As Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa struggles to rebuild a fragile Syria, the foreign fighters in his own military are complicating his relations with Washington and could drag Damascus into a sectarian regional war.
The U.S. Senate is moving to freeze defense aid to Syria unless Sharaa disarms these fighters, remnants of the forces that brought down former strongman Bashar Assad after a 14-year civil war. But recent reporting suggests the foreign fighters may already be mobilization-ready at an all-too-familiar flashpoint: the Lebanese border.
Armed Uzbek and Uyghur units integrated directly into the Syrian army since Assad’s defeat in 2024 have been conducting simulated cross-border operations into Lebanon, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights founder Rami Abdulrahman told MBN. The reported actions come just weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump urged Sharaa to intervene against Lebanese Hezbollah, a mission the Syrian leader has said he rejects.
Foreign Fighter Mobilization
In early March, after the war in Iran began, Syria reportedly deployed troops —including Uzbeks and Uyghurs — and equipment to the Syria-Lebanon border, in what the Syrian Ministry of Defense said were purely defensive moves.
Several Western analysts suggested that a more bellicose aim was unlikely. James Jeffrey, the former U.S. special representative for Syria engagement during Trump’s first term and Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Syrian deployments to the Lebanese border were likely for internal security and signaling.
“This is not a preliminary for cross-border operations,” he said, “but an effort to block Hezbollah entry into and resupply from Iran, and to show the U.S. and Israel that Syria is doing something.”
The prospect of the Sunni foreign fighters intervening against Lebanese Hezbollah, a Shia organization, has raised fears of sectarian conflict in southern Lebanon — an outcome an already pre-occupied President Sharaa wants to avoid, according to Kelly Campa, Middle East team lead at the Institute for the Study of War.
“Sending Syrian troops to Lebanon would be a marked departure from President Sharaa’s former foreign policy approach, given that it’s the kind of expeditionary warfare he is not interested in,” she said.
Such an intervention, Campa added, could also dredge up memories of Syria’s past and undermine its efforts to move forward from the Assad era.
“Deploying troops to go fight Hezbollah — an Assad ally and active participant in the Syrian civil war — could also undermine the Syrian government’s own efforts to promote reconciliation and transitional justice processes at home,” she said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is actively deliberating conditioning U.S. defense support to Syria on its efforts to disarm foreign fighters and jihadists in the country. The provision was included in the Senate Committee on Armed Services’ version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that soon will be voted on in the Senate.
The Armed Services Committee’s conditions may be a difficult ask for a Syrian state dealing with reconstruction, a regional war, and sectarian tensions that have at times escalated into violence.
2027 NDAA Draft
Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) put forth the provision in the 2027 NDAA draft bill. It stipulates that funds cannot be provided until the Syrian government has taken “credible steps” to “remove all foreign fighters and jihadists from the military forces of Syria and from other services of the Government of Syria.”
The provision also conditions U.S. aid on other benchmarks, such as requiring the Syrian government to crack down on al Qaeda in Syria and protect the country’s minority groups, such as the Kurds and Druze.
The 2026 NDAA, which lifted sanctions on Syria, obligated the White House to certify every 180 days in an unclassified report to Congress that Damascus is removing foreign fighters from its government, and contemplates reimposing sanctions without such a finding. There is no evidence that the Trump administration has submitted such a report to Congress.
Also last year, the U.S. laid out a list of conditions to the Syrian government for partial sanctions relief, including banning foreign fighters from senior roles in the government. In May 2025, President Donald Trump met with Sharaa in Saudi Arabia, where he reportedly told the country’s new leader to “tell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria.”
The US provides assistance to the Syrian government through a section in the NDAA that originated during the Syrian civil war, when the government funded vetted Syrian opposition groups against the Assad regime. The 2026 NDAA was updated to allow funding for vetted groups or individuals associated with the Sharaa government. The 2027 Senate version of the section now includes the foreign fighter conditions.
The Pentagon also funds the Counter-ISIS Train and Equip Fund (CTEF) to assist regional security partners in fighting the Islamic State, including Syria and Iraq. This section, also included in the 2027 NDAA, does not impose conditions on Syria. However, it conditions the funding to Iraq on the basis of the Iraqi government limiting the influence of Iranian-backed militias in the country.
The Foreign Fighter Dilemma
Sharaa’s ultimately successful military campaign to oust Assad relied heavily on foreign fighters drawn to join the fight during the Syrian civil war. The International Crisis Group estimated last month that some 5,000 armed foreign fighters remain in Syria. Some of them according to press reports, were appointed to senior positions in the government and security forces in December 2024.
Campa said that some jihadist elements have been integrated into the Syrian military.
