Abdi Declares the SDF Integration Into the Syrian State Complete

When Bashar Al Assad’s regime collapsed in late 2024, many feared his downfall would mark the end of unified Syria, a scenario Assad himself sought to push during the years of the civil war. While Syria remains divided by the Israeli occupation of its Southern territories, one of the greatest obstacles to unifying the country seems to be dissolving over the past couple of weeks.

Mazloum Abdi, the leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-Arab formation that has controlled the North-Eastern corner of the country for the past several years, has recently announced the completion of the SDF’s military and administrative integration into Syria’s state institutions. The move follows the agreement the two parties reached in January this year, which built on an earlier framework signed in March 2025 that was never implemented.

Abdi said that the integration would take place while preserving the forces’ “special nature,” noting that, across territories previously administered by the Autonomous Administration, new institutions are now being established under the Syrian state, while existing institutions will continue to function.

He also reaffirmed that Kurdish rights would be formally enshrined in the constitution, alongside political representation for the Kurdish population.

Abdi also expressed optimism that the emerging political framework could eventually help undo what he described as divisions deliberately cultivated by the Baathist regime, which, in his words, sought to “change the region’s demography” and “ban languages and identities.”

Over the past 11 years, the SDF has established itself as one of the most organised and militarily capable forces in Syria, becoming a central actor in the campaign against ISIS and playing a major role in its territorial defeat.

Following Assad’s fall in late 2024, one of the defining questions of Syria’s transition has been whether the new state would succeed in launching a constructive dialogue with the SDF, navigating a roadmap of gradual integration and re-unification of the country, or whether its failure in doing so would result in a territorial war that extends the course of the civil war for millions of Syrians who live in SDF-controlled territories.

Abdi’s latest remarks suggest that the process is continuing to move towards full integration. Yet the language of integration leaves several questions open, particularly around what preserving the SDF’s “special nature” will mean in practice, how its existing structures will be incorporated into the state, and how Kurdish political and cultural rights will ultimately be codified in the constitution.

For the Kurdish population of Syria, the stakes are particularly significant. Across decades of Baathist rule in both Syria and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Kurdish populations were subjected to policies of discrimination, cultural suppression and attempts to weaken or reshape their political and demographic presence.

In Syria, this included restrictions on Kurdish language, music, celebrations, and identity, alongside broader efforts to Arabise Kurdish-majority areas. The collapse of the Baathist order therefore presents a consequential break from a political system that repeatedly treated Kurdish identity as an outsider thread instead of a natural, internal component of Syrian identity.

While the dialogue between the interim Syrian government and the SDF eventually produced this integration, the road to it was anything but smooth. It passed through repeated breakdowns in negotiations, bloody clashes, and a January 2026 government offensive that seized roughly 80 percent of SDF-held territory and left the Kurdish-led forces accepting integration on Damascus’s terms.

Israel, for its part, has made no secret of its preference for a divided, weakened Syria, and was whispered to be a big supported of a Kurdish uprising leading to a sovereign state. Yet when Damascus moved against the SDF, Israel stayed on the sidelines, while the decisive external hand belonged instead to the U.S., the SDF’s most vital ally, which sided with Damascus while pressing for full integration and a strong, unified state.

However, until today, several SDF leaders, including those who have been integrated into the new Ministry of Defence, like Sipan Hemo, have claimed that Israel might continue to seek to destabilize the integration arrangement, while Mahmoud Barkhodan, the SDF commander in Ain Al Arab (Kobani), said his forces were ready to deploy to the Golan, Quneitra and Daraa and fight Israel in the south if Damascus commanded them to – indicating a terminal breakdown in Israeli-Kurdish alliance-building in Syria.