Negotiators Zero in on Potential Deal to Disarm Syria’s Last Battleground

Negotiators are zeroing in on a potential deal to resolve one of the most explosive questions looming over Syria's future: the fate of Kurdish forces that the US considers key allies against ISIS but neighboring Türkiye regards as a national security threat.

Diplomatic and military negotiators from the United States, Türkiye, Syria and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are showing more flexibility and patience than their public statements suggest, a dozen sources told Reuters, including five directly involved in the intensive web of discussions in recent weeks.

This could set the stage for an accord in the coming months that would see some Kurdish fighters leave Syria's restive northeast and others brought under the authority of the new defense ministry, six of the sources said.

However, many thorny issues need to be resolved, they said. These include how to integrate the SDF alliance's well-armed and trained fighters into Syria's security framework and administer territory under their control, which includes key oil and wheat fields.

In an interview with Saudi Arabia's Asharq News channel on Tuesday, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi said the alliance's "basic demand" is for decentralized administration - a potential challenge to Syria's new leadership, which wants to bring all of the country back under the government's authority after ousting Bashar al-Assad last month.

Abdi indicated that the SDF has no intention of dissolving, saying it was open to linking with the defense ministry and operating according to its rules, but as "a military bloc".

Syria's new defense minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, rejected that approach in an interview with Reuters on Sunday, saying the suggestion that the SDF remain one bloc "is not right."

The former opposition fighters now in power in Damascus have said they want all armed groups to integrate into Syria's official forces, under a unified command. The SDF, when asked for comment, referred Reuters to its commander's interview.

How much autonomy Kurdish factions retain likely hinges on whether incoming US president Donald Trump continues Washington's longtime support of its Kurdish allies, according to diplomats and officials on all sides.

Trump has not spoken publicly about his intentions, including his plans for some 2,000 US troops stationed in Syria. A Trump representative did not comment.

Any deal also depends on whether Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds off on a threatened military offensive against the People's Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that spearheads the SDF alliance.

Ankara views them as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is deemed a terrorist group by both Türkiye and the US.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said this month that Syria's new authorities "should be given an opportunity to ... end the occupation and terror the YPG created", but he did not say how long Ankara would wait for it to disarm before launching an incursion.

A Turkish Foreign Ministry source said disarming armed groups and the departure of "foreign terrorist fighters" were essential for Syria's stability and territorial integrity, so the sooner this happens the better.

"We are voicing this expectation of ours in the strongest terms during our contacts with both the United States and the new administration in Damascus," the source said.

INTENSIVE TALKS

US and Turkish officials have been holding "very intensive" discussions since fighters led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, launched a lightning offensive from their northwestern stronghold that deposed Assad on Dec. 8, a senior US diplomat told Reuters.

The two countries share a "common view of where things should end up", including a belief that all foreign fighters should exit Syrian territory, the diplomat said, noting Turkish negotiators "have a very high sense of urgency" to settle things.

However, the diplomat, who like some other sources requested anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said the talks were "hugely complex" and would take time.

Parallel talks are taking place between the US and both the SDF and HTS, Türkiye and HTS, and the SDF and HTS, officials from all sides say.

Part of a stateless ethnic group straddling Iraq, Iran, Türkiye, Armenia and Syria, Kurds had been among the few winners of the Syrian conflict, gaining control over Arab-majority areas as the US partnered with them in the campaign against ISIS. They now hold nearly a quarter of the country.

But Assad's fall has left Syrian Kurdish factions on the back foot, with Türkiye-backed armed groups gaining ground in the northeast and the country's new rulers in Damascus friendly with Ankara.

Türkiye, which provided direct support to some opposition groups against Assad, has emerged as one of the most influential power brokers in Syria since his fall. Like the US, it has designated HTS a terrorist group because of its al-Qaeda past, but Ankara is believed to have significant sway over the group.

Officials on all sides worry that failure to reach a ceasefire and longer-term political accord in the northeast could destabilize Syria as it seeks to recover from a 13-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions and drew in countries including Russia, Iran and Israel.

Dozens of people in northern Syria have been reported killed since December in clashes between the Kurdish-led SDF and Türkiye’s allies, and in cross-border Turkish airstrikes.

