The New Syrian Army: Order of Battle

Executive Summary

Syrian Transitional President Ahmed al Shara and his political allies are building a new Syrian army as part of their effort to unite Syria under their Damascus-based government. The establishment of a professional army that both responds to civil control and protects all of the Syrian people, regardless of ethnic, religious, or sectarian background, will be necessary to ensure Syria’s long-term stability in the wake of Syria’s civil war. Shara must balance integrating multiple competing armed groups into his army, professionalizing his forces, and ensuring that his forces remain ready and capable of providing security in the near term. Failing to address any one of these challenges risks destabilizing the country, which would undermine the stated US strategic objective of promoting long-term stability in Syria.1 US decision-makers should evaluate Shara and the type of state he is building in large part by how Shara integrates Syria’s post-war armed factions and the extent to which he invests in meaningful efforts to professionalize the new army.

Any evaluation of Syria’s new government and its trajectory should proceed from a realistic assessment of the army’s initial structure and its limitations. This paper presents, in its final section, the initial order of battle of the new Syrian Arab Army. Shara and his allies are constructing the new Syrian military out of the victorious civil war opposition factions that helped him topple the Bashar al Assad regime in December 2024. The new army’s early characteristics indicate that Shara and his government will need to pursue three primary lines of effort in the coming months:

• Integration: Shara aims to extend state control over Syrian territory and all Syrian factions, similar to the way in which he centralized Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) control over Idlib during the later years of the civil war. Multiple power centers within Syria remain, and Shara’s own decisions—including his pursuit of a highly centralized government and his divisive appointments of US- and EU-sanctioned commanders—hinder this goal. Non-Sunni armed groups, including the Kurds and Druze, have largely refused to integrate into Shara’s government on his terms and have formed political alliances to advocate for guarantees of government protection or autonomy. The Syrian government and the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) nominally agreed in mid-October 2025 to incorporate parts of the SDF as three new Syrian divisions and multiple independent special operations brigades, which is a positive development towards integration.
• Professionalization: The army’s early deployments indicate that Shara and his Defense Ministry face substantial challenges in ensuring that its forces do not exacerbate Syria’s existing political and military fissures. The decision to incorporate civil war militias, including those dominated by known war criminals responsible for ethnically-, sectarian-, and religious-motivated killings, into the army as entire units reflects the state’s immediate need for cohesive units, but the Defense Ministry maintains weak command and control over some units as a result. Poorly disciplined units that have committed unsanctioned abuses during deployments have destroyed communities’ trust in Shara and his government and are undermining his objectives. Shara will need, at a minimum, to expel sectarian actors who have committed unsanctioned abuses from the army’s command structures, which risks antagonizing key political allies.
• Capacity to Respond to Security Challenges: Shara is balancing the integration and professionalization of Syrian armed groups with protecting Syrians from significant security threats. These threats include the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS), other insurgents and criminals, and the intercommunal violence that will continue to erupt as the country recovers from the civil war. Shara’s reliance on loyal or allied commanders and reflagged civil war militias suggests that, in the short term, he is prioritizing designing a force to respond to emerging threats to state stability. He will nonetheless need to ensure that his need for expediency does not prevent him from undertaking the long, politically challenging professionalization process that is required to build a disciplined army.

Shara faces three major constraints as he begins to create the new army. First, Shara and his inner circle come from al Qaeda networks, which makes many Syrian minorities skeptical of their motives, regardless of their current ideological convictions. Second, Shara has understandably surrounded himself with his civil war allies and long-time supporters, all of whom are Sunnis who opposed Assad. Finally, the legacy of the civil war leaves extremely limited trust between different civil war-era factions that continue to hold competing visions for the future of Syria. The abusive behavior of some individuals and groups in Shara’s coalition—both during and after the fall of Assad—has diminished trust even further and threatens to spur some groups, such as the Druze and Kurds, to organize themselves on a religious or ethnic basis. The abusive behavior, when coupled with the constraints Shara faces, could transform political differences in Syria into intercommunal conflict.

Shara and his principal subordinates in the Defense Ministry will need to provide transformational leadership and assume significant political risk in order to construct the type of professional army that will support Syrian long-term stability and avoid intercommunal conflict. Shara has not yet demonstrated the fortitude necessary to disband abusive formations, particularly those backed by Turkey. The US experience in Iraq demonstrated that transforming sectarian military organizations required committed, transformational Iraqi leadership and significant political support from an external power. The US-backed effort to transform the Iraqi military faltered badly when the United States was no longer able to reward and encourage effective, transformational Iraqi leaders. US and Western support can encourage Shara to professionalize his army and punish abusive forces and commanders, but he will need to execute reforms with much less significant external support compared to his Iraqi counterparts in the late 2000s.

US policymakers can play a meaningful role in encouraging actions that will improve Syria’s security sector and build long-term stability in Syria beyond the five-year transition period. The United States must evaluate the new Syrian government and its leadership based on its actions and avoid the temptation to evaluate the government and its leadership based on its intangible and unobservable values and unspoken motives. The United States should evaluate and support the development of the Syrian army and security sector in the following ways:

• Set Clear US Objectives: The United States should support the establishment of a new Syrian army that can contribute to Syria’s longterm stability. Long-term stability will require that most Syrians trust the army and that the army incorporate at least some elements of other Syrian armed groups.
• Ensure Accountability: The United States should encourage the Syrian government to discipline and hold its forces accountable for abuses. Atrocities and the failure to hold the perpetrators responsible will make it much harder for this government to create long-term stability and prevent threats from Syria that threaten US interests and partners in the region.
• Press for Security Sector Reform: The fragility of Syria’s post-war transition means that Shara probably feels forced to rely upon some bad actors to ensure that the transitional government can provide near-term stability. The United States should place heavy pressure on the Syrian government to reform its security sector and sideline or disband problematic units.
• Promote Inclusivity in the Army: The United States should encourage the new Syrian government to recruit and build formations from Syrian civil war groups that do not belong to the Sunni opposition milieu, including the SDF and Druze militias.
• Engage with Turkey: Turkey’s continued patronage of problematic actors in the new army will hinder any professionalization efforts. The United States should hold Turkey accountable for its ongoing support for groups in Syria that have contributed to ethnic cleansing and continue to mediate between the Syrian government and the SDF to build trust and avoid another destabilizing Turkish offensive.