All you should find out about Syria’s primary Kurdish-led drive and its cope with Damascus | EUROtoday

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as soon as an important US-backed alliance and the best drive in opposition to the Islamic State group in Syria, are reportedly poised to merge into the Syrian military.

This important shift follows a sequence of main setbacks for the Kurdish-led group in current weeks.

The religiously and ethnically numerous SDF suffered a considerable defeat over the weekend when Syrian authorities forces captured in depth areas in territory beforehand below the group’s management within the nation’s northeast, following lethal clashes.

With SDF fighters now cornered in Hassakeh province, this newest victory by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa might mark the tip of Syria’s Kurdish ambitions to determine an autonomous area in northeast Syria, generally known as Rojava or Western Kurdistan.

The fighters as soon as held sway over practically 1 / 4 of Syria.

Kurds constituted roughly 10 per cent of Syria’s 23 million inhabitants earlier than the civil conflict started in 2011.

When based in 2015 with American backing, the SDF comprised ethnic Arab, Kurdish, and Turkmen fighters, alongside the primary Christian militia in northeast Syria, the Syriac Military Council, which incorporates Assyrians.

However, the alliance was predominantly led by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the primary Kurdish combating drive.

The dominant position of Kurdish fighters throughout the alliance remained a priority for almost all Sunni Arab factions and their regional backers, resulting in inner clashes on a number of events.

Post-Assad period

Many of the Syrian insurgent factions that had been combating former President Bashar Assad’s forces from 2011 till his ouster in December 2024 have at all times been against the SDF, seeing them as a secessionist drive that goals to interrupt away from Syria.

Additionally, whereas Ankara has been a primary backer of Syrian rebels throughout Assad’s rule, it views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdish PKK, which has waged a protracted insurgency in Turkey.

After Assad’s fall in December 2024, relations between the nation’s new rulers, led by al-Sharaa and the SDF remained chilly, however a shock got here in March when SDF chief Mazloum Abdi arrived in Damascus and signed a cope with al-Sharaa.

The deal listed, amongst different issues, that the SDF would merge into the Syrian military by the tip of 2025. However, important disagreements remained on how it will occur.

In October, Abdi advised The Associated Press that the SDF had agreed in precept with the federal government on a plan to merge its fighters as a cohesive group into the nationwide military.

Abdi visited Damascus in early January to debate the merger. State media reported on the time that no “ tangible results ” had been achieved. Shortly afterward, lethal clashes broke out between authorities forces within the northern metropolis of Aleppo, main the SDF to evacuate three neighborhoods that it had managed for years.

Soon after, the federal government launched an offensive to seize two cities east of Aleppo that later snowballed right into a full-blown offensive that ended Sunday with the federal government in charge of a lot of the essential northern province of Raqqa alongside the border with Turkey and the japanese oil-rich province of Deir el-Zour that borders Iraq.

A brand new ceasefire

On Sunday night time, Syria’s authorities introduced a ceasefire, marking the tip of the newest spherical of combating, with the SDF. The group now solely controls Hassakeh, which has a big Kurdish group.

Later on Sunday, state-run information company SANA confirmed al-Sharaa signing and holding the settlement. Abdi, who was scheduled to fulfill with the president in Damascus, was not seen, although his signature appeared on the doc. Al-Sharaa advised journalists that Abdi couldn’t journey resulting from dangerous climate and was anticipated within the Syrian capital on Monday.

According to the brand new settlement, SDF fighters will merge into the nationwide military and police forces as people relatively than as a complete drive, which is a blow to Abdi’s earlier plans.

The Kurdish-led drive can even hand over names of commanders who might be given excessive navy and managerial posts throughout the Syrian military and authorities.

The SDF as part of Syria

Al-Sharaa issued a decree making Kurdish an official language within the nation, together with Arabic, and adopting the Kurdish new 12 months as a nationwide vacation, a step considered as an try to appease the Kurdish minority. The new ceasefire was introduced two days later.

The SDF, which was as soon as estimated to have about 40,000 fighters and had performed a serious position within the victory in opposition to IS in March 2019 once they captured the final sliver of land the extremists held, will most probably dissolve within the close to future as al-Sharaa boosts his authority in Syria after taming Assad’s Alawite minority sect in lethal sectarian clashes in March.

A significant mission that SDF continues to have is the management of prisons the place some 9,000 IS members have been held for years with out trial. The SDF additionally controls al-Hol and Roj camps in Hassakeh which are residence to tens of 1000’s, principally ladies and kids linked to IS.

The group stated in a press release Monday that gunmen had been attacking the Shaddadeh jail “which holds thousands” of IS members. It later stated that its fighters repelled a number of assaults including that the jail it out of the management of its fighters.

Under the 14-point ceasefire, the authorities and safety forces that run the prisons and camps will merge into the federal government that can grow to be “fully in charge” of the authorized and safety affairs of jails and camps. No deadline was set.

The Syrian authorities, the deal says, is dedicated to the combat in opposition to IS as Syria is now a member of the U.S.-led coalition combating in opposition to the extremists.