Syria must speed up the integration of Kurdish units to prevent the revival of terrorist and foreign proxy groups in the country.

When Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa officially assumed power after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in January 2025, he pledged to preserve “civil peace,” rebuild Syria’s military and security institutions, and restore state authority after years of fragmentation and civil war. It was an appealing proposition. Under Assad, weak state control and ungoverned territory allowed jihadist groups like the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) to seize and hold ground. At the same time, Iran exploited eastern Syria’s porous borders to sustain a land corridor to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Restoring coherent state authority offered a credible path toward long-term stabilization of Syria and the region.

But Syria’s ongoing transition reveals a dangerous contradiction. As Damascus consolidates military and political authority, some of the policies intended to strengthen the state risk weakening its ability to secure it. Chief among them is the marginalization of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US-backed force that spent the last decade dismantling ISIS’ territorial caliphate, governing former jihadist strongholds, and building the intelligence networks that kept eastern Syria from sliding back into insurgency. As the SDF has lost operational control over key terrain in the northeast following clashes in January 2026 with Damascus, resurgent ISIS cells, escaped jihadist detainees, and Iran-backed Iraqi militias are taking advantage of a growing security vacuum.

Sharaa cannot fulfill his promise of stabilization through centralization alone. Syria’s security architecture remains too fragile, its military too inexperienced, and its threat environment too volatile for Damascus to sideline its most effective counterterrorism partner. The operational integration of the SDF is the precondition for the stable Syria Sharaa has promised. Washington should make this the center of its Syria policy by conditioning continued support to Syria’s counterterrorism strategy on Damascus delivering substantive integration rather than symbolic absorption. If Damascus gets this wrong, it risks recreating the very conditions that once allowed Syria’s ungoverned spaces to incubate jihadist insurgency and foreign proxy warfare.

ISIS and Hezbollah Are Still Threats to Syria

If Sharaa’s centralization project is to succeed, it must contend with the regenerating ISIS threat. Although the group lost its territorial caliphate in Syria in 2019, ISIS never fully disappeared. Instead, it adapted—shifting from territorial control to survival mode via clandestine recruitment and targeted attacks against local security forces. Syria’s transition now risks giving ISIS its most significant opportunity to rebuild in years.

The warning signs have grown more acute, indicating a significant risk of ISIS scaling up its activities. In January 2026, Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri warned that ISIS’ manpower had increased fivefold over the previous year—from roughly 2,000 fighters to more than 10,000—as the group exploited Syria’s post-Assad instability. Clashes that same month between the SDF and Damascus’ forces in northeast Syria created further opportunities, as an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 ISIS-linked detainees and family members escaped from facilities previously secured by the SDF. As ISIS reconnects with escaped jihadists, attacks could escalate in scale and frequency—with transnational attacks possibly reaching Europe and the United States.

Although ISIS activity decreased after Assad’s fall in December 2024, cells remain active, with an intensified focus on undermining the new interim government. Over the last year, ISIS conducted approximately 330 attacks in Syrian territory, most of them in Syria’s Kurdish-majority northeast where the group has historically concentrated its operations, while frequently targeting officials and forces under Sharaa’s government to undermine what it views as an apostate regime. After Syria joined the Coalition to Defeat ISIS last November, the terrorist group stepped up attacks in territory under the Syrian government’s control. ISIS is also seeking to exploit a growing rift inside the regime itself. Sharaa’s pursuit of moderate policies to consolidate international and domestic support has increasingly disillusioned the Islamist factions forming his political base—and ISIS is positioning itself to capitalize on the resulting alienation.

Other armed actors are exploiting the same vacuums found throughout Syria. Al Qaeda-linked actors remain active in the country’s northwest, while emerging extremist groups such as Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah—composed of defectors from ISIS and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a terrorist group founded and formerly led by Sharaa himself—have already carried out sectarian attacks and threatened further violence. Hezbollah, though weakened by Israeli strikes, also remains operational inside Syria. In May, Syrian security forces arrested 11 Hezbollah-linked operatives across five governorates, disrupting an alleged plot to assassinate senior officials. This followed earlier interdictions of rockets, explosives, and weapons shipments originating from both sides of the Syrian-Lebanese border. That Hezbollah continues to run weapons into Syrian territory and plan assassination plots of Syrian officials, despite Damascus’ crackdowns, suggests the group still views the Syrian state as porous enough to exploit.

