Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx
Syria is arresting former Assad-era pilots and commanders while rebuilding its military aviation structure, forcing Israel to watch who inherits Syria’s airbases, aircraft, radar networks, and command architecture on the northern front.
For years, Israel watched Syrian aircraft operate from bases such as Mezzeh, Tiyas, Shayrat, and Hama, knowing that every sortie could carry the risk of escalation along its northern frontier. That strategic environment changed fundamentally after Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024. Now, the Syrian authorities are pursuing former Air Force personnel accused of helping direct the regime’s air war, while simultaneously rebuilding a military structure intended to serve the post-Assad state.
The contradiction is the story. This is not simply a campaign of arrests, nor is it the dismantling of an air force. It is a struggle over institutional inheritance: which people, practices, facilities, and capabilities will survive the transition, and which will be discarded with the Assad era.
The September arrests show the scale and character of that reckoning:
On September 10, Syrian internal security forces in Latakia announced the arrest of nine former military pilots. The Interior Ministry said they had served extensively during the civil war and had participated in air operations over several opposition-held areas, including Eastern Ghouta, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, and Hama.
On September 18, authorities in Tartus announced five more arrests involving former pilots, commanders, and other senior Air Force personnel. Among those detained were several senior officers from the former regime, followed days later by the separate arrest of Brigadier General Zakaria Mohammad Sannoun, who had held a senior operational role overseeing major airbases.
Syrian authorities have linked the detainees to the planning, direction, or execution of airstrikes against populated areas, while stressing that investigations are intended to establish individual responsibility. These arrests therefore sit at the intersection of accountability and state reconstruction. They are not only about what these men allegedly did during the war, but also about what Syria will do with the military system they once helped operate as the country builds a new military.
That distinction matters because the Assad-era Air Force was not merely a collection of aircraft and pilots. It was an institutional system linking command rooms, intelligence, targeting procedures, maintenance crews, air-defense personnel, bases, communications networks, and accumulated operational knowledge.
Years of combat created a reservoir of specialized expertise that cannot simply be recreated by moving uniforms onto new recruits. The September arrests could therefore weaken institutional memory even as they advance transitional justice. That creates a genuine policy dilemma for Damascus. A new national military needs experienced personnel, but retaining officers implicated in attacks on civilians can carry legal and political costs.
The challenge is to separate technical competence from the structures of coercion and impunity that sustained the old regime. The historical record makes that distinction particularly important: United Nations investigators and Human Rights Watch documented repeated Syrian government air attacks and the widespread use of barrel bombs against populated areas during the civil war.
Yet the evidence does not point toward the abolition of Syrian military aviation. It points toward reconstruction. In July, more than 1,000 cadets graduated from Syria’s Air Force Academy in a ceremony attended by Air Force Commander Brigadier General Assem Hawari, accompanied by a Syrian Air Force display. In September, Hawari joined the chief of the General Staff and naval commander at Hmeimim Airport for discussions with Russian military commanders.
Those developments suggest that the transitional authorities are building a new aviation hierarchy while deciding which elements of the old one can be retained. The most important question is therefore not whether Syria will possess an air force, but what kind of air force it will become. Will it reproduce Assad-era command habits, patronage networks, and opaque chains of authority, or will it emerge as a smaller and more conventional institution under centralized state control?
The geography of Syria’s military aviation adds another layer to that question. Former military facilities are not all following the same path. Mezzeh, one of the most prominent air facilities near Damascus, is now being rehabilitated for reclassification as a limited civilian airport focused on private and executive aviation. That decision shows that the new government is willing to convert some of the infrastructure associated with the old military system rather than preserve it indefinitely. Other bases, meanwhile, remain strategically significant.
Sannoun’s arrest is notable precisely because the 22nd Division once coordinated operations from Hama, Tiyas, and Shayrat. Those installations represent more than runways. They are nodes in a wider architecture of logistics, command, fuel storage, communications, and air-defense planning. Their future use will help reveal how seriously Damascus intends to transform the security state rather than simply rename it.
Recent events at Abu al-Duhur show why this transformation matters beyond personnel files. The base, which had not operated as a dedicated military airfield since 2013, has been used as a training center for Syria’s new army since Assad’s overthrow. In August, Israel struck its runway and storage facilities, while Syrian officials disputed claims that the site was being prepared for a permanent Turkish deployment and said it was being rehabilitated for the Syrian Air Force.
The episode illustrates the wider uncertainty surrounding Syria’s military geography. Bases that once belonged to Assad’s war machine can become training grounds, future air-force facilities, civilian projects, or contested strategic spaces. Their meaning is no longer fixed by the old regime’s command structure. For neighboring states, especially Israel, the identity of the personnel operating those sites may matter almost as much as the weapons stored there. A runway has strategic value because of what an institution can do with it. The post-Assad transition is therefore redefining not only who commands Syria’s military, but also what each installation is intended to accomplish. That makes the rebuilding process itself a strategic signal, because every new appointment, training cycle, and base assignment can reveal the direction of Syria’s emerging defense policy.
For Israel, that transformation creates a different kind of problem from the one posed by Assad. Israel previously confronted a hostile Syrian government whose military structures, leadership, and operating patterns had existed for decades. The post-Assad environment is less predictable because the identity of the institutions themselves is changing. The immediate effect of removing experienced Assad-era commanders may be to reduce continuity within networks that carried out wartime operations. But disruption can also create uncertainty about who controls bases, aircraft, radar systems, training establishments, and ammunition stocks.
The broader security issue is control. Syria has already experienced repeated explosions at military storage facilities, some attributed by officials to poor storage conditions, fires, or deteriorated ammunition. Such incidents underscore the practical importance of secure stewardship during a period of institutional transition.
An airfield can survive without an active squadron; a state cannot safely manage sophisticated military infrastructure without reliable chains of authority, trained personnel, and secure storage. The question is therefore not simply who is being removed from the old system, but whether the new system can replace them without creating dangerous gaps.
That is why the September purge deserves attention beyond the individual cases. Transitional justice can establish accountability, but accountability alone does not create a functioning military. Rebuilding a national defense institution requires recruiting and training personnel, defining chains of command, protecting sensitive facilities, maintaining equipment, and establishing clear rules for the use of force. Syria’s emerging air arm will be judged not only by how effectively it distances itself from Assad’s legacy, but by whether it can transform the remnants of that legacy into a coherent institution under lawful civilian authority.
For Jerusalem, the decisive indicator will not be the number of former pilots behind bars. It will be what happens next at the bases they once served, the commands they once occupied, and the training systems that produced their replacements. Syria is purging a generation associated with the old air war while constructing the framework for a different military future.
The purge may determine who is excluded from Syria’s new military. The harder question is who will control the airfields, aircraft, and command networks left behind.