Syria’s new government strikes deal to integrate powerful Kurdish rival in landmark agreement

By Eyad Kourdi and Kareem El Damanhoury, CNN

(CNN) — Syria’s interim government says it has reached a landmark agreement with Kurdish-led forces to integrate them into state institutions as it tries to unify the country’s diverse communities after a decade of civil war.

Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa announced the deal on Monday, saying the agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is aimed at “ensuring the rights of all Syrians in representation and participation in the political process and all state institutions based on competence, regardless of their religious and ethnic backgrounds.”

The agreement marks a significant victory for Sharaa, who has been working to mend Syria’s divisions. It comes in the wake of the deadliest violence the country has seen since Assad’s fall late last year, with over 700 killed in weekend clashes between government loyalists and minority Alawites.

As part of his broader push to consolidate control, Sharaa has called on all armed factions, including Kurdish forces, to integrate into the national army. The People’s Protection Units (YPG), a key faction within the SDF, had pushed for the creation of special units within the military as a condition for joining, but Sharaa rejected the demand.

The deal will formally recognize Syria’s Kurdish community as an integral part of the state, granting citizenship to tens of thousands who were previously denied it under the Assad regime’s decades-long rule.

“We consider this agreement a real opportunity to build a new Syria that embraces all its components and ensures good neighborliness,” SDF General Commander Mazloum Abdi said in a statement on X.

It remains unclear how the SDF’s integration into Syria’s state institutions will take shape, said Natasha Hall, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, adding that deal’s terms align with SDF’s earlier demands – previosly rejected by Sharaa.

“Right now, the SDF is allowed to hold on to its weapons and basically maintain the same structure that it did in the northeast. So that could lead to further fragmentation in the future.”

It also comes nearly two weeks after Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Öcalan called on his followers in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to lay down their arms and dissolve the group, potentially ending a decades-long conflict with Turkey that has claimed at least 40,000 lives and impacting Kurdish militancy across the region.

Turkey claims that the YPG, which forms the backbone of the SDF, is part of the PKK.

After Öcalan’s call late last month, the SDF’s Abdi said that the call to lay down arms “was for the PKK guerrillas and not about us here in northeast Syria.”

But a YPG spokesperson, in a statement to CNN, praised Öcalan’s “historic message” as one that “serves (the interests) of all the people in the region; the Kurdish people, the Turks, the Armenians, and all other communities living in the Middle East.”

Trump’s ‘America First’ policy

Crowds gathered across the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Tartus, Deir Ezzor and Hasaka to celebrate Monday’s agreement between Sharaa and Abdi. Fireworks lit up the sky over the landmark Aleppo Citadel in the early hours of Tuesday.

The move comes amid the worst violence the country has seen in years as security forces and allied militants fought minority Alwatite Syrians and Assad loyalists. The killings in the former ruler’s heartland have killed at least 779 people since last Thursday, including scores of civilians, according to a war monitor.

Hall said Sharaa is reeling from the weekend’s violence and needs manpower to secure the area. He is also likely to be looking for wins with the international community, knowing that Kurds have good international relations, “including the United States and even perhaps Israel,” she said. “He’s playing a strategic game by signing the agreement.”

The deal between Syria’s interim government and the SDF guarantees the Kurdish-led group’s support to the Syrian state in combatting Assad regime remnants and any other threats to the country’s security and unity.

The SDF, which was not part of the rebel alliance that overthrew Assad, is presently the most powerful non-governmental force in the country and holds strategic territories, primarily in the northeast.

Under the new deal, those areas would come under the control of the central government, including border crossings, airports, and oil and gas fields. Meanwhile, a ceasefire would go into effect across Syria and displaced Syrians would return to their homes.

Executive committees have been tasked with making sure the agreement is implemented by the end of the year.

While the US-backed SDF has been a key US partner in the fight against ISIS, it is largely made up of fighters from the YPG, which is considered a terrorist organization by neighboring Turkey.

In 2019, several months after the SDF liberated the town of Baghouz, ISIS’s final stronghold in the country, US President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of the remaining US troops from northern Syria – a move that paralyzed the fight against ISIS and ceded US and Kurdish battlefield gains to Moscow and Damascus.

Five years later, after returning to the White House, Trump has doubled down on his “America First” stance, arguing that Syria is not the US’ fight.

“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in December as opposition forces closed in on Damascus, urging a hands-off approach.

In the days following Assad’s ousting, the SDF repeatedly clashed with Turkish-backed militants, raising concerns among US officials and experts about the security of the more than 20 detention facilities and camps holding suspected ISIS members and their families in northern Syria.

The SDF later relocated ISIS detainees to more secure detention facilities because the prisons were threatened.

Turkey and other neighbors including Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon have all offered to help secure prisons holding ISIS suspects.

CNN has reached out to the SDF and the Syrian government for comment on how the deal would affect the detention facilities.

This story has been updated with additional information. CNN’s Michael Rios and Mostafa Salem contributed reporting.

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