The threat from east of Syria’s borders may be even more consequential to Syrian security. In January, a Damascus-led offensive against the SDF pushed the militias out of its northeastern strongholds. It ended in a US-mediated ceasefire under which the SDF lost roughly 80 percent of its territory. As the SDF lost operational control along the Iraqi-Syrian frontier, Iran-backed factions within Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) deployed along the border, extending their reach into a corridor that had, until weeks earlier, been patrolled by the SDF. 

In late March, Syrian security forces dismantled a PMF-linked intelligence and weapons smuggling cell in Deir ez-Zor, one of the first such cells uncovered in Syria’s northeast, territory under previous SDF control for years. The arrest of the PMF smuggling cell was followed within hours by rocket fire from Iraqi territory against Syrian military positions, highlighting the interconnected nature of the PMF threats within Syrian territory and on its borders. The threat of PMF activity is unlikely to taper. In April and May, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani traveled to Baghdad to help coordinate Iran-aligned Iraqi factions—an indication that Tehran sees renewed value in Iraq’s militias as Hezbollah has been degraded in Lebanon.

What links these threats is not ideology, but opportunity: a Syrian state still consolidating control, a security architecture in flux, and the country’s most capable counterterrorism force losing operational control at precisely the wrong moment.

The growing threat of Islamist terrorist groups is exacerbated by the dangers posed by extremist elements within Syria’s own security forces. To consolidate the Syrian state’s monopoly on violence, Sharaa incorporated a Star Wars Mos Eisley Cantina scene line-up of former jihadists and US-sanctioned factions that fought against the Assad regime into the Syrian military and security services, including senior positions. Since joining the state military, some of these groups have committed serious human rights abuses, including involvement in two sectarian massacres against Syria’s Alawite and Druze communities last year. 

Last December, an ISIS-affiliated member of the Syrian security forces killed two American servicemembers and a civilian interpreter—at a meeting between Syrian forces and the global counter-ISIS coalition. Reports are also emerging of an extremist culture developing within the Syrian military, including ideological teachings in training programs. The efficacy of asking extremist fighters to sideline their guiding ideologies—including possible affiliations to the terrorist groups they are now told to fight—to ensure the security of the Syrian state is dubious.

Why Syria Still Needs the SDF

The January 29 Damascus-SDF integration agreement marked an important first step toward stabilizing Syria’s northeast. Damascus has integrated four SDF brigades into the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), and Syrian officials have placed senior SDF commanders Sipan Hamo and Chia Kobani in positions inside Syria’s military hierarchy—albeit with limited influence. But Damascus has not completed integration. In May, Hamo acknowledged that Damascus had not resolved several core issues, including the size and composition of the brigades and the future of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), a core SDF formation. Damascus has reportedly indicated its willingness to integrate women in the Ministry of Interior (MOI) in internal security positions but resisted their inclusion in the Ministry of Defense, as YPJ Commander Rohilat Afrin has pushed for. Each unresolved issue creates a potential rupture point, and each delay erodes the SDF leadership’s trust in Damascus, thereby increasing the risk that the ceasefire gives way to renewed conflict.

To roll back ISIS reconstitution and deter terrorist activity, Damascus must meaningfully integrate the SDF into the SAA. Unlike the SAA, the SDF has extensive experience neutralizing terrorist threats. It played a pivotal role in defeating ISIS with the United States. The SDF received military training from US forces and maintains substantial intelligence capabilities and effective military infrastructure. It continues to serve as Syria’s most dependable counterterrorism force and, if incorporated, could increase the force of the Syrian military and the MOI by about 30,000–50,000 fighters—a boon in abilities and size that would allow the Syrian military to expand its counterterrorism operations before the threat of ISIS and other groups worsens. 

