On March 10, Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa and the commander in chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Mazloum Abdi signed an eight-point agreement to integrate the SDF into the new Syrian administration.
The timing of the agreement with the Kurdish-dominated SDF surprised many people, and one might wonder what motivated the Kurds to sign it so soon after a localized insurgency in Syria’s coastal areas and their hinterland by supporters of the former Assad regime. This led to a brutal crackdown against the Alawite community, which included the extrajudicial killing of around 800 people. Were the Kurds motivated to sign because of the prospect that U.S. forces could soon withdraw from Syria, leaving them at the mercy of Turkish forces? Or, on the contrary, was Damascus pushed to do so, to absorb the reputational damage that followed the massacre of Alawites? Or were there other reasons?
Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, in an interview with ABC News, wondered why the Syrian regime failed to come to an agreement with the Kurds until after the dramatic events in Syria’s coastal areas. Some Syrian analysts feared that the massacre of Alawites would prevent the United States from lifting sanctions on Syria, thereby harming its economic recovery. Others took a more positive view. “This [agreement] was much-needed good news following the violence that we saw in the coastal region,” Wael Alzayat, a former Middle East policy expert at the U.S. State Department, told me. “Syrians are breathing a sigh of relief in both government- and SDF-held areas.”
Badr Mullah Rashid, director of the Raman Center for Studies, a research and consultancy center based in Istanbul, added that there had been expectations that the agreement would be announced earlier, on March 2 or 3, but “then, suddenly, the situation escalated in the coastal region.” He added, “I think both sides, along with the U.S. and some regional countries, applied pressure on the SDF and Damascus to hasten the signing of the agreement.”
So far, the Trump administration has been very distrustful of Sharaa’s government, much like Israel. U.S. sanctions on Syria have held up support by Qatar to provide financial support to the country, although on March 13 the Qataris announced that they would be able to send natural gas to Syria, via Jordan, for electricity production. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned “radical Islamist terrorists” for killing people from ethnic minorities in [the coastal areas of] western Syria. In this context, for Sharaa’s government to make a deal with the SDF, a U.S. ally, could potentially bring approval from the West, enhancing the image of the new Syrian leadership. Indeed, on March 12, Rubio praised the deal, even as he again expressed his concern over “[the] recent deadly violence against minorities.”
Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, tended to agree with this interpretation. He told me, “For the new Damascus government, it’s important not to get into a direct confrontation with the SDF, if that can be avoided. It needs constructive ties with the U.S to secure sanctions relief and would also need U.S. approval to be delisted as a terrorist faction.”
Another possible factor pushing for an agreement was the possibility that the Trump administration might pull out of Syria. Speaking at an event hosted by the Middle East Institute on March 11, Hassan Hassan, the founder of New Lines Magazine, stated that the Americans were already starting to explore scenarios for a withdrawal in September. During the first meeting between Sharaa and Abdi last December 30, an American mediator was present. “So, the Americans were involved in a deal, and mediating a deal under Biden [which they] continued through the Trump administration,” Hassan said.
At the same event, Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, noted that the “deal had essentially been on the table for weeks and had already been agreed as kind of the core architecture of agreement.” Lister also observed, “The U.S. military has been involved since day one. And the fact that we have this agreement is a result of a big push by the U.S. military.” He added that the commander of U.S. Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, was recently in northeastern Syria, amid reports that he helped push the SDF toward the deal, even if the agreement was already moving along without him.
Aaron Stein, the president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told me that “the U.S. has been pushing Mazloum to sign for quite some time now, but he was dragging his feet. I assume that with the likelihood of a U.S. withdrawal, Mazloum made the decision that now was the time to take this first step and to extend negotiations with Damascus over the future of Syria.”
There were also signs that the SDF sought a deal on its own. On February 18, SDF’s Abou Omar al-Idlibi, announced that during a meeting held between the SDF and local institutions, a decision was made to integrate the SDF into the Syrian army and set up committees to address outstanding issues, including facilitating the return of internally displaced persons, key points also part of the new agreement with Damascus. Furthermore, on February 26, Abdi had already hinted that a deal could be reached within two weeks.
However, a SDF source denied that the agreement was related to a possible U.S. withdrawal. “The U.S. has not made a decision regarding its Syria policy. Nothing is changing. The talks were going on for a long time.” As for the outbreak of violence in Syria’s coastal regions, the source noted that the timing of the agreement with the incidents on the coast “was purely coincidental.”
Last February 26, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan called on his party members to lay down their arms as part of a peace process between the PKK and the Turkish government and end their four-decade-long conflict. This process might also help improve relations between Türkiye and the SDF, which the Turks accuse of being linked to the PKK. This major development prompted the SDF source to add, “Öcalan’s letter encouraged the SDF and the Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria to speed up the process [of agreeing with Damascus]. The U.S. was pushing the same as well. So, there was no reason to wait anymore.”
Furthermore, senior Democratic Union Party (PYD) official Salih Muslim told the Türkiye newspaper that his party had been in discussions with Damascus for a long time. The PYD helped establish the People's Protection Units, the main component of the SDF. “We did not sit at the table under the direction or instruction of the U.S. or any other country.” He added, “A decision to withdraw from northern and eastern Syria could be made tomorrow. We are not making our plans based on the presence of the U.S. or the coalition.”
Samantha Teal, a researcher at the Rojava Information Center, stated that the SDF isn’t expecting the U.S. to withdraw soon. “But of course [the Kurds] know they won’t stay forever and the SDF are serious about wanting peace in Syria. They want this to be achieved so there’s no need for external forces inside the country.”
As for the motivations of the Syrian government, Charles Lister seemed to underline that it too had an interest in concluding an agreement. He remarked that the Syrian defense minister suggested that a military solution against the SDF would have required moving all Syrian military forces to the northeast, which would never have happened. So, Damascus had a reason to favor a negotiated solution, all the more so as, since December, there have been no clashes between the forces of Syria’s new leadership and the SDF.
This is a view that appears to be shared by Wael Alzayat. “I think the SDF was under pressure given the possible withdrawal of U.S. troops, but [so too was] the Syrian government, which didn’t want to be facing conflict on multiple fronts,” he concluded.
Aaron Lund hinted that despite the agreement, there may still be some outstanding problems. To him, the “deal seems very vague, and I think both Sharaa and Abdi are doing it because it is politically expedient to show some progress on this track. They do not seem to have sorted out the major sticking points, or at least there was no indication of that in the published agreement.”
Indeed, the agreement does not clarify whether northeastern Syria will be part of a more decentralized Syrian structure, or will even be autonomous, while the authorities in Damascus are known to favor centralization. It also leaves unresolved whether Kurdish rights will be enshrined in the Syrian constitution, whether the SDF will be disbanded or will be integrated as separate units in the new defense system, or how Kurdish gender equality policies will align with Syria’s legal system, influenced by Islamic law. There is also the question of who will control Syria’s oil and gas fields. All these gaps indicate the need for lengthy negotiations, even if the agreement stipulates an implementation period that concludes no later than the end of this year.
