Syrian Arab Republic

It is almost certain that Syria will be directly involved in significant armed conflict within the next three years, primarily through continued internal armed clashes and periodic external strikes on Syrian territory.

Armed conflict remains almost certain. Expect recurrent government–SDF crises with ceasefires that pause but do not resolve the underlying integration and resource-control disputes. Sectarian/communal violence in the south and coastal areas remains a high-impact tail risk. ISIS will likely continue attacks, especially where security seams widen during state–SDF confrontations. External strikes on Syrian territory remain a persistent, episodic feature.

Over five years, risk could fall from extreme to very high only if a durable northeast settlement is implemented (security integration, revenue-sharing, border/oil governance), minority protection becomes credible, and security forces professionalize with reduced militia autonomy. If these conditions fail, Syria likely remains a managed-fragmentation state: chronic insurgent/terrorist violence, periodic communal massacres, and recurring external kinetic actions, with occasional escalatory spikes.

Security situation Syria remains an active conflict system rather than a post-conflict stabilization case. The state lacks a durable monopoly on force across key peripheries, and violence persists across multiple arenas: northeast governance and oil/border nodes, southern communal fault lines, and residual insurgent/terrorist activity. Recent reporting of government–SDF fighting around Aleppo and wider confrontation in Raqqa/Deir ez-Zor, followed by a ceasefire, fits a pattern of episodic spikes within an unresolved center–periphery bargain.

Threat drivers Internal: The dominant driver is fragmented security governance and contested legitimacy. Armed actors retain autonomous mobilization capacity, and communal security dilemmas (notably Druze–Bedouin dynamics in the south and minority fears on the coast) can rapidly escalate into mass-casualty violence. ISIS remains degraded but adaptive, with attack patterns that exploit seams between the SDF, local forces, and state units. Criminal-smuggling ecosystems and politicized armed groups further weaken command-and-control and raise the risk of localized wars that become national crises. External: Syria remains a permissive battlespace for foreign kinetic action and proxy competition. Israeli strike patterns and Türkiye’s security priorities in the north create persistent exposure to escalation-by-miscalculation, especially when internal fronts flare and airspace/ground deconfliction is stressed.

Resilience and systemic firebreaks (pre-mortem) War fatigue, limited Syrian conventional capacity for sustained maneuver warfare, and major external actors’ preference for bounded operations reduce the likelihood of a classic, prolonged interstate war. Diplomatic re-engagement and reconstruction incentives can reward restraint. Ceasefire mechanisms and international channels can still cap some escalatory spirals.

Net assessment New evidence reinforces, rather than reduces, the baseline: significant armed conflict is the status quo. The most likely trajectory is continued multi-arena armed violence with periodic spikes tied to SDF integration failure, sectarian flashpoints, and ISIS attacks, alongside intermittent external strikes. A meaningful risk reduction would require enforceable security integration in the northeast, professionalized internal security, and credible minority protection—none yet appear consolidated at scale.