(Diego Lopes da Silva, Zubaida A. Karim and Gretchen Baldwin – SIPRI) The peace deal between the Syrian Armed Forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), if it holds, may have brought the Transitional Government’s ambition of stabilizing post-revolutionary Syria one step closer. Of the many tasks facing the Transitional Government, one of the most daunting is undoubtedly integrating or disarming the patchwork of militias and semi-autonomous armed groups born out of years of civil war. Besides the enormous political challenges, it requires vast resources and the institutional apparatus to marshal those resources effectively. In both policy and research circles, discussions of how to achieve the Transitional Government’s vision of building ‘One Syria, One Army, One Government’ have so far neglected the importance of funding architecture—that is, the policy framework determining where the resources will come from, how they will be allocated and managed, and who will oversee their use by the Syrian Armed Forces and any groups that are at least partially integrated into the chain of command. Funding architecture might seem like a secondary, rather technical issue at a time when violence is still rife in Syria. But it should not be ignored. The funding architecture could exert a strong influence on the future distribution of power in Syria. The Constitutional Declaration adopted in March 2025 is intended to prepare the ground for negotiating a new permanent Syrian constitution in five years’ time. Decisions made in the next few months—including those on military funding—will shape the conditions under which that happens.
Military funding compromises could cast a long shadow over Syria’s future | SIPRI
