The US-backed Syrian Free Army says it has been working to secure and protect the Al Seen Military Airbase in Syria. “Our teams continue to work at Al-Seen Airport to secure it and protect it from sabotage. We will work day and night to protect civilians and prevent ISIS from seizing weapons,” the SFA said in a statement on May 17.
The operations at the facility appear to be getting noticed by the new government in Damascus. A delegation of high-ranking Syrian Air Force officers visited the site, according to a social media post by the Syrian Ministry of Defense on May 20.
The Syrian Ministry of Defense noted that “the commander of the Air Force at the Ministry of Defense, Brigadier General Asim Hawari, accompanied by the chief of staff of the Air Force, Brigadier General Mustafa Bakour, inspected Al-Seen Military Airport to review its technical readiness in preparation for its reactivation and putting it into service.”
The SFA’s work at the base comes as Syria’s new transitional government continues international outreach, including to the US, Turkey, and other countries. It’s also happening as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Syria could become unstable without the US engaging with the new powers in Damascus.
The SFA has been backed by the US over the last decade and largely operated out of the Tanf Garrison in southern Syria. After the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime in December 2024, the group has played a key role in securing roads and communities in the desert area around the garrison. The unit’s future was unclear after the fall of Assad because the US-backed training mission was part of the larger US-led coalition’s efforts against the Islamic State. It was unclear if a new transitional government in Damascus would partner with the SFA or how its mission would develop. Since December 2024, the SFA has continued to receive training from US forces.
Al Seen Military Airbase is around 72 kilometers northeast of Damascus and 14 kilometers south of Syria’s Route 2, which links Damascus with Tanf. Tanf, near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders, is around 144 kilometers from the airbase. During the Assad era, the Tanf Garrison maintained a 55-kilometer exclusion zone around the facility. After the fall of the Assad regime, the SFA began conducting operations far beyond this zone, reaching as far as Palmyra, around 128 kilometers north of Tanf.
The Al Seen Military Airbase was used by Syria since at least the 1960s and eventually expanded to include two runways and hardened shelters. In the past, the facility was also called Sayqal Airfield. In 2018, Israel alleged it was one of five Syrian airfields used by the Iranian regime, which backed Assad. “Israeli intelligence believes the sites are used by Iran for its missions in Syria, as well as to transport weapons to its proxies in the region,” The Times of Israel reported.
The base has been described as a significant military installation by Navaar Saban, a researcher at the Harmoon Center. “The current operations at Al-Seen are part of broader efforts to stabilize the region, protect civilians, and prevent the resurgence of ISIS, which has previously targeted military installations to acquire weapons and equipment,” Saban wrote on May 17, when the SFA published images of its work at the site.
Hawarn News, a Kurdish website, asserted that “observers believe that reactivating the presence at the Seen Airport has strategic implications, given its vital location near the M5 international highway […] it was also a sensitive site in the Ba’athist regime’s air defense system. This move comes amid growing concerns about the activity of ISIS mercenary cells in the Badia [Syrian desert], particularly with the repeated attacks targeting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the provinces of North and East Syria.”