Concurrently, Damascus should assign SDF personnel not already integrated into the Ministry of Defense to the MOI. In Syria, the MOI is the leading institution on domestic counterterrorism efforts and the only body cooperating with the United States on counterterrorism operations. Syrian internal security forces have already dismantled ISIS– and PMF-linked cells in Deir ez-Zor. Last November, US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Syrian MOI forces also destroyed more than 15 ISIS weapons caches in southern Syria. Damascus should expand Kurdish participation inside MOI counterterrorism units, grant Kurdish commanders real decision-making authority within the ministry, and integrate former SDF intelligence networks into Syria’s internal security architecture.

For Washington, abandoning the SDF in the middle of an incomplete integration would compound the instability the US military presence has held at bay. Instead, the United States should maintain cooperation with both Syrian forces and the SDF, while conditioning military support for Damascus on its meeting of its January 29 commitments. Although the US military has withdrawn from Syria, CENTCOM has already established a precedent for direct counterterrorism cooperation with both the SDF and the Syrian MOI. The dual-track posture should be maintained to preserve both relationships, rather than collapsing into a Damascus-only engagement. 

Concurrently, continued US support for the Syrian government’s counterterrorism capacity—training, intelligence sharing, and joint operations like those conducted by CENTCOM and the MOI in November—should be conditioned on Damascus delivering on its January 29 commitments. Full brigade integration with operational authority in both the defense and interior ministries spreads the SDF’s counterterrorism experience across all facets of Damascus’ security apparatuses. Integrating the YPJ into counterterrorism roles, in line with their capabilities, preserves 7,000 proven and committed fighters. Without enforceable conditions, the January agreement will produce structures that look like integration on paper but function as exclusion in practice—and ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the PMF will continue to exploit the security vacuums that Sharaa’s centralization was meant to close.

Syria’s Limited Window to Course Correct

Syria’s transition is not unfolding in isolation. Hezbollah remains wounded but again seeks a footprint inside Syria. Iraq’s PMF have emerged as one of Iran’s most viable remaining proxies. ISIS is reconstituting as a diffuse insurgency. The threat posed by each of these groups could escalate if Syria’s transition fractures—and each has already begun probing for the opening.

Sharaa’s centralization-through-exclusion is producing that opening. By marginalizing the SDF in the name of consolidating state authority, Damascus is hollowing out the very counterterrorism architecture it needs to deliver the stabilization Sharaa has promised. The January 29 integration framework created a path to avoid that outcome, but Damascus still has not resolved its most consequential political and operational disputes.

The window for course correction is narrow but real. The integration framework remains in motion, Hamo and Kobani still hold their appointments, and CENTCOM has already established a precedent for direct counterterrorism cooperation with both Syrian state institutions and the formerly autonomous SDF brigades. The decisions Sharaa and Washington make in the coming months will determine whether Syria emerges as a more capable or more vulnerable state. The time to focus on ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the PMF is not when these threats become inescapable. It is now, while Damascus, the SDF, and Washington still have the architecture in place to roll them back together.

About the Authors: Jonah Brody, Giran Ozcan, Rena Gabber

Jonah Brody is a policy analyst at JINSA. His research interests include Middle Eastern geopolitics, counterterrorism, and Turkish foreign and security policy. Jonah holds an MA in International Security from Sciences Po Paris, a BA in History from the University of Tennessee at Martin, and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Comparative Politics from Sciences Po Toulouse. He previously worked at the National Democratic Institute on the West and Central Africa portfolio and has interned at the Hudson Institute, the European Army Interoperability Centre, and the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism. His writings have appeared in The Hill, RealClearDefense, The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, and Modern Diplomacy.

Giran Ozcan is the fellow for Kurdish affairs at the Jewish Institute for National Security in America (JINSA). Prior to JINSA, Giran was the founding executive director of the Kurdish Peace Institute. He previously worked with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) at its overseas representative offices and served as the HDP Representative to the United States of America between 2017 and 2021. He graduated from the University of Warwick with a degree in sociology and worked at the Center for Turkey Studies in London between 2011 and 2016. He was a founding editor of The Region, an online news outlet covering the Middle East.

Rena Gabber is a research associate for JINSA Senior Fellow John Hannah. She formerly worked as a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focusing on Arab-Israel relations. Rena graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service with a degree in International Politics in May 2024.

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