Sharaa and the heads of rebel factions agreed Tuesday to merge the groups under the Ministry of Defense, according to a statement from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel group that led the charge to topple dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Assad, old alliances have crumbled, and global powers are figuring out their relationships with Syria’s new de facto leaders.

President Trump’s dilemma in Syria is to let a terrorist state emerge at the heart of the Middle East on his watch or to violate his campaign promise of “no more foreign wars."

Syria is in chaos. The danger to Israel and the West is that the next Syrian regime will be no friendlier than Assad was. After all, the enemy of your enemy isn’t always your friend.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has led to the freeing of tens of thousands of prisoners from the country’s brutal and byzantine prison system. Desperate family members continue to search for many more people who went missing since repression of an anti-government uprising triggered a horrific civil war in 2011.

Years of strife ruined the energy sector, battered the currency and strangled growth. The West must ease financial controls to help the economy, experts say.

Will he walk the walk and not just talk the talk? And if he doesn’t win in the elections, will he peacefully stand aside for whoever does win?” one analyst said.

In the past week, the Pentagon has acknowledged that its footprint in Iraq and Syria is bigger than it has claimed for years

The Pentagon announced the US currently has “approximately 2,000” troops in Syria, more than double the previously disclosed number of 900, a Defense Department spokesperson said at a press briefing on Thursday.

After more than 53 years of a brutal dictatorship and nearly 14 years of debilitating conflict, the Assad government fell in just under two weeks. The sudden collapse of the regime — which killed, tortured and repressed countless Syrians — has brought a remarkable sense of unity and euphoria across longstanding divides in the country.