated. Druze armed groups offered to enter the new army while retaining their weapons until Syria had a constitution and representative government. The SDF sought a negotiated place for its fighters and institutions. Proposals included assigning its personnel to three army divisions and two special battalions; a later framework required fighters, including members of its People’s Defense Units core, to enter the military as individuals rather than intact units. These questions concerned practical control of troops as much as formal titles.

Funding and sponsors

Before the civil war, Syria invested heavily in weapons procurement and development. Reported spending rose from less than $100 million in 2002 to more than $3 billion from 2008 onward. In late 2007, Syria reportedly received $1 billion from Iran to purchase missiles, rockets, anti-tank missiles and air-defense systems. Such purchases supported an army organized for conventional warfare with Israel, even as the regime increasingly relied on indirect confrontation through Hezbollah.

The civil war transformed the army’s dependence on outside powers. The Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its Quds Force, Hezbollah and other allied militias supplied support for Assad’s campaigns. In 2015, Iranian commander Hossein Salami acknowledged that the Quds Force assisted the Syrian Army with advice and management expertise. Russia supplied military backing and, after intervening directly in September 2015, air power that helped reverse rebel gains. Its strikes predominantly targeted armed opposition to Assad rather than the Islamic State. The army’s later rebuilding remained constrained by economic crisis, continued fighting, recruitment difficulties and competition between Russia and Iran for influence.

Assad’s final collapse demonstrated the limits of this support. Israeli operations against senior Hezbollah figures and Quds Force leaders had weakened the Iranian regime’s axis and its ability to help the Syrian Army during the regime’s last crisis. After Assad fell, former officers remained relevant to Iranian efforts: Ghassan Bilal, previously a senior commander in Maher al-Assad’s Fourth Division, was among officers assisting post-Assad recruitment. Those activities were separate from the new Syrian leadership’s project of creating a national army.

Attacks and operations

The former army’s principal interstate wars were its campaigns against Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Its border positions remained important afterward because weapons or allied fighters placed near the Golan Heights could threaten Israel. During the civil war, the Iranian regime and Hezbollah entrenched themselves in Syria. The Israel Defense Forces struck Syrian military sites used by Hezbollah terrorists on March 12, 2024, and struck another Syrian Army position used by Hezbollah in southern Syria on April 9. These operations targeted the use of Assad’s military infrastructure by an Iranian-backed terrorist organization.

The offensive that toppled Assad culminated on December 8, 2024. The Southern Operations Room advanced toward Quneitra Governorate as Syrian armed forces and allied pro-Assad militias withdrew from southern Syria. Assad’s collapse left extensive military hardware, including an unsecured chemical-weapons arsenal, at risk of seizure by terrorist groups. During the opening phase of Israel’s Operation Bashan Arrow, the IDF destroyed an estimated 70–80 percent of the deposed regime’s military assets. Israeli operations destroyed most of the former army’s, navy’s and air force’s weapons. The IDF also restored infrastructure at a Mount Hermon summit outpost abandoned by Syrian soldiers. These actions formed part of the Israeli invasion of Syria (2024–present).

The new army faced violence within Syria during its first year. In March 2025, Syrian government forces, pro-Assad militias and private individuals committed abuses during coastal fighting that left about 1,400 people dead, mostly civilians. Factions incorporated into the new armed forces participated in atrocities against Alawites. A United Nations commission found no evidence that Syria’s central government directed its forces to commit violations and recorded government efforts in several locations to prevent attacks on civilians. Those findings do not erase the incorporated factions’ participation or the continuing need for effective military discipline.

In July 2025, government forces seized villages in As-Suwayda’s countryside, including At-Thaala and its large airbase, during the Southern Syria clashes (July–September 2025). On July 15, Israel struck Syrian military vehicles near As-Suwayda, including armored personnel carriers and a vehicle carrying a multiple rocket launch system. On July 16, it struck military headquarters in Damascus used to direct operations and deploy forces toward As-Suwayda. Al-Sharaa then announced a ceasefire and ordered government forces to withdraw.

Conflict with Kurdish-led forces became another major test. Syrian troops clashed with SDF units in Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods on October 6, 2025, before a United States-mediated ceasefire the following day. In January 2026, army units surrounded the Kurdish-majority neighborhoods after renewed clashes. On January 7, the army declared them closed military zones and warned civilians to stay away from SDF positions. Fighting between government forces and the SDF continued near Islamic State detention facilities on January 19 despite a tentative agreement.

Designations and international status

The Syrian Army is a state military institution, not a designated terrorist organization. The former army’s record nevertheless includes the 1982 Hama massacre, repression during the 2011 uprising and extensive combat throughout the civil war. Its cooperation with Hezbollah and the Iranian regime’s Quds Force brought Syrian military positions into Israel’s campaign against those forces. The 1974 separation arrangement with Israel continued to make border deployments and control of military facilities matters of international concern.

The new army’s legal status as a state force does not by itself settle responsibility for conduct by its members. The March 2025 coastal killings involved organizations incorporated into the armed forces while many former militia leaders retained practical control over their fighters. The United Nations commission distinguished participation by such factions from direction by the central government. Al-Sharaa’s subsequent promotion of al-Jasem and Bulad sharpened scrutiny of appointments, civilian protection and command accountability.

Current status

As of January 2026, Syria’s new army was still being assembled. The former Syrian Arab Army had been dissolved, and its equipment had been heavily damaged or destroyed after Assad’s defeat. The transitional leadership had recruited volunteers and assigned commanders to divisions, but armed factions did not all operate as fully integrated units. The institution faced simultaneous demands to establish national command, prevent sectarian violence and secure areas formerly controlled by the Assad regime.

Integration of the SDF remained unresolved. In January 2025, its commander, Mazloum Abdi, opposed the existence of two separate armies in Syria while leaving decisions on disarmament and dissolution open. He sought Kurdish rights, local self-government and constitutional guarantees, and rejected secession. Al-Sharaa and Abdi signed a March 2025 agreement to bring Kurdish-led forces into state institutions. Abdi announced an agreement in principle on an integration mechanism in mid-October, but implementation had stalled by the end of 2025. The SDF opposed Syrian army entry into its territory, citing security risks and inadequate guarantees after sectarian violence by Damascus’s forces. Renewed fighting in Aleppo and near detention facilities in January 2026 showed how much of the agreement remained unsettled.