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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | |
| Syria’s army restructuring shows how Damascus intends to absorb the SDF | |
| 2026-08-08 | |
[NationalContext] President Ahmed al-Sharaa is building a military system designed to prevent any faction, including the SDF, from preserving an autonomous chain of command inside the state. The restructuring now moving through the Ministry of Defence weakens commanders associated with abuses against Kurdish civilians, breaks apart factions of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and brings senior SDF officers into the national hierarchy.
That reading misses the wider purpose of the restructuring. The process now separating Abu Amsha, Saif Abu Bakr and other former faction leaders from their forces is likely to be applied gradually to the SDF once its integration and formal dissolution are complete. Removing abusive commanders and unifying the army may serve Syria well. The SDF’s apparent plan to enter the state while retaining a concentrated military and political bloc is nonetheless unlikely to survive al-Sharaa’s centralising strategy. Breaking the factional commands: The government’s first approach after the fall of the former regime was to absorb armed formations into the Ministry of Defence without dismantling their internal structures. Former faction leaders received military ranks, and many of their fighters entered newly created divisions under the same commanders. That arrangement brought roughly 130 armed formations nominally under state authority without provoking immediate resistance, while preserving much of the factional reality beneath the new titles: commanders continued to lead the same fighters, officers and local networks that had served under them before the new army existed. The current restructuring moves beyond that transitional stage. Reports differ over whether the final structure will contain five or six corps, but the direction is consistent. Divisions are being reduced, reorganised or placed under wider regional commands, and faction leaders are being transferred away from direct control of the formations built around their personal networks. Muhammad Hussein al-Jassem, known as Abu Amsha, who formerly led one of the key Turkish-backed SNA factions, has reportedly been moved from command of the 62nd Division to deputy commander of the Central Corps. The new post carries higher formal rank while separating him from the fighters and officers of his former Sultan Suleiman Shah faction, and places him inside a headquarters where authority is divided among a commander, deputies, chiefs of staff and central departments. Saif al-Din Bolad, known as Saif Abu Bakr, the former commander of the Hamza Division, another prominent SNA faction, was removed from command of the 76th Division and offered an administrative role within a corps headquarters; he reportedly rejected the reassignment and resigned from the ministry. The transfers have also reached the 80th Division, an Aleppo-based formation assembled largely from SNA factions of the northern countryside. Among the officers moved from it into the Second Corps command are Muatasim Abbas, founder and long-time commander of the Muatasim Division; Abdul Nasser Abu Jalal, a defected army captain who founded the opposition’s 9th Division (Special Forces) in the western Aleppo countryside; and Thaer Maarouf, former commander of the Samarqand Brigade and a senior figure in the SNA’s First Legion. Each of the three built his standing on a faction of his own. These transfers matter because a faction leader’s real power comes from control over a concentrated body of fighters, weapons, bases and subordinate officers. A senior title inside a corps headquarters can remove him from his original force while conferring rank and status inside the state. Once the ministry controls salaries, appointments, ammunition, logistics, training and deployments, the former commander becomes dependent on the institution, and his authority ceases to rest on personal control of an armed organisation. More at the link | |
| Posted by:badanov |