Syria Moves to End Kurdish Self-Rule in Northeast Under Damascus Integration Deal

A flag returns to Qamishli

On a recent morning in the northeastern city of Qamishli, streets that once bustled with Kurdish security forces and local administration workers were nearly empty. Under a daylong curfew declared by their own authorities, residents watched from balconies as convoys of Syria’s Interior Ministry police rolled past shuttered shops and toward government buildings that, for more than a decade, had answered to a separate power.

By the end of that first week of February, the red, white and black Syrian flag flew again over key offices in Qamishli and nearby Hasakah. The change followed a landmark agreement announced in Damascus on Jan. 30 that turned a fragile cease-fire between the Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces into what both sides called a “permanent truce” and laid out plans to fold Kurdish military and civil institutions into the state.

The deal effectively ends the system of de facto Kurdish self-rule that has governed much of northeast Syria since 2012. It also marks a turning point for the country’s new leadership under transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who rose to power from the ranks of Islamist insurgents after the fall of Bashar Assad, and for the United States, which spent nearly a decade relying on the SDF as its main local ally against the Islamic State group.

What the agreement does

Under the agreement:

• SDF fighters are to be absorbed into newly created brigades in the Syrian army.
• Kurdish-run security forces are being placed under the Interior Ministry.
• The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) is to see its parallel ministries dissolved or merged into those of the central government.

In return, officials in Damascus have pledged to guarantee Kurdish “civil and educational rights,” to recognize the Kurdish language in schools and public life, and to keep local staff in their jobs as state employees.

The accord was announced after weeks of intense fighting and diplomacy that left the once-mighty SDF with control over only a handful of Kurdish-majority enclaves along the Turkish border.

A U.S.-backed force under pressure

The SDF, a multiethnic coalition dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), took shape in 2015 with American support as the main ground component of the international campaign to dismantle the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate. At its height, the force and its civilian arm, the AANES, controlled roughly a quarter of Syria’s territory, including major oil and gas fields, strategic dams and fertile farmland east of the Euphrates River.

That map changed rapidly in early January. After months of stalled negotiations over integrating the northeast into the post-Assad order, government forces loyal to al-Sharaa launched a sweeping offensive on Jan. 6 and 7. Backed by artillery and airstrikes, they pushed SDF units out of the cities of Raqqa and Deir el-Zour and from much of the countryside around Aleppo, as well as from key energy infrastructure.

Government media declared “full control” over large swaths of the northeast and claimed victory over what officials in Damascus and Ankara both describe as “separatist” Kurdish structures. Western reporters who visited recaptured towns described neighborhoods damaged by shelling and residents expressing relief at the halt in fighting but concern about who would control their streets next.

By mid-January, Syrian troops were on the outskirts of Hasakah and Qamishli, raising fears of urban warfare in heavily populated Kurdish areas. On Jan. 19, Damascus announced a cease-fire and said it had given the SDF four days to present a concrete integration plan. The truce was extended by 15 days on Jan. 24, officially to allow a U.S.-led operation to transfer thousands of Islamic State detainees from SDF-run prisons in the northeast to facilities in Iraq.

Those detainees—many of them held for years in overcrowded, makeshift prisons and camps such as al-Hol and Roj—had become a central concern for Washington. U.S. officials warned that further fighting around the facilities could lead to mass escapes and a resurgence of extremist cells.

“The security of these detention centers cannot depend on a nonstate force indefinitely,” Tom Barrack, the U.S. special envoy for Syria and ambassador to Turkey, said in an interview last month.

He argued that the SDF’s role as the “primary anti-ISIS force” had “largely expired” now that Damascus had formally joined the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and agreed to assume custody of many detainees.

Behind closed doors, U.S. and European diplomats shuttled between Syrian, Kurdish and Turkish officials to try to lock in a negotiated settlement rather than a final battle for the Kurdish-majority cities.

Terms of integration

The text made public on Jan. 30 does not grant formal autonomy or a federal status to the northeast. Instead, it sets out a unitary state framework in which local bodies in Kurdish areas operate under central authority.

Military and security

The agreement calls for SDF combat units to be regrouped into new brigades within the Syrian army. State media and Kurdish sources have both described plans for a new division composed of three SDF-origin brigades, as well as a separate brigade based in the border city of Kobani (Ain al-Arab), tied to the army’s Aleppo command.

Local Kurdish security forces, known as Asayish, and other policing entities are to be folded into the Interior Ministry. Officials in Damascus have said the current deployment of Interior Ministry units to Hasakah and Qamishli is temporary and aimed at securing key state facilities—such as civil registries, passport offices and Qamishli airport—until the integration process is complete.