Failure to resolve the fate of Kurdish factions in Syria could also undermine nascent efforts to end the PKK's insurgency in Türkiye.

The United Nations has warned of "dramatic consequences" for Syria and the region if a political solution is not found in the northeast.

POTENTIAL TRADE-OFFS

US support for the SDF has been a source of tension with its NATO ally, Türkiye.

Washington views the SDF as a key partner in countering ISIS, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned will try to use this period to re-establish capabilities in Syria. The SDF is still guarding tens of thousands of detainees linked to the group.

Erdogan said on Wednesday that Türkiye has the power to "crush" all terrorists in Syria, including ISIS and Kurdish militants.

Türkiye wants the management of camps and prisons where ISIS detainees are being held transferred to Syria's new rulers and has offered to help them. It has also demanded that the SDF expel all foreign fighters and senior PKK members from its territory and disarm the remaining members in a way it can verify.

Abdi, the SDF commander, has shown flexibility regarding some Turkish demands, telling Reuters last month that its foreign fighters, including PKK members, would leave Syria if Türkiye agrees to a ceasefire.

The PKK said in a statement to Reuters on Thursday that it would agree to leave if the SDF maintains control of the northeast or a significant role in joint leadership.

Such assurances are unlikely to satisfy Ankara at a time when the SDF is "trying to stay alive and autonomous" in Syria, Omer Onhon, Türkiye’s last ambassador to Damascus, told Reuters.

In Ankara on Wednesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani said the extensive US-backed SDF presence was no longer justified, and the new administration would not allow Syrian land to be a source of threats to Türkiye. Standing next to him, his Turkish counterpart, Fidan, said it was time to put anti-terror pledges into practice.

Abdi told Asharq News that he has met with Syria's de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and the two sides agreed to set up a joint military committee to decide how the SDF would integrate with the defense ministry. He described the meeting with Sharaa, who heads HTS, as positive.

Abu Qasra, the defense minister, accused SDF leaders on Sunday of "procrastinating" on the issue, saying "consolidation of all areas under the new administration ... is a right of the Syrian state."

The new leadership believes that allowing SDF fighters to continue operating as a bloc would "risk destabilization, including a coup", a ministry official told Reuters.

Abdi argued that a decentralized administration would not threaten Syria's unity, saying the SDF is not demanding the kind of federalism introduced in Iraq, where Kurds have their own regional government.

Some Syrian officials and diplomats say the SDF will likely need to relinquish control of significant territory and oil revenues, gained during the war, as part of any political settlement.

In return, Kurdish factions could be granted protections for their language and culture within a decentralized political structure, said Bassam al-Kuwatli, president of the small Syrian Liberal Party, which supports minority rights but is not involved in the talks.

A senior Syrian Kurdish source acknowledged that some such trade-offs would likely be needed but did not elaborate.

Abdi told Asharq News that the SDF was open to handing over responsibility for oil resources to the new administration, provided the wealth was distributed fairly to all provinces.

Washington has called for a "managed transition" of the SDF's role.

The US diplomat said Assad's ouster opens the door for Washington to eventually consider withdrawing its troops from Syria, though much depends on whether trusted forces like its Kurdish allies remain engaged in efforts to counter any ISIS resurgence.

Trump's return to the White House on Monday has raised hopes in Türkiye of a favorable deal, given the rapport he established with Erdogan during his first term.

Trump has spoken approvingly about Erdogan's role in Syria, calling him a "very smart guy", and said Türkiye would "hold the key" to what happens there.

"The Americans won't abandon (the SDF)," said Onhon, Türkiye’s former ambassador. "But the arrival of someone as unpredictable as Trump must worry them in a way too."

A train station in Damascus was once the pride of the Syrian capital, an essential link between Europe and the Arabian Peninsula during the Ottoman Empire and then a national transit hub. But more than a decade of war left it a wasteland of bullet-scarred walls and twisted steel.

The Qadam station's remaining staff say they still have an attachment to the railway and hope that it, like the country, can be revived after the swift and stunning downfall of leader Bashar Assad last month.

