External Contribution :A Panoramic View of the Status Quo in Syria and the Emerging US Position

Charles Lister; Senior Fellow, Middle East Institute and Founder of Syria Weekly

Three months on, Syria’s fragile transition continues. Amidst the rubble of more than a decade of war and faced by a collapsed economy, an exhausted population, and huge structural challenges, the interim government has continued to invest heavily in external engagements as a means of broadening and consolidating its legitimacy. In recent weeks, it has widened the scope of its diplomatic activity beyond governments, to include the likes of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Arab League, several United Nations (UN) bodies, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

Internally, the transition itself has moved forward. A Preparatory Committee was appointed on 12 February to convene national dialogue meetings with several thousand citizens from each of Syria’s 14 governorates, which paved the ground for the National Conference on 25 February. Involving as many as 800 participants, the conference was hurriedly convened, with invitations sent out just three days prior—but it was an important step nonetheless. On 2 March, interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa then appointed a drafting committee of seven legal experts to produce a constitutional declaration that would serve as the legal framework for Syria’s transitional phase. Internal deliberations over a cabinet reshuffle continue, and hundreds of candidates are being reviewed for a transitional parliament, expected to be named later in March.

The scope, breadth, and process involved in the domestic transitional steps have not always been ideal—sometimes far from it. But conditions within the interim government and across Syria make perfection an impossible goal. For more than half a century, Syria has lacked any meaningful political culture, so the dramatic widening of the socio-political aperture since December 2024 is a remarkable feat in and of itself. The interim government is also run by a skeletal staff, with extraordinarily minimal resources. Whether in terms of politics, governance, or security, bandwidth is a debilitating problem.

In terms of security, the situation remains extremely fragile. According to assessments by interim government authorities in early February 2025, 4,000–5,000 men in Latakia and Tartous had failed to engage with the settlement process and the decision had been made not to go after them en masse—to avoid a campaign that would have inevitably created negative optics and probable cause for significant instability. However, that otherwise pragmatic decision created conditions in which a fledgling pro-Assad armed resistance began to gradually develop from late January, with each week since seeing a greater number of attacks and a higher rate of resulting casualties—primarily in Latakia, Tartous, Homs, Hama, and around Damascus.

The interim government lacked the manpower to permanently deploy forces throughout the affected areas, forcing it to play a largely ineffective game of whack-a-mole. The ticking time bomb detonated late on 6 March, when pro-Assad armed cells launched a campaign of near-simultaneous attacks across Latakia and Tartous, triggering localized internecine warfare and two days of sectarian killing—by locals, interim government forces, foreign fighters, and Syrian men from elsewhere in the country. By the end, hundreds of civilians lay dead, as well as hundreds of Alawite gunmen and interim government forces. While Damascus announced the formation of a legal investigative committee and other steps to de-escalate, the enormity of violence left Syria’s already fragile transition on a knife-edge.

After Assad’s fall, ISIS attacks near-vanished in Syria, marking an abrupt reversal of 2024’s trendline which saw the group clearly resurgent—tripling its operational tempo, more than doubling the deadliness of attacks, and expanding geographically and in terms of sophistication. That pause appears to have ended since late February, when ISIS attacks returned to nearly the levels seen through 2024.

Meanwhile, the transition’s disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) challenge continues—with regular negotiations ongoing with notables and militia leaders in Druze-majority As-Suwayda and in Daraa. Substantial progress seems to be occurring in the Daraa track, but the dynamic vis-à-vis As-Suwayda remains complex. Israel’s demand that southern Syria be demilitarized and its attempts to instrumentalize Syria’s Druze as a means to stoke division and tensions may have, ironically, served to narrow As-Suwayda’s gap with Damascus. However, differing and potentially rival Druze positions have begun to emerge, with religious leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri toeing a more unbending line and militia groups expressing more flexibility in their interactions and cooperation with their interim government counterparts.

The toughest nut to crack in terms of DDR remains the northeast, where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) appear keen to see the outcome of an eventual call between Presidents Trump and Erdoğan before sealing or rejecting any deal with Damascus. The fall of Assad engendered an intense desire among Syrians to see their country reunite, and for now, the SDF’s semi-autonomous status remains the biggest perceived obstacle to that. The drive to resolve the impasse faced a major setback on 3 February, when 20 civilians were killed in a car bomb blamed widely on SDF elements. The fact that SDF leader Mazloum Abdi appears to have acknowledged Ahmad al-Sharaa’s presidency is an encouraging sign, as is the resumption of oil trade with Damascus. Ultimately, thanks to considerable pressure on the SDF from the US military, the SDF signed a landmark framework agreement with Sharaa’s government on 3 March that paves a path towards integrating it into Syria’s new state institutions. Under the deal, and subject to follow-on negotiations, SDF-controlled border crossings, an airport, oil and gas fields, and ISIS prisons and camps in eastern Syria would be placed under Damascus’ administration.

While Syrians remain euphoric at their newfound freedom, the subject of near-unanimous priority is the economy. Shattered by nearly 14 years of civil conflict and regime corruption, Syria’s economy is barely breathing. The Syrian pound has lost 99% of its pre-war value and a persistent liquidity crisis continues to fuel fluctuations in value. Ninety percent of Syrians live below the poverty line; 70% rely on aid; and more than 50% of Syria’s basic infrastructure is destroyed. The international community funded only 28% of the UN’s aid needs for Syria in 2024 and expectation for 2025 is even lower. While Assad’s departure has unlocked the door to recovery, the door itself can only be opened by sanctions relief—principally from the US government.

While Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and international organizations continue to engage intensively with Damascus, the US has taken a step back since Donald Trump became President. While the outgoing Biden administration moved quickly to engage diplomatically, the Trump administration holds a deeply skeptical—for some, even hostile—view toward Syria’s interim authorities. The near-unanimous ask that the US ease sanctions (which is now coming directly from governments across the board, as well as from the UN) is being met with flat-out rejection in Washington. For Trump’s team in the White House, there is no cause that would justify “rewarding terrorists.”

Interestingly, this cynical take sharply contradicts how the US military and intelligence community has responded to Assad’s departure. Through Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) have established a channel of near-daily communication and coordination with Damascus in the counter-ISIS space. OIR commander Major General Leahy has met Ahmad al-Sharaa on several occasions and has directly facilitated in-person talks with the SDF on the al-Dumayr Airbase outside Damascus. With Leahy’s green-light, OIR’s partner force in the al-Tanf Garisson (the Syrian Free Army) has dissolved itself and joined the interim government’s Ministry of Defense—and Leahy has visited them twice since. Beyond the military, US intelligence has also established a working intelligence-sharing relationship with Damascus, which has already resulted in the foiling of eight ISIS plots—most in Damascus. It is likely that a recent surge in US drone strikes on al-Qaeda loyalists in Idlib is also the result of this intelligence exchange.

Although interactions on a security level have borne clear fruit and early trust, it is unlikely that the Trump administration’s diplomatic and political assessments on Syria are going to change. If anything, there are increasing signs that the US and Israel may be aligning their respective positions on Syria—toward a policy of isolation, aimed at fostering an eventual change in leadership in Damascus. Such a short-termist policy would virtually guarantee the failure of Syria’s transition and a potential collapse back into civil conflict. How that aligns with the strategic desire for “peace in the Middle East” is anyone’s guess.