Rebuilding Security in New Syria: Year 2, Week 6

Tracking the spread of new security forces and security incidents in post-Assad Syria from January 12 to January 18

Announcements of security deployments mostly in western Syria, with an emphasis on the minority regions. This weekly update is intended to provide base level data for more holistic research into the rebuilding of the security and governance structures of post-Assad Syria. Direct links to primary sources are provided throughout.

• Raqqa

• Aleppo and Idlib

• Damascus

• Coast

• Homs

• Hama

This week saw a continuation of the Damascus-SDF conflict following last week’s battle in Aleppo city. Following the SDF’s rapid loss of Sheikh Maqsoud, Damascus and the U.S. called on SDF forces to withdraw from all positions west of the Euphrates. SDF leaders refused and both sides mobilized along the Deir Hafer front. On January 16, Sharaa released a new presidential decree enshrining several key cultural and legal rights to Syrian Kurds. This was followed shortly by an announcement from the SDF on a unilateral withdrawal from “east Aleppo” which would begin the next day. However, SDF forces only partially withdrew and refused to leave southern Raqqa. January 17 saw the start of a large military campaign by Damascus forces against these positions. Despite Kurdish and Alawi forces defending some areas, the SDF quickly collapsed. Local Arab simultaneously began to mobilize against SDF forces in their areas of Raqqa city and Deir Ez Zor. By January 18, locals had expelled the SDF from all of Deir Ez Zor and most of Raqqa city, with government military forces quickly filling the voids and advancing into southern Hasakah. A ceasefire and new integration terms were announced at 7pm on January 18.

Elsewhere in the country small levels of violence continued in Homs, with two shootings and one assassination of a security member, and in the coast, with several robberies in rural Latakia and a rare murder of an Alawi man in southern Tartous. Overall, however, security incidents outside of eastern Syria had decreased this week.