The actor as a whole — political system, leadership, military capacity, alliances, strengths and vulnerabilities. The Force Atlas covers the units and equipment inside each actor.
Figures carry their own uncertainty. Population, economic and military-spending data in wartime are estimates, often contested. Every figure shows its as-of date and a confidence grade; leadership positions reflect the last review date and change without notice.
State actor
Syrian transitional government
The government formed after the fall of the Assad state, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa — the former HTS commander once listed as a terrorist under the name Abu Mohammad al-Jolani — under a March 2025 constitutional declaration providing a five-year transition. It has won recognition and sanctions relief abroad and extended formal authority over most of the country, while carrying the transition's failures — the coastal massacres, the Sweida standoff — on its own record.
Transitional governmentTransitional authority · state rebuilding
President Ahmed al-Sharaa (transitional, from January 2025)
Head of state
EST · AS OF 2026-07 · CONF HIGH
March 2025 constitutional declaration — five-year transition, strong presidency
Constitutional basis
EST · AS OF 2025-03 · CONF HIGH
Interim People's Assembly seated July 2026; Sweida seats vacant, no organised opposition
Legislature
EST · AS OF 2026-07 · CONF HIGH
US executive relief from May 2025; Caesar Act repealed December 2025 with periodic certifications
Sanctions status
EST · AS OF 2025-12 · CONF HIGH
Objectives
Consolidate a unified state under Damascus: one army absorbing the factions and the SDF, one administration absorbing AANES and the Turkish-zone structures, recognition and reconstruction finance abroad, and enough stability to convert transition into permanence. Declared commitments — inclusion, minority protection, accountability — are the measures this module tracks it against.
Trajectory
Rapid consolidation, uneven delivery: presidency, constitution, elections and parliament built inside twenty months; sanctions dismantled; the northeast brought in by agreement after force. The failures are equally structural — the March 2025 coastal massacres with government-affiliated forces among the perpetrators, Sweida unresolved, and analysts warning of decision-making concentrated in family and loyalist circles.
Relationships
US-brokered integration with the SDF; deepening alignment with Türkiye and the Gulf; a security negotiation with Israel conducted under continued strikes; bases-for-terms bargaining with Russia; exclusion of Iran; certification-linked sanctions relief with Washington. Each relationship prices the transition's conduct.
The Kurdish-led, multi-ethnic force formed in 2015 that defeated the ISIS caliphate with the US-led coalition and secured a decade of northeast self-administration. After the January 2026 fighting cost it its Arab-majority territories, it signed a US-brokered integration agreement — three divisions and two specialised brigades entering the Ministry of Defence — that commander Mazloum Abdi describes as short of aspirations but preferable to war.
SDF & Kurdish-led structuresKurdish-led force · integrating into the state
Mazloum Abdi
Commander
EST · AS OF 2026-07 · CONF HIGH
Three divisions and two specialised brigades (Women's, Counter-Terrorism) into the MoD under the 30 January 2026 agreement
Integration terms
EST · AS OF 2026-05 · CONF HIGH
Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor ceded January 2026; consolidated toward Hasakah and Qamishli
Territorial position
EST · AS OF 2026-01 · CONF HIGH
Objectives
Preserve as much as possible of what autonomy built: Kurdish civil and educational rights, employment guarantees for administration personnel, meaningful command positions inside the integrated army — and ultimately constitutional recognition, the file the agreement deferred. Abdi's stated red line is not returning to war.
Trajectory
From coalition partner to integration partner in fourteen months: the December 2024 collapse removed its adversary, the March 2025 framework promised negotiated integration, the January 2026 fighting — with Arab tribal defections accelerating its retreat — hardened the terms, and the US withdrawal in April removed the external guarantee. Its remaining leverage is institutional: experienced forces, the detention file, and the northeast's administrative competence.
Relationships
Implementation partnership with Damascus under US-brokered terms; an existential adversary in Türkiye, which demands the YPG's dissolution and which Abdi publicly asks not to obstruct the agreement; a departed patron in Washington whose certifications still reference Kurdish rights; and a Kurdish political field it urges toward unified electoral participation.
Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES)
The civil administration built on the self-rule declared in 2013–14 — councils, courts, schools, municipalities and the Asayish internal security force, run on a decentralised model with formal multi-ethnic representation. Under the January 2026 agreement its institutions merge into state bodies, with an understanding that no administration employee is excluded — and with the judiciary, education and the return of displaced residents still unresolved files.
