Syria and the main Kurdish fighting force struck a wide-ranging deal to bring Kurdish civilian and military authorities under central government control yesterday, ending days of fighting in which Syrian troops captured territory including key oil fields.
US envoy Tom Barrack hailed a “pivotal inflection point”, but noted that there was still challenging work to be done to finalise details of a comprehensive integration deal.
The terms of the deal appeared to be a major blow for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which ran a semi-autonomous region in Syria’s northeast for more than a decade.
The 14-point deal published by Syria’s presidency featured the signatures of both Syrian President Ahmed Al Sharaa and SDF head Mazloum Abdi, who appeared to have signed separately and are set to meet in Damascus today, state media reported.
Syria’s government and the SDF engaged in months of talks last year to bring Kurdish-run military and civilian bodies under Syrian state institutions by the end of 2025.
Yesterday’s agreement said the clashes should end, although intermittent fighting was still reported in some areas.
The deal stipulates that all SDF forces will be merged into the central defence and interior ministries as “individuals” and not as whole Kurdish units. The latter had been a SDF demand.
It also says all border crossings, gas and oil fields and prisons and camps holding Islamic State fighters and affiliated civilians captured after the group’s defeat in 2017 would be handed over, another point the SDF had long resisted.
The government will formally take over two Arab-majority provinces from the SDF – Deir Al Zor, the country’s main oil- and wheat-producing area, and Raqqa, home to key hydroelectric dams along the Euphrates. The deal did appear to offer some concessions.
It said the SDF could nominate military and civilian figures to assume key roles in the central government and that Hasakeh province, which has a sizeable Kurdish population and is the main stronghold of the SDF, would have a governor appointed by consensus.
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