Security in northeastern Syria

Sunday 25 January 2026

Over the past several days northeastern Syria has entered one of those periods in which a change of flags on a map quickly becomes a change in the incentives for violence. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which had functioned as the region’s principal security manager since the territorial defeat of Islamic State, have begun withdrawing from positions they previously held. Forces loyal to Syria’s government have moved into vacated areas under the umbrella of a short ceasefire and an integration process that, at least on paper, is meant to fold the SDF’s military and civilian structures into the Syrian state. 

The immediate question is whether this transition is producing, or averting, a deterioration in security. The honest answer is that it is doing both at once. The same events that may reduce the risk of open warfare between two organised armed actors also raise the risk of disorder, opportunistic insurgency and prisoner breaks in a region whose security architecture has long depended upon uneasy compromises.

What has changed, and why that matters

The SDF’s power in northeastern Syria was always a hybrid. It rested partly on local legitimacy in Kurdish-majority areas, partly on battlefield credibility against Islamic State and partly on external support, principally from the United States. When one leg of that stool weakens, the whole structure becomes more wobbly. Recent reporting suggests that Washington has pressed the SDF towards a deal with Damascus and has signalled that the earlier rationale for a large-scale partnership has diminished. 

From Damascus’s perspective, the SDF’s withdrawal and the government’s advance can be framed as the restoration of sovereignty and unified command. From the SDF’s perspective, the same movement can be framed as coerced retrenchment under shifting external sponsorship. Those narratives matter because they shape behaviour on the ground. If local fighters believe they are being absorbed into a national structure with guarantees, they may stand down. If they believe they are being disarmed without protection, they may splinter, defect or resist in ways that are locally unpredictable.

Deterioration in security: what it looks like in practice

Security deterioration in northeastern Syria rarely announces itself through a single dramatic event. More commonly it appears as a layering of smaller risks:

A shrinking perimeter of control

When one force withdraws and another replaces it, the change is seldom instantaneous at every checkpoint, road junction and administrative office. Even a co-ordinated handover leaves gaps: some units move faster than others, local police arrangements lag behind and rival commanders test one another’s boundaries. The effect is not necessarily mass violence but rather a brief period in which armed men with unclear mandates have more room to act.

A rise in “grey-zone” violence

Islamic State’s strength was less about holding cities and more about exploiting fractures: assassinations, intimidation of local leaders and attacks on isolated positions. Similarly, a contemporary transition in authority offers exactly the sort of uncertainty that such an organisation prizes. It is therefore rational to expect, even without dramatic headlines, an attempt by Islamic State cells to probe the new security order as it forms.

A scramble for resources and patronage

Oil and border crossings are not only economic assets but also security assets, because they fund salaries, pay informants and sustain local governance. Agreements that reallocate these resources can produce losers as well as winners, and the losers are often the ones most willing to take risks with violence. Even if the strategic direction is “integration”, local politics can still become combustible.

In that sense the claim of deterioration is plausible but it should be described carefully. It is not obvious that the region is sliding into a single, linear collapse. It is obvious that it is entering a volatility window.

The prisons and camps: where security risks become global risks

The most consequential test of the handover concerns detention sites holding Islamic State suspects and prisoners, including high-risk detainees and large numbers of family members. For years this system has been an uncomfortable compromise: Kurdish-led forces guarded a population of detainees from dozens of countries, whilst many governments declined to repatriate their nationals, leaving the burden in place but politically out of sight.

That compromise is now strained by territorial change. Recent reporting indicates that Syrian government forces have taken control of al-Hawl, a major detention camp that has housed tens of thousands of people linked, in varying degrees, to Islamic State. There has also been focused concern around a prison at Shaddadi (or Shaddadeh), where the shift in control has been accompanied by competing accusations about whether detainees were left unguarded, whether attacks occurred and whether escapes took place. 

Why do these sites matter so much?

Because they concentrate three different security problems in one place.

First, they contain people with both motive and, in some cases, capability to rejoin armed networks. Even a small number of escapees can have an outsized operational effect if they include experienced organisers.

Secondly, they are propaganda targets. Islamic State has long treated prison breaks as proof of vitality and as a recruiting tool. A rumour of chaos can be as useful to it as chaos itself.

Thirdly, they are governance stress tests. Whoever holds the keys must provide guards, logistics, medical care, intelligence screening and a legal pathway for detention. If a new authority can do those things credibly, it may stabilise the situation. If it cannot, the detention system becomes a pressure cooker.