SDF & Kurdish-led structuresKurdish-led civil administration · merging into state bodies
Merging into state institutions under the 30 January 2026 agreement; civilian files behind military files
Institutional status
EST · AS OF 2026-05 · CONF HIGH
Reported agreement that no Autonomous Administration employee is excluded from state absorption
Employment understanding
EST · AS OF 2026-05 · CONF MODERATE
Judiciary integration, curriculum and Kurdish-language education, displaced-resident returns
Open files
EST · AS OF 2026-05 · CONF HIGH
What it built
A functioning administration where the state had left: local councils with ethnic quotas, a distinct court system, a Kurdish-language curriculum, women's institutions unusual for the region, and the civil registry of a decade of de facto government. Its record also carries criticism — political dominance by one movement, conscription, and friction in Arab-majority areas it administered.
The merger question
Integration transfers institutions, but institutions carry values: whose law in the courts, whose curriculum in the schools, whose police on the streets. The employment understanding addresses livelihoods; the deferred constitutional question — decentralisation and Kurdish rights in the permanent order — decides whether anything of the model survives in law rather than memory.
The external power with the deepest position in Syria: patron of the factions that helped end the Assad era, holder of a military presence across the north since 2016, host of millions of Syrian refugees now partly returning, and first partner of the transitional government — with one demand above all, pressed under President Erdoğan: no autonomous YPG-led force anywhere in Syria.
Türkiye & backed factionsExternal power · the north's patron
Dissolution of the YPG as an autonomous force; integration of a disarmed remainder into the national army
Core demand
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF HIGH
Garrisons and backed factions across the northern border areas since 2016 — structural level only
Military presence
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF HIGH
Largest Syrian refugee host through the war; returns via the northern crossings accelerating since 2025
Refugee position
EST · AS OF 2026-03 · CONF HIGH
Objectives
A Syria unified under a friendly Damascus with no Kurdish autonomous force on the border; the PKK's dissolution process extended, in Ankara's reading, to all its affiliates including the YPG; refugee returns at scale; and first position in reconstruction trade and contracts. Türkiye considers the SDF-YPG a PKK extension — the SDF rejects the equation — and measures the integration agreement by implementation, not signature.
Trajectory
From intervenor to patron: three ground operations built a border position, the 2020 Idlib ceasefire preserved the enclave that later took Damascus, and the transition converted accumulated leverage into first-partner status — welcomed by Damascus, watched by the northeast, and priced by the Afrin precedent Kurdish communities cite against it.
Relationships
Strategic partnership with the transitional government; structural hostility to the YPG within a US-brokered settlement it did not sign; management of the factions it organised as they integrate; competition and coordination with Israel over influence in the new Syria; and the domestic peace process with the PKK whose Syrian clause remains the hardest.
Israel answered the Assad government's fall with a strike campaign that destroyed much of the former state's military assets and with ground moves into and beyond the Golan buffer zone. Since then it has run negotiation and enforcement in parallel: a US-mediated security agreement reported near-complete — phased withdrawal toward the 1974 lines, positions retained on the Syrian Hermon — alongside continued incursions and strikes, including on Damascus during the July 2025 Sweida crisis, justified by border security and Druze protection.
External powersExternal power · southern security enforcer
US-mediated security agreement discussed in Paris January 2026; reported near-complete, unsigned
Negotiation status
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF MODERATE
Recurring incursions and strikes in southern Syria through 2026 — Quneitra (February), Daraa province (June)
Military activity
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF HIGH
Occupies the Golan Heights since 1967; annexation recognised only by the US; deal reportedly defers the issue
Golan position
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF HIGH
Objectives
A demilitarised southern Syria with no Iranian-linked presence, a security regime it can enforce with or without a signature, and the Golan question kept off the table. Israel says its operations protect border communities and the Druze; Damascus calls the incursions violations of sovereignty; the reported deal trades phased withdrawal for Syrian security commitments.
Trajectory
From opportunistic destruction to negotiated architecture: the December 2024 strike campaign removed the arsenal, the buffer-zone entry created facts, the Sweida crisis added a protection claim, and the 2026 talks are converting the position into terms. An eleventh-hour corridor demand toward Sweida has been reported among the sticking points; Israel has not confirmed it.
