The Stakes of Military Reform in Syria

Reforming an army is not an easy task for any country. In Syria, it is made more complex by the many pockets of rebellion. Not a week goes by without soldiers being killed or seriously wounded.[i] While the territorial collapse of the Islamic State group and the 2020 Turkish-Russian ceasefire agreement have put an end to major military operations, hotbeds of conflict remain. Damascus has nonetheless embarked on a far-reaching reform to professionalize its armed forces. In doing so, it is reaffirming the centrality of the army as the backbone of the regime and sending to the population the message that the time for postwar reconstruction has come.

Before the civil war, the Syrian army numbered 300,000. According to the Global Firepower index, it now numbers 220,000, not including pro-regime paramilitary militias.[ii]  The army has long been composed of four contingents: volunteers, conscripts, reservists and civilians. The model is hardly conducive to troop cohesion, especially when operating in a country in which pockets of wrangling are scattered across the territory. The current initiative puts all the forces under the same status, the same flag, the same motto, the same objectives, thus attempting to create an esprit de corps. This brings us to the notion of loyalty and allegiance to the power in Damascus. At the beginning of the conflict, allegiance was Bashar al-Assad’s Achilles’ heel. According to the Institute for the Study of War, out of 300,000 soldiers, only 65,000 to 75,000 were considered reliable by Damascus.[iii]

The Syrian army has always been based on community loyalty, which explains why much of the force remained loyal to President Assad despite the popular uprising in Syria and international pressure on the country. The Alawite soldiers saw the survival of the regime as essential to their own security. This coup-proofing strategy is common in authoritarian regimes. In the Syrian case, it has involved the creation of parallel security forces, such as the Republican Guard and pro-regime militias (Shabiha), but at a very high cost: the fragmentation of the Syrian security apparatus. This is the main unknown factor in the current reform process: Will President Assad cling to a system that has saved his job but segmented the country, or will he have the audacity to create a paradigm of institutional loyalty that transcends ethnic and sectarian diversity to give meaning to the Syrian nation?

Reservist fate reform

The decision to reform the armed forces is not the result of intellectual posturing by armchair generals, but of operational necessity. Damascus has realized it is time to put an end to highly unpopular measures such as the احتفاظ system – meaning ‘reserve’ but should be understood here as ‘preservation’ – that kept soldiers under the flag after their military service had ended. One Syrian refugee, who wished to remain anonymous, put it this way: “As soon as Damascus wants to recruit a young man, he runs to the ranks of the opposition to escape the worst.”

General Ahmed Youssef Suleiman, Director General of the General Administration of the Syrian Ministry of Defense, has announced his intention to demobilize tens of thousands of soldiers.[iv] The operation will take place in three phases.

• The first phase will last until the end of 2024. Soldiers who have served six years or more in the reserves will be demobilized, followed gradually by those who have served five years.
• Next year, in the second phase, those who have served four years will be demobilized, with the aim of reducing the duration of reserve service to two years.
• After 2025, the length of military service will be set at a maximum of two years. This third phase will complete the transition to a professional army.

To make military service more attractive, the regime has introduced financial incentives to encourage citizens to join on five to ten-year contracts. A long-awaited measure is the relaxation of the rules for university students. They will now be allowed to defer their military service or convert it into civilian service. The financial compensation required to avoid military service has been reduced from 40 to 38 years. The objective is to ease relations between citizens and the military establishment. It remains to be seen whether these measures will be sufficient. There is nothing peaceful about the current national context. Young people who enlist today know that they are going to fight and that their country is at the center of rivalries in the Middle East.

The professionalisation challenge

Since 2011 Syria has experienced every form of asymmetrical and conventional conflict. Accordingly, Damascus aims to create a multi-purpose army capable of operating in different theatres: the desert (Badiya), the hills (Idlib), the mountains (Jebel al-Aqra), the plains (Al-Jazeera), as well as in urban and peri-urban zones. After more than a decade of civil war, much of the army’s equipment is obsolete or has been destroyed. In 2018, Damascus was found to have lost most of its tanks and armored vehicles; some 2,322 units.[v] A Bellingcat investigator, Jakub Janovský, in 2020, listed 3,380 destroyed vehicles. If Russia can help rebuild a mechanical force,[vi] two questions arise: firstly, money, as Damascus’ coffers are empty. Secondly, delivery – the war in Ukraine is mobilizing almost the entire Russian arms industry.

Professionalization should improve command and control. The Syrian army has been assembled and reassembled several times during the war,[vii] integrating a myriad of local and foreign militias (Lebanese, Iraqi, Iranian). This brings on a real headache for anyone trying to carry out large-scale operations. Damascus knows how to fight in limited areas but struggles to plan major operations such as retaking the north. The reform will have to introduce real-time battlefield management systems, such as C2, to enable the army to regain the capacity to conduct major battles.

