QAMISHLI, Syria (AP) — The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces announced a new agreement on Friday with the country's central government in Damascus to stabilize a ceasefire that ended weeks of fighting and to lay out steps toward integrating the two sides.
The development is the latest as Syria’s new leaders have struggled since toppling former President Bashar Assad in December 2024 to assert their full authority over the country torn by nearly 14 years of civil war.
An agreement was reached in March that would merge the Kurdish-led SDF with Damascus's new security forces, but it didn’t gain traction.
The SDF lost most of its territory in northeast Syria to a government offensive after intense clashes erupted in the northern city of Aleppo on Jan. 6, following months of failed negotiations to implement an integration deal.
A new agreement
According to the SDF, the new agreement says that fighters from both sides will pull back from the front lines, while Syrian Ministry of Interior's security forces would go into the cities of al-Hassakeh and Qamishli in the Kurdish heartland, which they had previously been barred from entering. Local Kurdish police forces would also continue to patrol there.
Then the process of integrating SDF and Syrian government forces would begin.
This would include the formation of a new military division consisting of three brigades from the SDF in Hassakeh province, in addition to the formation of a brigade of SDF fighters within a division in Aleppo province.
Local institutions in the Kurdish-led government of northeast Syria — which has operated as a de facto autonomous zone for years — and their employees would be integrated into state institutions. It was not clear how quickly the integration would take place.
Kurdish rights and Syrian integration
The agreement also includes “civil and educational rights for the Kurdish people, and guaranteeing the return of the displaced to their areas,” the statement said.
“The agreement aims to unify the Syrian territories and achieve the full integration process in the region by enhancing cooperation between the concerned parties and unifying efforts to rebuild the country,” it said.
The Syrian government confirmed the agreement in a statement.
The state-run SANA news agency said that while the former SDF fighters would form brigades in the Syrian army, the fighters would be integrated on an “individual basis after conducting necessary security checks."
The distinction appears to be an attempt to balance the SDF's demand that its forces remain as distinctive units with the government's demand that they should be dissolved and that SDF members then join the army as individual troops.
There was no reference in the agreement to the future of the SDF's all-female fighting units — a sensitive point as much of the Damascus leaders come from a conservative background and are opposed to women in combat.
Elham Ahmad, a senior official with the de facto autonomous administration in the Kurdish-led northeast, said in a call with journalists that the future of the women's fighting units had not been discussed in detail but that she expected they would be folded into the SDF’s brigades in northeastern Syria.
She said the United States and France would guarantee the deal and that the SDF has also been in discussions with Turkey. Ankara has long regarded the SDF as a terror group because of its ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that waged a long-running insurgency in Turkey.
The US realignment
Meanwhile the U.S., which had long been the main backer of the SDF as the group fought against Islamic State militants, has moved closer to Damascus under new interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa. The U.S. did not intervene militarily in this month's fighting but pushed the two sides to make a deal.
The truce that was reached last week between the two sides has been largely holding, with Friday's announcement appears to be a step toward solidifying the ceasefire.
U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack called the new agreement in a post on X a “profound and historic milestone in Syria’s journey toward national reconciliation, unity, and enduring stability.”
He lauded “the Kurdish people, whose extraordinary sacrifices and steadfast resilience have played a pivotal role in defending Syria against extremism and safeguarding vulnerable populations.”
He also praised a recent decree issued by al-Sharaa to strengthen the rights of the Kurdish minority in the country, including recognizing Kurdish as a national language along with Arabic, and adopting the Nowruz, a traditional celebration of spring and renewal marked by Kurds around the region, as an official holiday.
The decree also annulled measures resulting from a 1962 census in the northeastern al-Hasakeh province that stripped tens of thousands of Kurds of their citizenship.