Syria’s government said it has reached a deal to integrate a Kurdish-dominated armed faction into state institutions, a significant breakthrough for the interim administration as it seeks to extend its control over the fractured country.
The fate of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is estimated to have more than 60,000 fighters on its payroll and controls a swath of the country’s north-east, was one of the critical challenges to the new authorities’ efforts to unify the Arab nation and its security forces.
The deal, signed after a meeting on Monday between interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa and SDF leader Mazloum Abdi, calls for a nationwide ceasefire and the merging of the US-backed SDF’s civil and military wings into the state, a Syrian presidency statement said.
If the agreement holds, it would bring a bigger area of Syria under the control of Sharaa’s government, including vital oil and gasfields in the north-east, as well as border crossings. The deal should also reduce the risk of more violence and ease a long-festering point of friction between Turkey and the US.
Since leading the rebel offensive that toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad in December, Sharaa has been working to convince numerous armed factions to merge into a national security force. But the nation’s fragility was underscored by days of sectarian violence last week that was triggered by attacks on government security forces by Assad loyalists.
Hundreds of people, mostly civilians, were killed in the violence around the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous, home to many from the Alawite sect, to which the Assads belong.
The SDF has controlled a tract of the north-east for years, where it has been armed and trained by the US after Washington identified it as its main local partner in the fight against Isis.
The Kurdish-dominated movement exploited the chaos of Syria’s civil war to take control of about 20 per cent of the Arab nation. But its presence on the border region with Turkey has long riled Ankara, which considers the militants as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a separatist group that has fought a four-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.
Turkey has launched at least three offensives into Syria since 2016 to push the SDF back from its borders, and armed and trained Syrian factions to counter the Kurdish militants.
After the fall of Assad, Turkey — which has emerged as the most influential foreign actor in Syria — insisted that the SDF disband and that its non-Syrian fighters leave the country, or face the threat of further military offensives.
The Turkish-backed Syrian factions, which are allied to Sharaa’s government, clashed with the SDF in the north following the collapse of the Assad regime late last year.
The SDF’s agreement should also ease western concerns about Isis seeking to exploit the security vacuum to mount a resurgence of jihadi activity.
The SDF runs prisons and camps holding tens of thousands of Isis fighters and their families, and concerns grew among western officials about the security of the facilities if the Kurdish-led militants became involved in more fighting.
The announcement of the agreement between Sharaa and the SDF comes 10 days after Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK’s imprisoned founder, issued a statement calling for his group to disband and lay down their arms.
The terms of the deal are meant to be implemented by the end of the year.