Context, not targeting. This atlas describes structure and history. It deliberately excludes current locations, live strength, unit movements and anything operationally sensitive — the content model has no fields for them. Branch depth reflects what can be established from public sources, not the size, capability or importance of a force: a thin branch means a state publishes little, and record counts are never a measure of strength.
Current state
Records assessed as of 2026-09
How the forces on each side are organised — formations, lineage and subordination, never locations or strength.
Transitional government
The new national military being assembled since January 2025 from the victorious factions, HTS-derived formations, integrating SDF divisions and vetted personnel — replacing the dissolved Assad-era army rather than inheriting it. Described at structural level only.
Transitional government
The transitional state's interior security structures — successor space to the Assad era's police and feared intelligence branches, rebuilt around the General Security Service, and the destination of the Asayish under the integration agreement's interior file. Structural description only.
SDF & Kurdish-led structures
The Kurdish-led, multi-ethnic force that defeated the ISIS caliphate — commanded by Mazloum Abdi, integrating into the Ministry of Defence under the January 2026 agreement as one division formed from three SDF brigades, with a Kobani brigade attached to an Aleppo-affiliated division. Structural level only.
SDF & Kurdish-led structures
The Autonomous Administration's internal security force — police, checkpoints and detention responsibilities across the northeast for a decade, including guard roles in the ISIS detention system. Entering Interior Ministry structures under the January 2026 agreement. Structural description only.
Türkiye & backed factions
Türkiye's military presence in northern Syria since 2016 — the garrisons, observation arrangements and patronage structures built through operations Euphrates Shield, Olive Branch and Peace Spring, now recalibrating around partnership with the transitional government. Broad structural description only.
Local & minority authorities
The Druze-led armed factions of Sweida province — local self-defence structures hardened by the July 2025 violence into the de facto security authority of most of the province, outside state control and without unified command. Structural description only; listing is description, not recognition.
ISIS remnants
The insurgent remnant of the Islamic State after the 2019 territorial defeat — desert cells and attack networks concentrated in Deir ez-Zor and the central Badia, reduced and recalibrating since the January 2026 settlement of the east.
External powers
The US military presence that anchored the anti-ISIS campaign and the SDF partnership from 2015 — ended with the handover of the last major base to the Syrian government on 16 April 2026. Historical record, broad structural level only.
External powers
Russia's remaining publicly documented presence — the Khmeimim air base and the Tartus naval facility, hubs of the 2015–2024 intervention — whose future the memorandum of 9 August 2026 settled: civilian facilities to Syrian management, military ones repurposed as joint training centres within three months. Broad structural level only; no current dispositions represented.
External powers
Israel's regional posture bearing on Syria — the strike campaign of December 2024, presence in and beyond the Golan buffer zone, and recurring operations in the south alongside the security negotiation. Broad strategic description only; no positions or operational detail represented.
External powers
A navigation grouping, not a command: the Iranian-coordinated militia, logistics and financing structures of the Assad era — Hezbollah's Syrian role, aligned foreign militias, the Iraq–Lebanon corridor — dismantled or dispersed since December 2024, with residual smuggling and cell activity reported by the Syrian government, Israel and others and hard to verify. Each element's real parent institutions differed; historical and strategic scale only.
Structure. Each side is a set of trees: state military, interior forces, and browsing groups. A record marked “Grouping · not a command” exists only so related organisations can be found together — its members do not share a command, and each states its real parent institution.
Record states. A full profile has passed source review. A stub is an honest structural placeholder — name, place in the tree, broad role, and a dated status — awaiting research. Records that cannot yet meet even that threshold are held internally and do not appear on the site at all.
Subordination grades. Parent links are graded:confirmed, reported, disputed,historical, or unknown. Where a current parent cannot be verified — as with brigades amid Ukraine's rolling corps reform — the record says unknown rather than inventing precision.
Lineage, not amnesia. Reorganised, merged or disbanded organisations keep their records, marked with dated predecessor and successor links — Wagner's absorption after 2023 and the Donetsk and Luhansk corps are carried this way, never as if unchanged.
Every record carries a status as of date for its claims and a separate reviewed date for editorial checks — a review never silently refreshes a status date.
