Bridging Divides: Kurdish-Syrian Relations Shift with Historic Military Integration
Kurdish refugees wait in line to receive water (Nara and Dvids Public Domain Archive).
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed-Kurdish leftist military group, agreed to be integrated into the larger Syrian military service on March 10. The news comes from an agreement between SDF Commander Mazolum Abdi and Syria’s temporary President Ahmed al-Sharaa in order to promote cooperation and protection of Kurdish rights. The agreement serves as a crucial step in reconciling the animosity between the Kurds and the Syrian government and gaining more centralized government control across the country.
The Kurds are an Iranian ethnic minority consisting of about 30-35 million people across the states of Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Armenia. They are the fourth largest ethnic minority in the Middle East but do not have their own state due to political interests and colonial powers dividing the region, which did not carve out a space for a Kurdish homeland. The Kurds have long been subject to discrimination and violence. In 1988 Iraq carried out the Al-Anaf Campaign, which resulted in genocide against the Kurdish people. Despite their persecution and discrimination, the Kurds still retain a degree of self-control in certain regions where infrastructure and political decisions are made by the Kurds.
The SDF controls around 46,000 square kilometers in north-eastern Syria known as Syrian Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria (AANES). This region is considered autonomous, with the SDF controlling airports, prisons, and oil fields in the region. The United States partnered with the SDF during the Syrian Civil War to use local military forces to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). However, this alliance has caused significant problems for political stability and U.S. relationships in the region.
U.S. support of the SDF has led to a variety of tension within the Middle East. U.S. relationships with Syria, Iraq, and Turkey have all been strained as a result of the U.S.-Kurdish relationship, which is viewed as enabling a nationalist group and delegitimizing the central governments of each of these states. Turkey, Syria’s neighbor, has designated the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), another Kurdish military and political organization, as a terrorist organization, a group that has contributed to tension and conflict in Turkey. Syria has also long viewed the Kurds as a threat to Syrian sovereignty and power, particularly because many Kurds have advocated for an independent state. However, opponents argue that the alliance with SDF has enabled greater control in the fight against terrorism in the region and legitimized the fight for Kurdish rights, offsetting the negative impacts of the United States’ alliance.
The recent cooperation of the SDF and the new Syrian government signifies a complete change in Kurdish-Syrian relations and the United States’ strategic position in the Middle East. The integration of Kurdish and Syrian military groups will politically align the two groups and ensure there is greater cohesion regarding defense in the region. But the SDF-Syrian agreement aims to integrate “all civil and military institutions in northeastern Syria,” signifying something more than just a strategic military alliance. Rather, the incorporation of civil institutions as well shows the beginnings of both political and cultural reconciliation in Syria and an attempt at a more symbiotic coexistence, instead of a cultural enclave of Kurdish separation. This integration will also reestablish Kurdish interests within the greater political framework of the country, enabling a greater protection of Kurdish rights. This being said, Kurds will have to give up the autonomy they have largely been able to exercise in north-eastern Syria in exchange for these benefits.
Additionally, the new Syrian government’s attempt at a new era of Syrian-Kurdish coexistence is likely to improve the United States’ standing in the country and in the greater region at large, since it will no longer be such a contentious issue opposed by the Syrian government. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued public support and hailed the deal as a way to “avoid further conflict,” showing a trend of widespread international support for the deal.
Whether this new agreement will lead to significant long-term improvements for Kurds will be seen as the details of the agreement develop, but the announcement of a new era of cooperation signals a new shift and an attempt at coexistence between the Kurdish people and the Syrian government.