Syria’s Uncertain Path

Welcome to the Audere Atlas, the Audere Group’s fortnightly update on global geopolitical trends, how we engage with them, and what they mean for your organisation.

Our focus this week is the astonishing overthrow of the Assad regime. After 13 long years of civil war, an unanticipated lightning advance by rebel forces brought the stalemate in Syria to an end in little over a week. But the country’s future is far from certain amid competing rebel factions and foreign interests.

The Audere Atlas offers timely, actionable insights that both support key decision-making and highlight areas for further exploration and understanding.

The Bottom Line

Despite the apparent ease with which rebels have swept away Russia and Iran-backed regime forces since the start of their surprise operation in early December, the path to building a new Syria will be fraught with challenges. While an institutional vacuum signals the potential for nation-building, renewed power struggles are an all too realistic possibility. Uncertainty risks both market turbulence and the prospect of further regional instability.

The Brief

In a single week, over 50 years of Assad family rule in Syria unravelled with a dramatic and decisive rebel advance led by the Islamist rebel movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Before December, Assad presided over a fractured nation. The stalemate of the 13-year Syrian civil war was characterised by his control over some 70% of the country, peppered with stubborn, mutually distrustful rebel enclaves in the north and northwest. There was also a smattering of foreign military bases, ranging from those of friends like Russia and Iran, as well as hostile foes Turkey and the US. The distinction was by no means binary. Pro-Assad forces were only a loose coalition, with the regime long scheming to play Iran and Russia off one another to maximise leverage, while the policies of the anti-Assad NATO allies were anything but aligned. Divisions centred on US relations backing of majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), for Washington a partner against ISIS but considered by Ankara as an extension of the terrorist-designated PKK, with Turkey intervening directly to counter it in 2016.

In all this complexity, rebels coalesced around SDF-controlled territory in the northeast, and the northwestern stronghold of Idlib. The latter was dominated since 2018 by HTS, established as ‘Jabhat Al-Nusra’ (or the Victory Front) at the dawn of the civil war in 2011. Originally a direct Al-Qaeda affiliate, current leader Ahmed Hussein Al-Shar’a (nom de guerre ‘Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani’) and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi (who would later splinter off to found ISIS) were key figures in its formation. Despite the UN, US, UK, Turkey, and others designating HTS a terror group, it swiftly became one of the most effective anti-Assad forces, due in part to the experience of many of its members, including both Jolani and Baghdadi, as anti-US insurgents in Iraq.

Vowing to have dissociated with Al-Qaeda in 2016, Jolani dissolved Al-Nusra, merging with other Islamist groups and rebranding as HTS. An HTS-backed Syrian Salvation Government established itself in Idlib, focussing efforts on institutional development and cohesion as the intensity of fighting waned in 2018. To calm sectarian distrust, Jolani personally conducted outreach initiatives to reassure local minority groups. Various technocratic civil institutions were established, responding equally effectively to everyday road and electricity network maintenance as to crises like the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes. Perhaps most importantly, HTS built up a unified fighting force that was trained with shared operational doctrines and armed with locally produced drones and other munitions. Though undoubtedly benefiting from some forms of external support in these endeavours, including from Turkey and even Ukraine, HTS sought operational autonomy through autarky.

In hindsight all this quietly positioned the group as a challenger to an increasingly frail regime, decaying under the weight of corruption and reliant on external backing that had become stretched, distracted, and degraded through conflicts with Israel (Iran & Hezbollah) and Ukraine (Russia). This only became clear as an opportune December offensive—which some sources have claimed only aimed to seize parts of the countryside between Idlib and regime-held Aleppo—turned into a rout that had toppled the regime a week later. Having taken Assad four years to seize, backed by Hezbollah fighters and Russian airstrikes, Syria’s second city Aleppo fell to the rebels in as many days, opening the way south towards Hama, a city laden with historical significance as the site of a brutal crackdown on Islamists by Assad’s father in 1982.

Their next target was Homs, the last major urban centre before Damascus and a vital strategic gateway between the capital and the regime’s power base in Latakia and Tartous. The latter provinces are also home to Russia’s Khmeimim air base and Mediterranean naval facility, central to its regional power projection and an important logistics hub for African operations. Despite the strategic significance of such bases, and unyielding Kremlin support for Assad since 2015, on 6 December, a day before rebels entered Homs, Russia issued warnings to its citizens in Syria, signalling either unwillingness or inability to come to their ally’s aid. For the regime’s soldiers, the writing was on the wall, with many defecting or simply blending into the civilian population as their directionless officers fled.

By the early hours of 8 December, Damascus fell, and news spread that President Bashar Al-Assad had sought asylum in Moscow. A mixed day of celebrations, looting, prison breaks, and general disbelief ended with the arrival of HTS police units from Idlib to guard public buildings, and talks on a transitional authority began between Jolani and Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, prime minister under Assad.

So what?

Confusion currently prevails in Syria, with uncertainty and instability qualifying hopes that a steady transitional order can be established. The core ‘known unknowns’ are the degree of influence international actors will have over the ongoing transition, and the ability of the rebels to unify the disjointed opposition.

