A state without its old army
Published 10 October 2026
On December 9, the HTS-led Military Operations Command declared a general amnesty for conscripted soldiers. The old army contained large numbers of men whose status could not be settled by treating institutional defeat as proof of individual guilt. The UN commission's later coastal report placed the amnesty at the start of attempts to disarm and demobilize former personnel. A conscript's position differed from that of an officer responsible for crimes. The new authorities needed to separate those categories while reducing the number of armed men whose relationship to the state had become uncertain. Victory had removed their command without automatically supplying a lawful civilian status. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Settlement centres opened during December for former army and security personnel to surrender weapons and regularize their position. Tens of thousands reportedly used them. Local officials told the commission that approximately 83,000 people had settled their status in Latakia and 40,000 in Tartus. These were official accounts recorded by the commission, not an independently verified national census. Their scale conveyed the ambition of the process. The authorities were trying to transform defeated personnel into individuals recognized outside armed service without preserving the old structure. Taking rifles was only part of the task. Decisions about past conduct and the credibility of protection offered in return remained unresolved. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Some declined registration because they feared retribution, especially as attacks on Alawi communities were reported. Others joined groups loyal to the former government or its commanders. Many welcomed settlement, while critics feared perpetrators of wartime crimes would escape accountability. A conscript could see a route home; a survivor could see a suspect receiving protection; a man expecting revenge might avoid the process altogether. These were different questions directed at one institution. An assurance sufficient for one audience could deepen another's concern. Damascus needed a system able to distinguish responsibility and provide protection, rather than expecting surrender itself to settle every claim arising from the war. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
The old military and intelligence apparatus disappeared faster than replacements could establish national reach. Forces arriving from Idlib lacked capacity to provide protection countrywide, while weapons remained plentiful. The commission described a security vacuum. That interval allowed armed actors and local grievances to determine what transition meant on streets where the new ministries had little presence. Removing oppressive institutions was a major change, but an absent replacement gave coercion other routes. The capacity to harm was dispersed among men and groups whose weapons survived the government's defeat. The capacity to stop them depended on institutions still being assembled. This was the immediate administrative cost of a collapse that had unfolded so quickly. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
From December 20, a recruitment drive sought personnel for General Security under the Interior Ministry. Trainees reportedly received two weeks of preparation. Fighters formerly associated with HTS and other opposition groups joined as they returned to their home regions. Officials later told the commission they intended longer training and were considering ways to vet former government personnel for recruitment. The sequence exposed the pressure of demand: officers were needed before systems for choosing and preparing them were complete. A uniform could identify someone as a state employee without proving that the employee understood or accepted the restraints of lawful policing. The new force's professionalism could not be inferred from its national name. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
A parallel effort rebuilt an army under the Defence Ministry. Former HTS leaders took charge of the Defence and Interior ministries during December and January. Men who had fought a state for years were becoming its institutions. Networks formed in the northwest moved to the centre of security in a country larger and more socially varied than their previous territory. Extending an existing command provided organization. It could not create trust everywhere or remove the histories brought by incorporated factions. Those histories would matter when units entered communities that remembered earlier abuses or associated armed opposition groups with threats rather than liberation. National institutions were being built from forces whose experience had been distinctly partisan. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
January supplied warnings. On January 23, General Security conducted a campaign in Fahel, in rural Homs. The commission recorded twenty-one male residents detained, fourteen killed and many houses looted. Some of the dead were former high-ranking army officers. Seven detainees were subsequently released from Homs Central Prison following community negotiations. Different outcomes cannot be compressed into a claim that every person taken was killed. Nor did the presence of officers justify the operation's conduct. The commission examined individual deprivations of liberty and life. A former role under Assad remained relevant to scrutiny, but it did not remove the state's obligation to use a lawful process. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
On the same day, security members raided Mreimin, beat and tortured residents, looted houses and killed two civilians previously affiliated with security services. At least one detainee was later released from Homs Central Prison. The next day, SANA condemned violations in the village and announced a committee to assess damage and provide compensation. The government did not publicly endorse every abuse attributed to its personnel. Yet condemnation did not establish that victims had received protection or redress. The distance between response and remedy was already visible: a public agency could acknowledge wrongdoing promptly while the harder tasks of accountability, compensation and reliable prevention remained ahead. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Fahel and Mreimin lay near Sunni-majority Houla, where the commission had documented a massacre in 2012 involving more than a hundred victims, including women and children. Some prominent former security officials reportedly lived in the two villages. The report placed those facts in the background of January's violence. Background was not justification. Proximity to an earlier atrocity did not prove the responsibility of a later victim. A community's grief did not create authority to punish another community. Geography and memory could make retaliation more likely while leaving each killing subject to examination on its own facts. The new state's challenge was to stop historical grievance from becoming a substitute for evidence. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
The commission examined an incident in Anz on January 27 as well. It found reasonable grounds to believe that interim personnel, including General Security elements, arbitrarily deprived people of life and inflicted severe suffering for purposes including punishment, intimidation or discrimination. These were findings about conduct, not a collective judgment against every recruit. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
On January 29, a victory conference gathered caretaker officials and opposition commanders at the presidential palace. Sharaa was appointed interim president. The old constitution and parliament were set aside, and the former military and security institutions were formally dissolved. The event supplied a political centre. It also revealed that centre's origin: the coalition winning the war. A national election had not produced the presidency. An agreement among victorious commanders established the authority that would design interim institutions. The appointment answered who would speak for Damascus before answering how citizens outside the coalition would shape the rules under which Damascus intended to govern them. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025 Anadolu Agency, December 7, updated December 9, 2025
The commission examined an incident in Arzet on January 31 too, and reached the same kind of finding about interim personnel. Their timing mattered. March's coastal massacres would not arrive without warning. January had demonstrated that official operations could become channels for abuse. A promise of restraint needed procedures controlling people acting under a state name, especially when the force had been assembled rapidly and grievances offered a ready justification for violence. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Dozens of factions, including HTS and Syrian National Army formations, agreed to enter the army. Units merged into divisions over subsequent months. Yet the UN envoy reported in February that many retained substantial autonomy, including separate revenue streams. Signing integration was not completing it. A ministry could announce one army while commanders retained the money, men and local relationships enabling independent action. The institution's unity had to be tested through operations and discipline. Signatures alone did not establish whether the centre could stop a unit harming civilians. Formal incorporation carried obligations that became urgent precisely where an incorporated faction's old command habits remained stronger than the new national chain. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025