The New Syrian Administration as an Effective Security Partner in Combating ISIS
Prepared by: Karam Khalil
Senior Political & Security Advisor – Middle East
Stand Up America US Foundation
Executive Summary
This memorandum is grounded in a central premise: the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria is neither temporary nor episodic, nor can it be neutralized through airpower alone. Rather, it is a structural threat that can only be contained and dismantled through a state-centered approach—one that combines penetrative intelligence capabilities, sustained ground control, and a religious-security discourse capable of dismantling ISIS’s narrative from within its own social environment.
The memorandum concludes that the new Syrian administration possesses rare qualifying assets in the fight against ISIS. These include accumulated organizational and battlefield experience derived from a direct structural confrontation with the group since 2013–2014, an intelligence apparatus oriented toward pre-emptive dismantlement rather than reactive response, specialized desert-warfare units treating the Syrian Badia as the decisive operational theater, and a unique capacity to delegitimize ISIS ideologically and doctrinally through religious-discursive tools that the organization previously monopolized.
The memorandum warns that the most critical vulnerability sustaining ISIS as a “contained but persistent threat” lies in the continued fragility of eastern Syria and the presence of armed structures operating outside the national chain of command. This condition enables regional manipulation and the recycling of instability. Accordingly, the memorandum recommends a conditional security partnership between Washington and Damascus, premised on direct U.S. pressure to integrate the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into the new Syrian armed forces under a binding roadmap, thereby closing the eastern front as a prerequisite for strengthening the Syrian state and drying up ISIS’s operational environment.
I. Nature of the Threat: ISIS as a Structural, Not Contingent, Conflict
The primary analytical error in addressing ISIS lies in treating it as an external or episodic phenomenon. In reality, the organization collided early on with Syrian Islamist currents that rejected the imposition of a “state by force.” From its inception, the conflict was fundamentally about religious-political legitimacy and mechanisms of social control.
Consequently, defeating ISIS in Syria cannot be achieved solely through kinetic force. It requires dismantling the group’s claim to exclusive religious legitimacy, eroding its social and symbolic networks, and severing its mobility and supply lines.
II. Operational Timeline (2013–2025)
2013: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s declaration of imposed statehood marks the beginning of fragmentation within Syria’s jihadist milieu between local and transnational paradigms.
2014: The dispute escalates into open armed conflict between ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra in northern Syria, transforming hostility into a long-term structural confrontation.
2015–2018: ISIS consolidates as a desert-and-network-based threat, gradually shifting toward attrition and decentralized operations.
2019: Collapse of the territorial control model and transition to small cells and guerrilla warfare.
2020–2024: Progressive erosion of narrative appeal, recruitment decline, and diminishing legitimacy, alongside continued low-level security presence along desert routes and smuggling corridors.
2025: Emergence of a new Syrian administration with prior experience in dismantling extremist cells, adopting a hybrid approach combining pre-emptive security operations and sustained ground control. The Badia file is assigned to specialized desert-warfare units, with road and axis protection elevated as a benchmark of sovereignty rather than a procedural security measure, opening a conditional window for counterterrorism partnership grounded in territorial unity.
III. Why the New Syrian Administration Is Positioned to Dismantle ISIS
- Direct Adversarial Experience: The current leadership has engaged ISIS for years through infiltration, confrontation, and dismantlement, possessing deep familiarity with its structural model—security detachments, dormant cells, smuggling networks, and rotational desert mobility.
- Pre-Emptive Intelligence Capability: Accumulated expertise in targeting cells, leaders, and facilitators has shifted the security posture from reaction to initiative.
- Fighting with ISIS’s Own Tools: ISIS now faces an adversary proficient in desert warfare, capable of mirroring its tactics and understanding the Badia as a networked terrain rather than an open expanse.
- Doctrinal and Ideological Delegitimization: The Islamic background of the new administration enables a three-layered confrontation—narrative, networks, and territory—stripping ISIS of its claimed religious representation and reframing it as a deviant project rejected by religion, society, and the state alike. This capability cannot be replicated through airstrikes or conventional campaigns.
Operational Indicators of Transformation
Clear indicators of transformation include the shift from post-incident response to pre-emptive dismantlement, from isolated raids to network targeting, and from individual arrests to disruption of support chains. This is reflected in institutional coordination between internal security and intelligence bodies, expanded road and axis protection, and systematic pursuit of facilitators and smugglers as the true center of gravity sustaining ISIS cells.
