Integration Agreement between the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian Government

The Syrian Government reached an agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) for integration late last month, in a major step toward national reconciliation after the fall of the tyrannical Baathist Assad regime in December 2024, which had ruled for over half a century, and the Syrian Civil War, which started in 2011 and killed over half a million people and displaced millions. Iran, its Lebanese Shi’ite sponsored terrorists Hezbollah, and the Russian Federation had backed Bashar Assad, while the United States had supported the SDF, which focused mostly on combatting the Islamist terrorist organizations, al-Qaeda and its offshoot, the Islamic State. Al Qaeda had been responsible for the deadliest terrorist attack in history, the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks against America that killed nearly 3,000 people. The U.S. led an international coalition to take away the Islamic State’s territory in Syria and Iraq, over which it had claimed a caliphate, but both al-Qaeda and the I.S. remain a threat throughout the Islamic World. The SDF is led by Kurds, but includes Armenian Christians and others, and governed northeastern Syria autonomously, although the new Syrian Government, which took power in 2004 after having been backed by Turkey, had seized some of the SDF’s territory. The SDF had been entrusted with I.S. prisoners, some of whom escaped during the clashes, who will be turned over to the Syrian Government. In the new agreement, brokered by the U.S. and guaranteed by both it and Syria’s former colonial power, France, Syrian Government forces will patrol in the Kurdish-ruled provinces, alongside provincial Kurdish forces, while SDF forces will form units in the Syrian Army while Kurdish provincial civil servants would be integrated into the state civil service. Kurdish civil and educational rights would be guaranteed by the agreement and displaced Kurds would enjoy the right to return to their territory. The integration agreement came after a truce and a decree by the Syrian Government recognizing the Kurdish language as official, along with Arabic, recognizing a Kurdish holiday as a national holiday, and annulling old laws that had stripped many Kurds of citizenship. Syria has multiple religious and ethnic minorities that the Syrian Government must respect and integrate for the sake of peace and national unity, as it has promised to do. After renouncing terrorism and dismantling Syria’s state-run drug production and trafficking operation, the U.S. and its allies have dropped economic sanctions on Syria. The U.S. must demonstrate gratitude and loyalty to its SDF and Kurdish allies by guaranteeing the success of the integration agreement between Damascus and the SDF.