Mideast: Fear Of ISIS Resurgence Amidst Political Transition In Syria
khaled damlakhi
Amidst Syria’s political transition, counter-terrorism officials have recently reported a spike in ISIS terror attacks across the country.
The power vacuum created by the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 has given ISIS fighters the opportunity to regroup, while the interim government is attempting to assert its control over the country.
In June 2025, ISIS fighters carried out a deadly shooting and suicide bombing at a church in Damascus, killing at least 25 people and injuring 63 others. The next month, ISIS launched more than two dozen attacks across northeastern Syria, employing various operational tactics such as guerrilla warfare.
An estimated 2,500 ISIS fighters remain currently active in Syria and Iraq, as attacks carried out by the group have increased since Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s takeover of Syria.
Faced with various nation-building challenges, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s success in forming a credible government is contingent on its ability to defeat ISIS.
Rivalry Between The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known as Mohammed al-Jolani, head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and current interim Syrian President, along with the entirety of the group, has been labeled as kuffar (“non-believers” in Arabic) by ISIS, in an attempt to discredit the current Syrian government.
Although Hayat Tahrir al-Sham no longer defines itself as a jihadi group, the group was once al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, standing in opposition to ISIS.
In January 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the creation of ISIS's caliphate across Syria and Iraq, leading to an escalation of tension between the two groups and the subsequent conflict between them.
Today, with al-Sharaa currently standing as the president of a fragile and divided Syria, ISIS sees an opportunity to both seek vengeance on its rival, and reassert his dominance over the region.
A Fragile And Divided Syria
In the midst of an unprecedented political transition, Syria is currently contending with recurring sectarian violence and internal disputes regarding the formation of the country’s new government.
One notable way in which ISIS seeks to exploit the country’s instability and rebuild its caliphate, is by recruiting new fighters; they do so by drawing on the current ideological and sectarian divisions plaguing the nation.
Indeed, frequent clashes break out between Kurds, Druze, Sunni and Alawite communities across the country.
Since the end of April 2025, sectarian violence between Druze militias and al-Sharaa’s transitional government has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Druze civilians.
ISIS also seeks to exploit the chaos brought about by sectarian conflicts to launch attacks. For instance, they conducted a series of attacks against Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in the wake of violence between Alawite and Sunni communities in the west of the country in March 2025.
Faced with divided and disorganized counter-terrorism forces, ranging from the al-Sharaa’s Syrian National Army to the Syrian Democratic Forces, ISIS is taking advantage of the lack of solid state infrastructures and national cohesion to recruit, assemble and reorganize its forces.
Additionally, the most significant threats to Syria in terms of ISIS’s recruitment lies in al-Hol and al-Roj prisons in the northeast of the country.
Holding over 40,000 alleged ISIS fighters and their family, a breach of al-Hol’s security would be a gold mine for ISIS’s recruitment efforts.
Currently guarded by the Syrian Democratic Forces, ongoing clashes with the Syrian National Forces continue to strongly undermine the integrity of these prisons' security apparatus.
Syria Joins The Global Coalition To Defeat ISIS
Crucial to the region’s counter-terrorism efforts against ISIS is the presence of the United States-led Global Coalition of 88 nations in partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces and Iraq’s national army.
However, in recent months, ISIS’s alarmingly growing confidence has coincided with an incremental withdrawal of American forces from Syria and Iraq, with a complete withdrawal from Syria expected before the end of 2026. In in April 2025, U.S. Central Command announced that 600 troops would withdraw from Syria by the end of 2025, bringing U.S. forces in the country from 2,000 to 1,400 troops.
Working closely with Kurdish leaders in the north of the country, the United States has already transferred three of its eight bases across Syria to the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
In parallel, since Assad’s fall, the United States has also conducted operations in government-controlled areas in coordination with al-Sharaa’s Syrian National Army.
On Monday, November 10, the U.S. announced that al-Sharaa’s forces would be integrated into the anti-ISIS coalition after al-Sharaa and President Trump met at the White House in Washington D.C. that same day.
While a concrete step towards Washington’s withdrawal plan from Syria, the success of al-Sharaa’s forces’s integration into the Global Coalition is contingent on the Syrian National Army’s ability to work in partnership with the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, key, if not main, U.S. partner in the fight against ISIS in Syria.