IV. The Badia as an Operational Theater: From Pursuit to Control
The Syrian Badia constitutes the decisive operational theater, where ISIS exploits three core variables: vacuum, mobility, and smuggling.
Effective strategy requires three synchronized tracks:
a) Fixed ground deployment along key routes and axes to isolate movement.
b) Targeting logistical networks encompassing fuel, weapons, finances, and facilitators.
c) Securing the Syrian-Iraqi border as the organization’s primary sustainability artery.
The establishment of dedicated Badia units signals a doctrinal shift from pursuit to control, gradually eroding ISIS’s ability to maneuver and regenerate.
V. International Coalition Assessment: The Air–Ground Gap
Airpower disrupts movement and eliminates leadership but cannot terminate a networked, mobile organization. The historic gap lay in the absence of a sovereign ground partner capable of converting strikes into lasting territorial control.
A new window is emerging with the rise of a state actor able to deploy ground forces and manage intelligence, rendering any future international cooperation materially more effective by transforming strikes into sustained control.
VI. Eastern Syria Dilemma: Why U.S. Pressure to Integrate the SDF Is Essential
Any stabilization pathway that leaves eastern Syria fragmented remains structurally deficient. Armed formations operating outside the national chain of command generate a sovereignty vacuum that enables ISIS circulation and tactical exploitation.
Accordingly, the U.S. administration must apply direct political and security pressure to integrate the SDF into the new Syrian armed forces, closing the eastern front that weakens the state and sustains ISIS’s residual presence. This integration is not cosmetic politics; it is an operational necessity grounded in the principles of one state, one army, and one chain of command.
VII. The Turkish Role: A Conditional Regional Stabilizer
Turkey constitutes a central variable in Syria’s stabilization equation—through border security, the Badia file, and the future of northern Syria. Ankara views Syrian territorial unity and the integration of armed forces under a national army as essential to its own national security and to preventing parallel entities or exploitable vacuums.
This position aligns with a structured SDF integration roadmap tied to dismantling parallel security architectures. When embedded within a coordinated international framework led by Washington, the Turkish role functions as a stabilizing pressure rather than an escalatory factor.
VIII. Washington and Israel: Recalibrating Influence, Not Managing Proxies
The eastern Syria file reflects divergent approaches within Washington’s allied environment, where counterterrorism priorities intersect with fluid regional security calculations. At times, this produces unintended effects—namely, prolonging parallel structures that delay state consolidation.
Proxy-based balance management recycles ISIS as a contained threat, whereas counterterrorism requires a unified sovereign state capable of enforcing authority. U.S. influence must therefore be repositioned as a partner in stabilization, not a manager of internal fault lines.
IX. ISIS Outlook: Narrative and Operational Decline Without Expansion Potential
ISIS faces a structural ceiling: declining narrative appeal, limited recruitment, near-total collapse of foreign fighter inflows, and mounting financial and logistical pressures. Most critically, it now confronts an adversary using the very tools that once ensured its superiority—desert warfare, infiltration, and cell dismantlement.
In the short- to mid-term, ISIS is likely to retain only a limited security footprint without the capacity to reverse strategic equations or regain urban control, favoring dormancy and disruption over expansion.
X. Strategic Recommendations: A Decision Package, Not Aspirations
- Establish a conditional security partnership with Damascus based on measurable benchmarks focusing on cell dismantlement, road security, and Badia control.
- Apply direct U.S. pressure to integrate the SDF into the Syrian armed forces under binding timelines and dismantle parallel structures.
- Shift the center of gravity from air operations to ground control by supporting desert-warfare units and route dominance.
- Invest in dismantling ISIS’s narrative within its own environment through religious-security instruments that neutralize its doctrinal appeal.
- Recalibrate the regional environment to prevent short-term arrangements that leave eastern Syria outside state authority.
Success should be measured through concrete indicators: reduced attacks on roads, disruption of smuggling networks, improved control of Badia axes, and declining cell mobility.
Strategic Conclusion
The stronger the presence of the new Syrian state, the narrower ISIS’s operational space becomes. The longer national consolidation is delayed, the longer a contained but persistent threat endures. Syria today is not a security burden but a test case for a new partnership paradigm. The measure of success is not declaratory intent, but the translation of local capability into sustained territorial control, network disruption, and the closure of eastern Syria as the final sustainability gap.