Acting under Israeli bombs

Another priority is to repair the heart of the defense apparatus, such as the Center for Studies and Scientific Research (CERS), which is responsible for the development of nuclear, biological, chemical and missile weapons in Syria. The center has been the target of Israeli strikes, particularly in 2017 and 2020, resulting in its partial destruction. In 2018, Aziz Azbar, the head of the CERS, was assassinated. In 2020, Turkish strikes targeted its weapons program. On 8 September 2024, Israel carried out a major operation against military installations in the Masyaf region (northwest), targeting a secret missile production factory linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The multiplicity of strikes has, little by little, dealt a heavy blow to the CERS, a reminder of the urgent need to re-establish an air defense system worthy of its name to protect the Syrian army’s reconstruction efforts. Otherwise, the Syrian army risks finding itself in an ubuesque situation where it succeeds in reorganizing its troops but has no logistical infrastructure. If Moscow does not supply S-300s, Iran will supply Bavar-373 surface-to-air missiles – a replica of the Russian system, as well as the Khordad-3 surface-to-air missile system. Iran’s military industry is interested in the highly captive Syrian market, especially for drones developed by the Institut 4000 and the Jamraya 650 branch.[viii]

Define a new ‘national’ military doctrine

The key question is whether the Syrian people will support the reform program. Damascus will need to demonstrate that the future army will fight for all of Syria’s ethnic constituencies and dispel the notion that it will only defend Alawite interests. Ethnic balance in the army is a long-standing issue. In 2021, 124 of the 152 senior officers, 82 percent, were Alawites. The numbers are clear.

The professional soldiers of the future must be committed to defending a social project that guarantees security and growth for the people. Damascus is trying. A fund of 2.23 million euros was recently released to support thousands of farmers. These initiatives, as real as they are fragmentary, are intended to create a climate of trust between the army and the government. No one has forgotten the terrible loss of soldiers at the beginning of the civil war. Between 60,000 and 100,000 men joined the rebellion – nearly one in three soldiers. Damascus hopes that professionalizing its troops will protect it from similar setbacks.

While Damascus communicates extensively about these reforms to win popular support, it remains silent on the highly sensitive issue of armed groups. How will the regime deal with the militias and paramilitary groups it authorized at the height of the civil war? [ix] Will it dare to ban them, claiming that the state has a monopoly on coercion? How will Damascus establish strict neutrality for its professional army corps? Today, for example, the 4^th corps of the Syrian army is pro-Russian and close to Iran, and the 1^st corps, responsible for the front with Israel, is a key vehicle for the presence of Hezbollah in the country. A so-called ‘national’ army, if it is to be coherent, cannot have such proclivities towards foreign powers.

The uncertainty of support from the Syrian population

Perhaps the answers can be found in a new defense doctrine unveiled by President Assad. His immediate objectives are well known: to regain sovereignty over a third of lost territory and to recover the Golan Heights. But sooner or later he will have to say how he intends to break out of the spiral of impotence in which he has trapped himself. Syria no longer has the means to fulfil its ambitions. In May, the World Bank drew attention to the country’s “dire […] economic situation, which continues to deteriorate, exacerbated by multiple and overlapping shocks.”[x] How can an army be built without financial autonomy? How can the country free itself from the omnipresence of Russia, Iran and South Lebanon (Hezbollah) and regain complete sovereignty? Would it not be time for the regime to reflect on itself? After all, is it not the best place to reflect on the greatness and services of all-out militarisation?

These mechanisms of authoritarianism and militarisation have consolidated the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but they have also contributed to a growing isolation between the state and the Syrian people, with two immediate consequences: increased social fragmentation and a weakening of the legitimacy of power. This is what the Syrian sociologist Hassan Abbas has defined as the complexity of Assad’s authoritarianism. When the army is no longer defending a nation but an authoritarian model, excessive force leads to weakness.

Bashar al-Assad is reduced to saying that he is in favor of increasing the number of Russian military bases[xi] on his territory – the price for Moscow’s security umbrella, while he would like to build his own bases, produce his own drones and have the budget to finance his war effort as he sees fit. Then there are the many uncertainties in the region. Reforming the army is legitimate given the sorry state of the security apparatus, but will Tel Aviv allow it? Since 2013, the Israeli air force has been striking targets of its choosing, completely unaffected by and indifferent to the condemnation of the international community.

In the space of ten years, Syria has become a place of confrontation between conflicting interests, a country fragmented by regional insurgencies and foreign troops. It is legitimate to ask who in the Middle East would have an interest in seeing the revival of a powerful regime, an imperious army, intrusive and authoritarian as it was in the past. Who would want Damascus to return to what it was under the late Hafez el-Assad? What capital in the sub-region would have any real interest in that? Arguably, not many.