The US has renewed pressure on Kurds in Syria to accelerate their integration into the government, sources have said, as Washington returns to other regional issues following its deal with Iran to halt hostilities.
The Syrian government led by former Al Qaeda leader Ahmad Al Shara, who quickly befriended Washington, has shifted regional dynamics against Iran and its proxies. However, US support has lessened for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), its majority-Kurdish ally during most of Syria’s 2011 to 2024 civil war, as it normalised ties with Damascus.
SDF chief Mazloum Abdi met Tom Barrack, US envoy and President Donald Trump’s confidant, in Erbil on Tuesday. They discussed implementing an American-brokered deal declared in late January that halted fighting in eastern Syria between government troops and the SDF.
A Syrian source with contacts in the SDF said the Iran agreement had allowed the US to return to “issues still hanging between” the Kurdish armed group and the central government. The main points of contention are the relinquishment of the remaining SDF-held territory in Hasakah governorate, the fate of thousands of SDF fighters who have not joined or were not admitted to the national army, a share for Kurds in the administration, and a de facto allocation of oil revenue. A significant proportion of Syria’s oilfields are in Hasakah.
“The US considers it mission accomplished as far as the Kurds, who realise that they have no other outside supporters and have to submit to Damascus, [are concerned],” the source said. However, the US still funds the SDF, after spending more than one billion dollars to train and arm the group since setting it up in 2015 as the ground component in the war against ISIS in Syria.
Attending the meeting in Erbil was Nechirvan Barzani, the president of the autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq and nephew of Kurdish statesman Masoud Barzani. The elder Mr Barzani has sought to protect Syria’s Kurds from mass violence that befell other minorities after the civil war, particularly Arab tribes in eastern Syria with grievances against the SDF, whose members participated last year in a government military campaign against a Druze area in southern Syria.
Under American pressure, the secular SDF relinquished most of its vast territorial acquisitions in Syria and retreated to Kurdish population concentrations in the north-east at the start of this year. The acquisitions supported by the US had put the SDF in control of areas along the ancient Euphrates Valley that account for most of Syria’s oil, gas, commodities and power output, although most of these areas are majority-Arab.
However, in late 2024, the regime of Bashar Al Assad fell and the US started supporting the government in Damascus, counting it as a counter-terrorism partner, instead of solely relying on the SDF.
The January deal committed the SDF to submit to the new regime, led by Islamists who had toppled the Assad regime. However, ties between the new order and minority groups, mainly Alawites and Druze, have been marred by violence.
Mr Abdi said that the meeting on Tuesday discussed bringing the SDF into the regular security forces and strengthening the “political process and stability”.
He called for “a comprehensive political solution in Syria that ensures the participation of all components in the government and in shaping the country’s future.”
A Syrian politician who operates in the north-east said the SDF’s resistance to full integration was partly because the authorities had insisted on dispersing SDF members in units throughout Syria once they enter the army, not keeping them concentrated in the north-east, where they could help to protect their communities. Another issue that has frustrated the Kurds has been a mostly ceremonial role for a new Kurdish governor of Hasakah, with the real power in the hands of his Arab deputy, the politician said.
However, an SDF contingent was recently sent to Damascus to co-ordinate counter-terrorism work with the new military, he said. Another sign of progress has been the opening of government-controlled roads to Kurdish areas and the return of thousands of displaced Kurds to their homes in areas close to the Turkish border.
The SDF has positioned itself as the defender of the Kurdish community since the civil war, although Syria’s one million Kurds are not cohesive, and some do not support the militia.
A Kurdish source said that senior cadres in the SDF expect more US pressure in the coming weeks, because the US is starting to consider the new order an ally in any potential moves against Iran’s proxies in Iraq, as well as in Lebanon.
The lull in the confrontation with Iran is allowing the US to “rearrange its cards in the region”. The source expected the American repositions to undermine not just Syria’s Kurds, but also Iraqi Kurds who were reluctant to act as a proxy to the US in the Iran war. “They have learnt from what happened to the SDF,” the source added.