“Generally speaking, the groups that are integrated into the government or the army are those that have fought with HTS for many years and are loyal to Shara,” Campa said, referring to Sharaa’s militia group, Hay’at Tahrir el-Sham. “For example, in the 84th Division, we got reports that is where the Turkistan Islamic Party, an ethnic Uyghur group that also has Salafi-jihadi roots, is currently integrated.”
The International Crisis Group estimates that two-thirds of the foreign fighters who fought for HTS during the civil war were Uyghurs from China. The remainder were an array of Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis, Chechens, Arabs, and others.
Many of these fighters are experienced from their involvement in the Syrian civil war, increasing their utility to President Sharaa.
“These fighters, particularly like TIP [Turkistan Islamic Party], have had a lot of battle experience fighting alongside HTS and allies,” Campa said. “So, there’s the loyalty aspect and the competence to bolster the security services aspect.”
Jeffrey also emphasized to MBN the importance of these fighters to Syria’s fledging military.
“They’re an important part of the fighting capability of the current Syrian army, which is very important for us in the continued fight against ISIS, and to ensure that Hezbollah and the Iranians do not return to Syria,” Jeffrey said.
During Assad’s reign, Syria was considered an important ally to Iran, and his fall in December 2024 was a major blow to Iranian influence in the region.
That doesn’t entirely assuage fears, however, that these foreign fighters lack the discipline to constitute a legitimate military force and could exacerbate sectarian tensions in post-Assad Syria.
Some foreign fighters took part in violent reprisals against Alawite communities in March 2025, after remnants of the Assad regime attacked government forces. Following that violence, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned “radical Islamic terrorists, including foreign jihadis” and urged the Syrian government to hold those responsible accountable.
Foreign fighters under Sharaa’s command were also accused of extrajudicial killings against the Druze in July 2025.
Campa added that Syrian intervention in Lebanon may be unpopular to the Syrian public, especially among minorities.
“Deploying certain groups of foreign fighters in Lebanon in particular would be a controversial choice, given that foreign fighters have contributed to abuses among Syrian minorities, for example,” Campa said. “I would expect Shara and his advisors to deploy some of his most loyal commanders — probably trusted HTS veterans — that have demonstrated their units’ discipline in combat.”
Israeli Pressure
Israel has been paying close attention to how Sharaa’s government leads Syria, and especially how it handles foreign fighters. Israel is concerned about foreign fighters on the Syrian-Israeli border and the threat of what they perceive as an unstable Syrian government, according to MBN’s chief correspondent in Israel, Yehia Qasim.
“We will not allow forces of the HTS or the new Syrian army to enter the territory south of Damascus,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last year, demanding the “full demilitarization of southern Syria.”
Since the fall of Assad, Israel has intervened in southern Syria, targeting military equipment to prevent its transfer to what it sees as radical elements, reflecting Israel’s skepticism of Sharaa and his past affiliations to al-Qaeda.
Yet despite those tensions, Jeffrey said, there are points of agreement between Israel and the new government in Syria.
“Israel is slowly coming to work with Syria. They have a negotiation underway on the security situation,” Jeffrey said. “[The Israelis] are appreciative of what al-Sharaa is doing to block Hezbollah resupplying from Syria and to close the border, and generally, I think that the situation is improving.”
Divisions in U.S. Policy?
In June 2025, U.S. Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack told Reuters that integrating foreign fighters was a better strategy than excluding them. That month, U.S. and Syrian officials reached a deal to allow the integration of select foreign fighters into the newly formed 84th Division of the Syrian army, and Trump signed an executive order terminating the Syria sanctions program.
Though the State Department soon removed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, Syria itself remains on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, providing what Aaron Zelin, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, sees as a source of leverage on the foreign fighter issue.
“There is still the state sponsorship of terrorism designation for Syria, which limits the ability of the US government legally to provide military assistance and other types of assistance to governments on that list,” Zelin told MBN.
Members of Congress, Zelin notes, have generally taken a harder line on the Sharaa government than the Trump administration has.
“People on the Hill have always been a bit more skeptical of what’s going on in Syria than maybe people that are orbiting Trump and Barrack,” he said.
The Syrian government, for its part, is more concerned about retaining support in the White House than it is about Capitol Hill. “I think that they believe that as long as they have the support of Trump and Barrack, everything is good,” Zelin said.
For now, Syria’s foreign fighter dilemma remains unresolved. Damascus needs these fighters to hold the line against ISIS and keep Hezbollah and Iranian influence out of Syria, yet their presence is the very thing that risks triggering a U.S. funding cutoff, inflaming sectarian violence, and handing Israel justification for deeper intervention in Syrian territory.
