Campaigns

A decade of self-rule ending by agreement — signed twice, fought over once, and still being implemented file by file.

Since March 20255 phases4 linked eventsConfidence: ModerateStatus as of 2026-07Reviewed 2026-07-28

Why it matters. This is the largest single question in the module and the one on which the transition's inclusiveness will be measured. It decides whether Syria emerges as a state that accommodated a decade of minority self-administration or one that absorbed it; whether the detention and camp system left by the caliphate passes to a capable authority; whether the oil, grain and water of the east are shared or captured; and whether Türkiye's core demand is satisfied by implementation rather than by signature. It is also the clearest test in this module of the difference between an agreement and a settlement.

A government that took the capital in eleven days has spent eighteen months discovering how much of the country that did not come with.

Since December 20244 phases6 linked eventsConfidence: ModerateStatus as of 2026-07Reviewed 2026-07-28

Why it matters. This is the campaign the transition is judged by, and the one that determines whether the others matter. A state that cannot protect minorities cannot credibly integrate a Kurdish-led northeast, negotiate a southern security agreement from a position of authority, or absorb custody of the detention system. It is also the clearest available study of how a transitional government converts military victory into governing legitimacy — the module's stated central question — and the record so far is that the institutional work has moved much faster than the protection work.

Strikes, incursions and negotiations running at the same time — pressure applied from high ground by a party that does not need to hold the plain.

Since December 20244 phases3 linked eventsConfidence: ModerateStatus as of 2026-07Reviewed 2026-07-28

Why it matters. This campaign sets the ceiling on the transition's sovereignty. A government that cannot control its own southern approaches, and whose capital has been struck during its own internal crisis, negotiates from a weaker position on every other file. It is also the module's clearest case of a security relationship in which the absence of a war is not the presence of a settlement: the file has produced an intelligence-sharing mechanism, a buffer-zone presence and a year and a half of negotiation without an agreement, and either direction it turns would change the region.

Ten years, three ground operations and one demand that no agreement has yet been able to satisfy on paper.

Since August 20165 phases5 linked eventsConfidence: ModerateStatus as of 2026-07Reviewed 2026-07-28

Why it matters. Türkiye is the only outside power in Syria that holds ground with governance attached, and this campaign is how it got there. That accumulated position is the source of its leverage over the transition and over the terms of the northeast settlement, and it is the reason the northern file cannot be closed by any agreement to which Ankara is not effectively a party. The campaign also explains a demographic fact the module records repeatedly: the population movement along the northern belt since 2016 is a consequence of these operations, not a background condition.

A caliphate destroyed in five years, an insurgency that has outlasted it by seven, and a detention system nobody wanted to inherit.

Since September 20144 phases7 linked eventsConfidence: ModerateStatus as of 2026-07Reviewed 2026-07-28

Why it matters. This campaign built the northeast's twin inheritance — the international standing that made a decade of Kurdish-led autonomy possible, and the prisons and camps that made it unavoidable — and both are now being handed to the Syrian state. It is also the reason detention and camp files in this module are security files as well as humanitarian ones, and the reason the module treats the post-2026 fall in attack tempo as reversible: the insurgency's health has tracked the gaps between rival authorities more closely than its own strength.

Eleven days from Idlib to Damascus — a fifty-four-year state that lost the country faster than anyone, including the people taking it, expected.

Nov – Dec 20243 phases2 linked eventsConfidence: HighStatus as of 2026-07Reviewed 2026-07-28

Why it matters. This campaign is the module's origin point. The transitional government, the unresolved northeast, the Turkish and Israeli files, the Russian basing negotiation and the entire accountability question all date from these eleven days. It also disproved the settled reading of the conflict: the regime had been treated since 2020 as having survived the war, and it turned out to have survived the war and not the peace. Every actor's 2025 and 2026 position was improvised from that surprise, which is why the transition has been fast, uneven and consolidation-first.