On that point, recent developments suggest that the United States has judged the risk significant enough to begin moving detainees out of Syria. Reuters reported the transfer of an initial group from a detention facility in Hasakah to a secure location in Iraq, with the possibility of thousands being relocated. Associated Press reporting aligns with this broad picture, describing the transfer as a preventative step amidst shifting control on the ground. 

This is a striking measure. It implies that Washington considers the present detention posture inside Syria to be less reliable than it was, and that the safest immediate mitigation is to relocate at least some high-value detainees to a partner state with more consolidated control.

Is Damascus a stabiliser or an accelerant?

It is tempting, but too simple, to argue that Syrian government forces taking over will automatically improve security because a single state structure is better than a patchwork. Centralisation can reduce the risk of inter-faction conflict. It can also, if it is resented, create the conditions for new insurgencies.

There are two opposing hypotheses:

The stabilisation hypothesis

If Damascus can swiftly establish disciplined control, pay salaries, integrate local fighters and co-ordinate with external partners against Islamic State cells, then the immediate security environment may improve. The handover of detention sites, under proper guard, could reduce the chance of a catastrophic breakout. The symbolic message would be that the state is back.

The destabilisation hypothesis

If Damascus’s arrival is perceived locally as punitive, or if integration is experienced as dismantling local institutions without fair representation, then the result may be fragmentation: defectors, new militia formations and a security vacuum in rural areas. Under those conditions Islamic State does not need to “win”. It needs only to outlast and outmanoeuvre competing security actors.

Current reporting supplies reasons to worry, but also reasons not to overstate. The existence of a ceasefire and a framework for integration suggests at least some level of co-ordination.  At the same time public claims and counter-claims about detainee security indicate mistrust and the potential for real, not merely rhetorical, gaps. 

The United States: manager, arbiter, or departing landlord?

Washington’s role has become the most politically charged variable in the crisis because it touches the core question of who guarantees order in the interim.

The United States has three overlapping interests.

Counter-terrorism credibility

American officials have consistently defined their mission in Syria, at least publicly, as preventing Islamic State’s resurgence. Beginning transfers of detainees to Iraq signals that the United States is prepared to act directly to reduce breakout risk when local arrangements become uncertain. 

Regional bargaining power

Pressing the SDF towards a deal with Damascus suggests a recalibration: prioritising a relationship with Syria’s central authorities, or at least with a new governing configuration in Damascus, over the older model of semi-autonomous Kurdish-led administration. This may be intended to reduce long-term instability by reducing the number of armed authorities. It may also be intended to reduce American exposure.

Alliance management and moral hazard

For years Kurdish-led forces served as the United States’ most effective local partner against Islamic State. If Washington is now perceived as shifting support abruptly, it risks reinforcing a broader regional belief that American partnership is transactional and time-limited. That belief has security consequences, because it alters how local actors hedge their bets. 

From an impartial standpoint, the United States is neither sole culprit nor neutral bystander. She remains a crisis manager in the narrow sense, because she retains the ability to move detainees, apply diplomatic pressure and co-ordinate with Iraq. She also appears to be an arbiter reshaping the end-state by encouraging integration into Damascus’s authority. The risk, of course, is that in managing the short-term optics of withdrawal and consolidation, she may intensify the medium-term incentives for local actors to pursue their own security through unilateral force.

What can be concluded now

The averred deterioration in security is not merely a talking point. It is grounded in a recognisable pattern: transitions in control, especially involving detention sites, create genuine opportunities for Islamic State to exploit uncertainty. 

But it would be analytically lazy to present the situation as a simple slide into chaos. Some of what looks like deterioration may be the turbulence of an attempted consolidation, including ceasefire arrangements and the reallocation of territorial administration. 

The most prudent assessment is therefore conditional.

If detention sites are secured quickly, if local security personnel are retained rather than humiliated and if intelligence co-ordination continues across the handover, the crisis may settle into a new, centralised but tense equilibrium.

If however custody becomes politicised, guards are rotated without local knowledge, or communities feel collectively punished, then the region may see a return of the very form of Islamic State violence that the detention system was meant to prevent: dispersed, opportunistic and resilient.

In the short term the prisons and camps are the barometer. In the medium term, legitimacy will be the determinant. And in the background, the United States will remain the decisive external factor, not because she can dictate outcomes on her own but because her choices shape the confidence and fear with which local actors behave.