Relationships
Mediated negotiation with a Damascus it does not yet trust; shared US patronage of the process; competitive coexistence with Türkiye's influence in the same state; and a declared interest in the Druze file that Sweida's factions themselves neither uniformly claim nor disclaim.
The power that led the anti-ISIS coalition, built and backed the SDF for a decade, lifted sanctions in stages through 2025, brokered the January 2026 integration agreement — and then left: the last major base was handed to the Syrian government on 16 April 2026, ending more than ten years of military presence. US influence now runs through diplomacy, the Caesar-repeal certification cycle and the mediation of the Israel–Syria file.
External powersExternal power · broker after withdrawal
Withdrawal completed 16 April 2026 — final base handed to the Syrian government
Military presence
EST · AS OF 2026-04 · CONF HIGH
Executive relief from May 2025; Caesar Act repealed December 2025 with 180-day certifications for four years
Sanctions posture
EST · AS OF 2025-12 · CONF HIGH
Brokered the 30 January 2026 SDF–Damascus agreement; mediates the Israel–Syria security talks
Brokerage
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF HIGH
Objectives
An ISIS kept down without US troops, a Syria stable enough not to re-export crisis, Israel's northern border quieted by agreement, and a transition disciplined by certification rather than presence. The withdrawal traded direct leverage for conditional relief — a bet that economics binds where garrisons no longer do.
Trajectory
From guarantor to guarantor-of-terms: a decade of partnership with the SDF ended in a brokered settlement that US pressure shaped — accounts differ on how much pressure — followed by January 2026 strikes against ISIS after a deadly ambush, drawdown from February and full departure in April. Its Syria policy now lives in documents: the agreement, the certifications, the Israel file.
Relationships
Working relationship with Damascus it once designated; residual obligations to a former SDF partner its certifications still reference; mediation between Israel and Syria; and alignment with Türkiye and the Gulf on the transition's success — with the counter-ISIS file as the relationship's hard floor.
The intervention that saved the Assad government in 2015 ended with its client's flight to Moscow in December 2024 — Russia declining to fight for a collapsing army while absorbed in Ukraine. What survives is concentrated and negotiable: the Khmeimim air base and the Tartus naval facility — Moscow's only Mediterranean naval foothold — whose terms are being bargained with a transitional government Russia once bombed, and which now hosts the man Russia shelters.
External powersExternal power · legacy presence under negotiation
Khmeimim and Tartus retained under negotiation with Damascus; long-term terms unresolved
Basing status
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF MODERATE
Air campaign 2015–2024 decisive for the Assad government's survival; declined to intervene in December 2024
Historical role
EST · AS OF 2024-12 · CONF HIGH
Bashar al-Assad and family in Russian exile since December 2024
The Assad file
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF HIGH
Objectives
Keep the bases — the logistics hub for Russia's Mediterranean and African operations — at an affordable political price; preserve a working relationship with a Damascus it needs more than it is needed by; and avoid the precedent of total expulsion from a client state it spent a decade defending.
Trajectory
From arbiter to tenant: the power that ran the Astana format and decided the war's direction now negotiates access. Damascus has leverage — the bases, the Assad extradition question, wheat and energy supplies Russia offers — and uses ambiguity as policy, neither expelling Moscow nor settling its status.
Relationships
Transactional bargaining with the transitional government; irrelevance to the northeast file it once mediated; parallel competition with Türkiye and the Gulf for position in the new order; and the standing complication that the transition's justice agenda points at the exile Moscow hosts.
The Assad government's most committed patron — Hezbollah's intervention, the IRGC-coordinated militia network, the land corridor from Iraq to Lebanon — lost its Syrian position in a single December: Hezbollah broken by its war with Israel, the corridor cut, the client gone. The transitional government has excluded Iranian presence, and Syrian commitments against Iranian-linked forces reportedly anchor both the Israel file and US certifications. What persists is residual: smuggling economies, loyalist remnants, and patience.
External powersExternal power · excluded, residual networks
Excluded from the transition; no acknowledged military presence; corridor through al-Bukamal cut
Position
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF MODERATE
Decisive manpower and financing for the Assad government 2012–2024 via Hezbollah and aligned militias
Historical role
EST · AS OF 2024-12 · CONF HIGH
What was lost
Syria was the keystone of Iran's forward posture: the bridge to Hezbollah, the depth behind Lebanon, the pressure point on Israel. Its loss — compounded by Hezbollah's degradation — is the largest single setback to the network in decades, and Tehran's regional strategy since has been rebuilt around its absence.
