Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi announced that the incorporation of Kurdish-led military, security and administrative bodies into Syrian state institutions had been completed. Speaking in Qamishli, Abdi said the process envisaged in a January agreement with President Ahmed al-Sharaa was finished and that a new political phase would begin.
As leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Abdi said Kurdish efforts would now focus on securing constitutional recognition of the community’s rights. His announcement marked a major change for institutions that had exercised autonomous authority across parts of northern and northeastern Syria. The supplied report did not include a separate confirmation from the national government that every element of the integration was complete.
The January accord followed clashes between Kurdish forces and troops aligned with Syria’s new authorities. During that fighting, Kurdish forces lost extensive territory in the oil-producing north and northeast. Al-Sharaa issued a decree on January 16 recognising Kurdish as a national language and setting out national rights for Kurds, a step described as unprecedented since Syrian independence in 1946.
Subsequent appointments brought Kurdish figures into the state system. Noureddine Ahmed Eissa, from Qamishli, became governor of Hasakeh in February, while Sipan Hamo, a senior Kurdish military figure, became an assistant defence minister for the region in March. Government forces also entered Hasakeh and Qamishli, and Damascus assumed management of Qamishli airport and important oil fields.
The institutional change extended to detention sites holding Islamic State suspects. US forces transferred more than 5,700 IS detainees from camps previously controlled by Kurdish authorities to Iraq, according to the report. Washington had supported the SDF against IS but later shifted toward the authorities that took power after Bashar al-Assad fell in 2024.
Important operational questions remained unanswered. Abdi did not explain how former SDF units or Kurdish security forces had been placed within state command structures. The SDF, established in 2015 with US encouragement, included Kurdish and Arab personnel and had around 100,000 fighters at its height, according to Abdi. Syria specialist Fabrice Balanche estimated its strength later fell by half after Arab members defected.
The agreement also changes a long history of restrictions on Kurdish language, cultural practice and citizenship. Kurds make up about 15 percent of Syria’s population, and a disputed 1962 census stripped citizenship from roughly one-fifth of them. While integration brought formal rights and appointments, analyst Mutlu Civiroglu described the SDF’s dissolution as a painful end to a force closely associated with the territorial defeat of IS in Syria. The reported territorial defeat of IS in Syria came four years after the SDF was established.