On a recent day, train operator Mazen Malla led The Associated Press through the landscape of charred train cars and workshops damaged by artillery fire. Bullet casings littered the ground.

Malla grew up near the station. His father, uncles and grandfather all worked there. Eventually he was driving trains himself, spending more than 12 hours a day at work.

“The train is a part of us," he said with a deep, nostalgic sigh, as he picked up what appeared to be a spent artillery shell and tossed it aside. “I wouldn’t see my kids as much as I would see the train.”

The Qadam station was the workhorse of the iconic Hejaz Railway that was built under the Ottoman Empire’s Sultan Abdulhamid II in the early 1900s, linking Muslim pilgrims from Europe and Asia via what is now Türkiye to the holy city of Madinah in Saudi Arabia.

That glory was short-lived. The railway soon became in an armed uprising during World War I backed by Britain, France and other Allied forces that eventually took down the Ottoman Empire.

In the following decades, Syria used its section of the railway to transport people between Damascus and its second city of Aleppo, along with several towns and neighboring Jordan. While the main station, still intact a few miles away, later became a historical site and events hall, Qadam remained the busy home of the workshops and people making the railway run.

As train cars were upgraded, the old wooden ones were placed in a museum. The Qadam station, however, retained its structure of Ottoman stone and French bricks from Marseille.

But war tore it apart after Assad's crackdown on protesters demanding greater freedoms.

“The army turned this into a military base,” Malla said. Workers like him were sent away.

Qadam station was too strategic for soldiers to ignore. It gave Assad's forces a vantage point on key opposition strongholds in Damascus. Up a flight of stairs, an office became a sniper's nest.

The nearby neighborhood of Al-Assali is now mostly in ruins after becoming a no man’s land between the station and the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk that became an opposition stronghold and was besieged and bombarded for years by government forces.

The fighting entered the railway station at least once, in 2013. Footage widely circulated online showed opposition firing assault rifles and taking cover behind trains.

Malla and his family fled their home near the station to a nearby neighborhood. He heard the fighting but prayed that the station that had long been his family's livelihood would be left unscathed.

Assad's forces cleared the opposition from Damascus in 2018. The train station, though badly wrecked, was opened again, briefly, as a symbol of triumph and revival. Syrian state media reported that trains would take passengers to the annual Damascus International Fair. It broadcast images of happy passengers by the entrance and at the destination, but not of the station's vast damage.

Syria’s railway never returned to its former prosperity under Assad, and Malla stayed away as the military maintained control of much of Qadam. After Assad was ousted and the factions who forced him out became the interim administration, Malla returned.

He found his home destroyed. The station, which he described as “part of my soul,” was badly damaged.

“What we saw was tragic,” he said. "It was unbelievable. It was heartbreaking.”

The train cars were battered and burned. Some were piles of scrap. The museum had been looted and the old trains had been stripped for sale on Syria’s black market.

“Everything was stolen. Copper, electric cables and tools — they were all gone,” Malla said.

The trains' distinctive wooden panels had disappeared. Malla and others believe that Assad's fighters used them as firewood during the harsh winters.

In the former no man's land, packs of stray dogs barked and searched for food. Railway workers and families living at the train station say an urban legend spread that the dogs ate the bodies of captives that Assad’s notorious web of intelligence agencies killed and dumped late at night.

Now Malla and others hope the railway can be cleared of its rubble and its dark past and become a central part of Syria's economic revival after war and international isolation. They dream of the railway helping to return the country to its former status as a key link between Europe and the Middle East.

There is much work to be done. About 90% of Syria's population of over 23 million people live in poverty, according to the United Nations. Infrastructure is widely damaged. Western sanctions, imposed during the war, continue.

But already, neighboring Türkiye has expressed interest in restoring the railway line to Damascus as part of efforts to boost trade and investment.

That prospect excites Malla, whose son Malek spent much of his teenage years surviving the war. At his age, his father and uncle were already learning how to operate a steam engine.

“I hope there will soon be job opportunities, so my son can be employed,” Malla said. “That way he can revive the lineage of his grandfather, and the grandfather of his grandfather."

Negotiators Zero in on Potential Deal to Disarm Syria’s Last Battleground