Prepared by Karam Khalil
Senior Security & Political Advisor
Stand Up America US Foundation – Middle East
Eastern Syria (Al-Jazira) is no longer a peripheral geography or a deferred conflict file. It has become the decisive center of gravity in Syria’s national security equation. Developments in the northeast confirm that the struggle was never only over territory, but over resources, borders, and economic decision-making authority. Control of Al-Jazira means control of food security, energy, trade corridors, and border stability. Without decisive resolution in this region, sovereignty remains structurally incomplete regardless of progress elsewhere.
What is unfolding in Al-Jazira reflects a strategic transition from crisis management to a comprehensive sovereignty doctrine. The Syrian state is no longer approaching the east as a liberated zone requiring services, but as the strategic reservoir upon which economic recovery, currency stabilization, and long-term security depend. Geography here is not administered; it is governed as a sovereign system. This distinction is central to understanding the current phase.
Food Security as a Strategic Defense Layer
Agriculture in Al-Jazira constitutes the first pillar of national economic security, not as a productive sector alone but as a mechanism of control and stabilization. Wheat, cotton, and corn belts across Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hasakah form the backbone of Syria’s food security architecture. Any disruption in this system directly impacts markets, prices, and currency stability. Reintegration of this agricultural basket into state control reduces import dependency and ties monetary stability to real production rather than speculation. Agriculture here functions as a first line of economic defense.
Energy Control as a Sovereign Imperative
Energy represents a parallel sovereign pillar. Al-Jazira holds the overwhelming share of Syria’s oil and gas resources, which were previously exploited not for national recovery but as tools of political and security leverage outside state authority. Reasserting control over energy fields secures sovereign revenues, finances infrastructure, and reduces external dependency. Equally important, channeling revenues through formal budgetary mechanisms dismantles parallel economies. Energy thus shifts from a source of fragmentation into a pillar of state consolidation.
Borders and Cross-Border Control
Borders and crossings in Al-Jazira play an advanced economic and intelligence role that exceeds conventional trade management. The Syria–Turkey–Iraq triangle functioned for years as a permissive security vacuum exploited by smuggling networks, ISIS, and transnational militias. Securing this triangle is not merely about regulating commerce but about severing supply lines, funding routes, and cross-border mobility of hostile actors. Borders become instruments of sovereignty rather than liabilities. This transformation is essential to national security normalization.
The Human Terrain as a Security Variable
Al-Jazira’s human reservoir is as strategically significant as its natural resources. The region’s demographic diversity—Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, Assyrians, and others—has historically been targeted for external manipulation and fragmentation. Managing this diversity through citizenship, institutional integration, and state legitimacy removes the foundations of separatist projects. Social cohesion here is not a political luxury but an intelligence requirement. Long-term stability depends on neutralizing identity-based leverage.
Hasakah: The Unresolved Node
Despite major advances in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, Hasakah remains the most sensitive unresolved node. The absence of full state control leaves a security and economic gap exploitable by the remnants of the SDF, ISIS cells, and regional actors seeking pressure instruments. Hasakah is not merely a province; it is an administrative and logistical hub connecting agriculture, energy, borders, and population centers. Delay in resolving Hasakah reverberates across the entire eastern sovereignty architecture. Its status is therefore decisive.
Intelligence Assessment: ISIS as a Networked Threat
From an intelligence standpoint, ISIS must be treated not as a defeated organization but as a flexible network of dormant cells. The group has re-embedded itself in parts of rural Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor through direct integration with smuggling and informal economic networks. These cells exploit cross-border routes for financing, movement, and concealment, operating under conditions of partial governance and tribal fragmentation. ISIS now prioritizes low-visibility operations—assassinations, extortion, and taxation—aimed at sustaining instability rather than territorial control. Any incomplete security environment enables reactivation.
Strategic Intelligence Conclusion
From a national security perspective, reclaiming Al-Jazira cannot be separated from closing the pathways of undeclared terrorism. The confrontation is no longer with an overt enemy force but with a hybrid ecosystem fed by smuggling, gray economies, and governance gaps. Any hesitation in decisive closure allows threat recycling under new labels and structures. Completing territorial control, securing borders, cutting financing, and reintegrating society into state institutions are not political preferences—they are core intelligence imperatives.
A state is fully sovereign only when its last vulnerability is sealed and Al-Jazira is governed as a strategic reservoir of sovereignty, not a testing ground.
