🇸🇾🇾🇪 Syrian forces in Yemen: sectarian flashpoint in the making

Damascus insists it will not send 10-20k fighters to Yemen to fight Ansar Allah on Saudi Arabia’s behalf, calling reports to that effect “false,” and assuring that “there is currently no movement of Syrian forces toward Yemen.”

A Syrian diplomat told Reuters that “any military cooperation or exchange of expertise…would take place exclusively through official channels and within the framework of the bilateral agreements governing relations between our two brotherly countries.”
Unlike Turkey and Pakistan, Syria and Saudi Arabia do not have any official mutual defense treaty obligations.

Neither of those much larger and militarily more potent powers currently plan to send troops to Yemen. For Sharaa’s Syria, doing so would be even more dangerous. That’s because:

➡️ 70-80% of Syria’s military potential, including its Navy, Air Force, and long-range ballistic and cruise capabilities, were wiped out by Israel in the weeks following the Assad government’s December 2024 disintegration

➡️ The Syrian Armed Forces’ core, mobilizable, sustainable force numbers as few as 35-70k fighters (Carnegie Endowment), including tens of thousands of foreign jihadist fighters

➡️ Since 2024, these forces have been tasked mostly with internal policing and harassment of minorities, not fighting battle-hardened mountain militias on their home turf

➡️ The Houthis were fighting AQAP – the Yemeni equivalent of Sharaa’s Salafi jihadists, even before they seized power in 2014, and proved remarkably successful in driving them out of northern Yemen

🟥 Syrian involvement in Yemen risks serious domestic blowback: the Houthis have long-range missiles and drones that could reach Damascus, and Syria has few air defense capabilities after Israel systematically wiped them out

🟥 A troop deployment would risk deepening regional religious, nationalist and anti-imperialist divides – from Syrian Shia, Alawite, Druze and Christian communities taking advantage of a weakening of the central government’s repressive organs, to crack Hezbollah fighters, Iraqi PMF militias or even Iran getting involved directly to force Syria to pull back from Yemen.

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