Despite the impressive agency of Syrian actors in the recent offensive, the transition will have to contend with the competing strategic and security concerns of Israel, Turkey, Russia, Iran, the US, and the Arab and Gulf States. Foreign Ministers from Turkey, Russia, and Iran met in Doha on 7 December, where some sources claim they agreed to Assad’s departure—coordinated with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Qatar—provided state and diplomatic institutions, along with Russian bases and Shia shrines, were preserved and reprisals avoided. While it is unclear if the rebels acquiesced, Iranian state media has reported that Tehran is in contact with HTS, and no attempts to penetrate Russian bases in Latakia or Tartous have been reported.

Left out in the cold, US Central Command, conducted a string of airstrikes on ISIS positions aiming to prevent it from exploiting the power vacuum. Israel went further, conducting over 300 airstrikes within 48 hours of Assad’s departure, crossing into and occupying Syrian territory for the first time since 1973, and destroying several naval vessels in the port of Latakia. Air and naval operations, the largest in Israel’s history according to an IDF spokesperson, sought to prevent the regime’s chemical and strategic weapons stores from ‘falling into the hands of hostile forces’—terminology that tacitly admits Israel’s ambiguous stance regarding the erstwhile regime, which it seems to have viewed as less ‘hostile’ to Israel’s security than HTS. Israeli Defence Minister Yisrael Katz described the IDF’s ground manoeuvres as efforts to secure a ‘safe zone’ around the occupied Golan Heights, which the IDF has said it will occupy as long as necessary to ensure border security.

Iran has suffered a major setback with the loss of a key member of its regional Axis of Resistance, the latest in a series of blows to its regional power network following the degradation of Hezbollah’s capabilities. But Israel has also lost an actor with which it had a tacit agreement to toe the line or face the consequences. Assad acquiesced to Israeli freedom of action against Iranian and Hezbollah activity directed against Israel, and Israel to Assad’s freedom of action against the rebels. Israel has lost its leverage in Syria with the end of this quid-pro-quo and clearly fears the long-term intentions of HTS and its leader, whose moniker Al-Jolani points to heritage in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israel will also be wary of Ankara. As relations with Erdogan’s government hit rock bottom over Gaza, Turkish influence over its neighbour will be of concern. Ankara’s lines of communication to HTS and backing of the northern Syrian National Army (SNA) will give it sway over the transition. Far from guaranteeing its peaceful nature, Turkey will now be unconstrained in its campaign against the SDF, which risks prolonging instability. Abandoned by the previous Trump administration, the SDF and its hopes for autonomy in a post-Assad Syria are extremely vulnerable.

But will HTS be able to establish a transitional order, or will grievances, internecine fighting, and internal divisions mean a descent into chaos of the kind that has characterised Libya since the defeat of the Ghaddafi regime in 2011? This remains unclear, but there have been positive signs so far. Reprisals have largely been avoided, and HTS has declared an amnesty for all former regime soldiers—hundreds of whom have been discovered wandering in the desert after apparently being abandoned by their officers. It has also allayed minority concerns with early decrees not to interfere with women’s dress, consistent with Jolani’s pronounced project to create a progressive, multicultural, multilateral Islamist state.

With the state an empty shell, its rebuilding will require new political, civil, and defence institutions. Unlike in Iraq in 2003, where foreign interference heavily influenced outcomes, and absent a dominant military as was the case in Egypt in 2011, Syrians have a chance to rebuild from the ground up. In a best-case scenario, leveraging its civil resilience and untapped diaspora resources, it could emerge as a more inclusive and self-determined nation. Refugees are queuing to return at the Turkish-Syrian border, and in time, many displaced in the region and beyond may choose to return to rebuild the country. For businesses and investors, this transition—while fraught with challenges—could signal new opportunities in reconstruction, development, and a re-engaged society ready to move forward, with regional geopolitical realignments potentially reshaping trade and investment flows in sectors from tourism to energy.

A different refugee story has been told at the border with Lebanon, however, where thousands of regime supporters have fled. Outward flows could be exacerbated by a resurgent ISIS, an uncompromising Islamist turn from HTS or renewed internecine conflict. Another refugee crisis risks creating tensions in Europe, while the general instability of a failed transition risks disrupting energy markets and challenging trade routes in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the medium term, the transition may lead to the emergence of a new player in a region with significant offshore gas deposits, where Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey have long vied for influence and access.

Prospects hinge on the recovery trajectory, but effective risk management and a clear intelligence picture will be essential for entities navigating the risks uncertainty poses to regional investments and assets. Audere’s source network and in-house analyst team are well-placed to provide timely, actionable intelligence on the evolving situation, while our

investigations team is ready to support asset tracing and other services essential for effective post-conflict reconstruction. Helping to position firms to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the new regional order, Audere’s market entry support and due diligence services leverage expert local knowledge, while our security team’s experience in delivering intelligence-driven travel risk management can help companies and NGOs get on the ground in challenging environments like the emergent Syria.

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_{Disclaimer: The content of this report is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For further details or specific inquiries, please reach out to our team directly.}