In the new Damascus, Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi found new friends for the Kurds. There, he decided to bid farewell to weapons and cast separation outside the geography of a unified Syria, not only because it is impossible, but because its price is high and its profits are small. Meanwhile, the price of integration is the weapons, whereas its profits are great, starting with a Syrian national identity that preserves the specificity of cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and spiritual groups within the state.
What the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) did is a foundational milestone in the history of the modern Kurdish struggle. This spans from the disappointment of the 1923 Lausanne Conference, through the Republic of Mahabad, to the fall of the Baathists in Syria and Iraq, along with the Turkish-Kurdish shifts in between that transformed a prisoner accused of terrorism by Ankara into a peacemaker.
The story of the SDF and Damascus is inseparable from the story of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Ankara. What Mazloum Abdi did at the Presidential Palace in Damascus was preceded virtually from prison by Abdullah Ocalan, the historical leader of the armed Kurdish struggle movement. The latter realized that the rights of his people could be secured without weapons, paving the way for the SDF to take historic and pivotal steps in their struggle history.
The Kurdish development in Syria is inseparable from what preceded it between Ankara and the PKK, extending to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the relationship with Baghdad, which in turn raises the slogan of restricting weapons to the state. Although the Peshmerga forces have a specificity granted to them by the autonomous authority in full understanding with Baghdad, the latter will assume full responsibility for Iraq's security and sovereignty after September 30, the date of the international coalition forces' withdrawal; this means protecting its Kurdish citizens from any internal attacks or external threats.
Apart from the Iranian-Kurdish deadlock, the Kurdish shifts in Iraq, Türkiye, and Syria are the result of long paths of armed struggle and harsh diplomacy, alongside Kurdish persistence on rights and survival. These factors ultimately led to integration options, following general and realistic Kurdish convictions regarding the impossibility of partition or secession. Consequently, options short of the state, above it at times, or parallel to it at other times, collapsed.
Therefore, states and armed groups have moved toward applying the principle of restricting weapons to the state, which marks the end of decades of crises and conflicts fueled by regional countries that built their presence and influence in this region outside the authority of the state.
The Iranian crescent, which dominated Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, and supported all separatist and insurgent groups within what it considered an Iranian vital sphere exaggerated in its extension and borders, is weakening in favor of the crescent of stability toward which the countries and peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean and their vital and natural extensions, from Ankara to Riyadh, are heading.
The "crescent of crises" is a geo-strategic metaphor from the veteran American politician Zbigniew Brzezinski, used when he planned to encircle the Soviet Union with countries experiencing crises and turmoil, which is exactly what Tehran practiced for several decades in its periphery, not only to achieve its influence, but to protect its regime from within. With the beginning of the end of this crescent, it is supposed to become convinced of the failure of the experience and its reflection on its interior and on its remaining followers in the region.
Accordingly, restricting weapons will not remain exclusive to the Kurds of Syria, but will be applied to all armed groups within the country and its surroundings; a word to the wise is enough.
