Syria's civil war

Who controls Syria now?

President Ahmed al-Sharaa controls most of the country. He was born in 1982 in Riyadh, where his father worked as an oil economist. He joined al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2003, was held in US prisons there, and founded al-Qaeda's Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, in 2012. He broke with al-Qaeda in 2016. In 2017 his group merged with other factions into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which ran Idlib province. There, HTS fought ISIS cells and al-Qaeda loyalists. UN investigators also documented torture and executions of detainees in its prisons. On November 27, 2024, HTS and allied rebel groups launched a surprise offensive from Idlib. They took Aleppo in three days and Damascus in eleven. Assad fled to Russia.

A conference of armed groups named al-Sharaa president on January 29, 2025. Under a temporary constitution, the transition lasts five years. The United States revoked HTS's terrorist designation in July 2025. The UN Security Council removed him from its al-Qaeda and ISIS sanctions list on November 6, 2025. He became the first Syrian head of state to visit the White House on November 10, 2025.

The Kurdish-led SDF had run much of northeast Syria since the war against ISIS. Turkey says the SDF's core, the YPG, is a branch of the PKK, which Turkey, the United States and the EU list as a terrorist group. The SDF says it is a separate Syrian force. It led the ground war against ISIS and says it lost about 11,000 fighters doing so. It lost most of its territory to a government offensive in January 2026. Fighting in the Kurdish-run districts of Aleppo that month forced more than 150,000 people to flee. On January 16, 2026, al-Sharaa issued a decree that made Kurdish a national language and gave citizenship to Kurds left stateless by a 1962 census. Under a deal brokered by the United States, it dissolved into the army on August 25, 2026, and about 10,000 of its fighters joined army brigades. Mazloum Abdi, the SDF's former commander, became an adviser to al-Sharaa. Turkey has troops in the north with the government's permission.

In the south, Druze forces loyal to Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri hold Sweida city. Israel holds posts in the 1974 buffer zone beyond the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, and further inside southern Syria. Syria said on August 9, 2026 that it had agreed with Russia to turn the Hmeimim air base and the Tartus naval base into joint training centers. US forces handed their last major bases to the government in April 2026.

What challenges does Syria face now?

The government faces armed Druze forces in Sweida, sectarian tension on the coast, ISIS cells and foreign troops on its soil.

After the March 2025 coastal killings, President al-Sharaa named a national fact-finding committee. In July 2025 it reported 1,426 dead and named 298 suspects. The Supreme Alawite Islamic Council rejected the committee and its findings. A military court in Aleppo began trying 14 men in November 2025: seven Assad loyalists and seven members of the government's forces. On October 15, 2026 it sentenced two loyalists to death and a soldier of the Defense Ministry's 82nd Division to 20 years in prison. Trials over the Sweida violence opened in Damascus in July 2026.

In Sweida, Druze forces loyal to Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri hold the city, and about 3,000 government troops held the western front line in October 2026. Al-Hijri calls for a separate Druze region. The government says Syria must stay united.

ISIS lost its last territory in Syria in 2019 but keeps cells in the desert. Government forces took over al-Hol camp, which held families of ISIS fighters, on January 20, 2026, after the SDF withdrew. Most foreign families have since left. By mid-February 2026, the US military had moved more than 5,700 ISIS suspects from prisons in the northeast to Iraq. On October 23, 2026, gunmen killed nine people at a church funeral in Jordan's Karak province. Jordan linked the attackers to ISIS. On October 26, Jordan struck what it called militant hideouts in Daraa and Sweida provinces and said it killed more than 20 ISIS fighters. Syria's health ministry said the strikes killed seven civilians, including three children. Syria said Jordan had not coordinated with it.

Israel holds posts in the buffer zone and beyond it in southern Syria. The UN human rights office counted about 280 armed Israeli incursions into Syria in September 2026, the most in any month that year. Israel says the positions protect its northern communities and Syria's Druze. Syria calls them a violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement and wants Israeli forces to withdraw. US-brokered talks set up an Israel-Syria communication cell in January 2026, but no security agreement is signed.