Civil administration

On the civil side, the AANES’s network of councils and departments in Hasakah province and in areas of Raqqa and Deir el-Zour that shifted hands earlier are being placed under the corresponding state ministries. Local education, health and municipal employees are to be retained as civil servants, according to statements from both sides.

In a bid to ease Kurdish fears, al-Sharaa issued decrees in recent months granting full citizenship to tens of thousands of Kurds who had been classified as stateless under Assad-era policies and authorizing Kurdish-language instruction in public schools in designated areas. The Jan. 30 agreement explicitly references these steps and promises to respect Kurdish “civil and educational rights” and to prohibit discrimination based on ethnicity or religion.

Human rights groups and legal analysts note that enforcement of those pledges will depend on future legislation and on the political will of security agencies still being rebuilt from a mix of former rebels, defectors and remnants of the old state.

A transitional state with Islamist roots

Al-Sharaa, who previously led the hardline Islamist coalition Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, became the country’s de facto leader after rebel forces overran Damascus in December 2024. On Jan. 29, 2025, a transitional council named him president for a defined period and dissolved Assad-era institutions, including the Baath Party-dominated parliament and much of the old military and intelligence apparatus.

In March 2025, he signed a five-year transitional constitution that placed Islamic law at the center of the legal system while also committing to separation of powers and promising a permanent constitution within three years and national elections within five. The charter mandates the dissolution of nonstate militias and their integration into a unified national army—a process that has swept up former Islamist, nationalist and tribal factions, and now the SDF.

Al-Sharaa’s government includes many former commanders and officials from his earlier insurgent alliances alongside technocrats. Human rights organizations and some opposition politicians have accused his security services of continuing patterns of arbitrary detention and suppression of dissent, allegations officials in Damascus reject.

Mixed reactions on the ground

Initial reactions in the northeast have varied sharply along community and political lines.

Some Arab residents of former SDF-held towns have welcomed the return of state institutions, saying they hope for more reliable services and less arbitrary rule.

“We just want one authority and clear laws,” a shopkeeper in Raqqa said in a recent interview with an international broadcaster.

Many Kurds, by contrast, describe the agreement as a painful rollback of gains made since 2012, when Syrian government forces withdrew from much of the northeast and Kurdish groups began building their own administration. For years, the AANES promoted a model of decentralized governance, multiethnic councils and strong representation for women through all-female units such as the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ).

The fate of those women’s military formations and of AANES-era women’s institutions remains unclear. Syrian defense officials have said only that “all units without exception” will be subject to national command and that “appropriate roles” will be found for qualified women, without offering details.

Kurdish parties in neighboring Iraq and diaspora organizations in Europe have condemned the January offensive and the integration deal. The Kurdistan National Congress, an umbrella group based in Brussels, called it “a settlement forced under military duress” and urged Western governments not to “trade away the democratic achievements of North and East Syria.”

Turkey, which views the SDF and YPG as extensions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has publicly welcomed the developments. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan praised the agreement as “a critical step toward restoring Syria’s territorial integrity” and warned that “anyone who seeks to sabotage it will be buried under their own rubble,” in comments widely interpreted as directed at potential Kurdish hardliners.

An uncertain future

For Damascus, the Jan. 30 agreement is being presented as a milestone in reasserting sovereignty over all Syrian territory and building a single national army out of the remnants of a fragmented war. Officials have linked the integration of the northeast—and its valuable oil, gas and agricultural resources—to their calls for broader international recognition and for the lifting of remaining economic sanctions.

For Washington and European capitals, the deal represents both a short-term success and a test. It appears to have averted a destructive urban battle in Kurdish cities and may ease the burden of managing Islamic State detainees. It also deepens cooperation with a transitional leadership whose roots in jihadist factions and whose Islamist-leaning constitution generate unease among some lawmakers and rights advocates.

In Hasakah and Qamishli, the changes are most immediately visible in small details: the uniforms at checkpoints, the language on official stamps, the flags above once-autonomous institutions. Whether the promises written into the Jan. 30 text lead to durable protections for Kurdish language and culture—and whether former battlefield enemies can function inside a single chain of command—will likely determine if Syria’s northeast moves toward stability or drifts into a new phase of quiet, low-level resistance.

For now, residents are adjusting to life under a government that, for the first time in more than a decade, answers directly to Damascus. Many say their concerns are less ideological than practical: safety from reprisals, access to work and services, and some assurance that the classrooms where their children study Kurdish this year will still be open the next.