The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on Tuesday announced the official dissolution of the group, which once controlled a de facto autonomous zone in Syria's northeast.
Speaking during a news conference at the presidential palace in Damascus, Mazloum Abdi said the SDF has completed a merger with the Syrian army and would cease to operate as an independent force. The Kurdish-led force lost most of its territory in northeast Syria to a government offensive in January and then signed the deal to merge with the army.
The SDF was once the main partner of the United States in Syria as it battled the ISIS group. But after the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Washington formed close ties with the new government in Damascus led by interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa.
The SDF “carried a heavy responsibility during one of the most difficult periods in Syria’s history,” Abdi said.
“Today, circumstances have changed, and the country has entered a new phase, one of peace and participation in building a new Syria,” he said, announcing the “end of the SDF’s mission” and “its dissolution as an independent military force.”
Under the 50-year rule of the Assad dynasty in Syria, Kurds were marginalized, with many denied citizenship.
Shortly after the uprising against the Assad government began in 2011, the Kurds filled the vacuum created by the withdrawal of government forces from wide areas of Syria’s northeast. The SDF at one point controlled about 25% of Syria.
The Kurds were initially circumspect about the new post-Assad government and unwilling to give up their de facto autonomy. Some of the opposition groups that took part in the offensive that ousted Assad were Turkish-backed forces that had clashed with the SDF in the past.
Türkiye considered the SDF to be a terrorist organization because of its ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a separatist group that staged a decades-long insurgency in Türkiye. A peace process is now underway.
Kurds questioned whether the new authorities would give them true representation in the new government, while al-Sharaa tried to woo them.
During ceasefire negotiations with the SDF in January, he issued a decree strengthening Kurdish rights. It made Kurdish an official language along with Arabic, and adopted Nowruz as a national holiday. It also restored the citizenship of tens of thousands of Kurds in northeastern Hasakeh province after they were stripped of it during the 1962 census.
Abdi said that al-Sharaa had promised that Kurds would have the right to education in their own language, an important issue for the country’s Kurdish population.
Questions remain, including the fate of the SDF's all-female fighting units.
But the success of the integration agreement with the SDF is a major boost to al-Sharaa's government, which has struggled to unify the country as it begins to recover from a nearly 14-year civil war. Most of the country is now under the control of the central government in Damascus.
The exception is southern Syria's Sweida province, which is now controlled by Druze factions that are hostile to Damascus after clashes last year. The Druze factions have received support from Israel, which is also occupying a strip of land in southern Syria near the border with the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