What remains, and what is claimed
Reported residues include smuggling and financing networks along the Iraq border and Alawite-coast loyalist remnants — claims that surface around every security incident and are hard to verify. This module treats "Iranian-linked" attributions with particular caution: the label is politically useful to several actors, and evidence standards vary widely across reporting.
What survived the caliphate: desert cells in the central Badia, attack networks concentrated in Deir ez-Zor province, extortion economies, and a strategic patience aimed at the prisons and camps holding its fighters and families. Attack tempo fell sharply after the January 2026 government offensive and integration agreement closed the seams it exploited — analysts describe recalibration, not resurgence — but the organisation attacked US forces lethally as late as January 2026 and continues low-tempo operations.
ISIS remnantsInsurgent remnant · recalibrating
Sharp decline after January 2026; attacks concentrated in Deir ez-Zor with isolated incidents elsewhere
Activity trend
EST · AS OF 2026-07 · CONF MODERATE
Detention facilities and camps holding fighters and families — stated and repeatedly attempted
Strategic targets
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF HIGH
How it survives
The remnant model needs seams — contested authority, aggrieved communities, unwatched desert. The transition closed several at once: one authority in the east, tribal politics settled against it, and a counter-ISIS file every external certification watches. Its response is classic insurgent patience: smaller cells, softer targets, extortion over governance, and waiting for the state to fail somewhere.
The files it waits on
The prisons and camps are the organisation's declared reconstitution reserve; their security transfer under the integration agreement is therefore a counter-ISIS event, not an administrative one. The second file is legitimacy: any state abuse in the Sunni east — or a collapse of services — is recruitment material it has used before.
The factions Türkiye organised from 2016 as the Syrian National Army — garrison and administration forces of the northern zones, participants in the operations against the YPG and in the December 2024 offensive, and carriers of a heavily documented record of abuses in Afrin and elsewhere. Under the transition they are being folded into the new national military structures, at a pace and depth that varies by faction.
Türkiye & backed factionsTurkish-backed factions · folding into the state
Integrating into national military structures announced from January 2025; faction identities persist beneath
Status
EST · AS OF 2026-06 · CONF MODERATE
Documented abuses in Afrin and the northern zones — property seizures, detentions — per UN and NGO reporting
Record
EST · AS OF 2025 · CONF HIGH
What they were built for
Ankara assembled the factions to hold ground it cleared: garrison forces with local administrations attached, paid and equipped under Turkish patronage, useful in every operation from Euphrates Shield to the fall of Damascus. Their coherence was always external — Turkish logistics and pay — which is why integration into the state is as much Türkiye's decision as theirs.
The integration test
Folding the factions into a national army tests whether the new state has one monopoly of force or several under one flag: command discipline, accountability for the Afrin-era record, and the fate of faction economies — checkpoints, property, trade — are the measures. Kurdish returnees to Afrin, above all, will experience the answer directly.
The Druze-led armed factions and council structures controlling most of Sweida province since the July 2025 violence — organised around local religious and military leaderships rather than a single command, holding the province outside state authority, its parliamentary seats vacant. Listing is description, not recognition; the factions themselves are divided over Damascus, integration and any external protection.
Local & minority authoritiesLocal authority · standoff with Damascus
Control most of Sweida province; northern districts under government control; no integration terms agreed
Position
EST · AS OF 2026-07 · CONF MODERATE
Sweida's three People's Assembly seats vacant; no election scheduled
Political status
EST · AS OF 2026-07 · CONF HIGH
How the standoff formed
Sweida spent the war in armed semi-autonomy — protecting itself from all sides, resisting conscription — and met the transition with conditional patience that the July 2025 violence destroyed: days of fighting with Bedouin tribal fighters and government forces, documented abuses against Druze civilians, and Israeli strikes claimed as protection. What remains is a province that trusts its own factions more than any capital.
The unresolved question
Every path out is contested: integration on Damascus's terms is refused, autonomy is unacceptable to the state, and an Israeli protection relationship — reported around the security talks, including a claimed corridor demand — is itself divisive among Druze leaderships. The factions' internal politics, between accommodationist and hardline currents, will shape the outcome as much as any negotiation.
Assessment confidence: moderateFaction structures and internal alignments are fluid and unevenly reported; this record stays at structural level deliberately.Profile reviewed 2026-07-19Sources: Reuters · Al Jazeera English · Syria DirectMethodology