Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi on Thursday said the integration of the Kurdish administration within Syria’s state institutions was complete, marking the end of the Kurds’ long-held dream of autonomy.
The January agreement, signed by Abdi and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, followed clashes between Syrian Kurdish fighters and the new authorities’ forces that saw the Kurds lose swathes of territory they held in the oil-rich north and northeast. In February, Noureddine Ahmed Eissa, a Kurd from the city of Qamishli, was appointed governor of Hasakeh. In March, senior Kurdish military official Sipan Hamo was appointed regional assistant defence minister.
Amid the violence, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed on January 16 a decree enshrining the Kurds’ national rights and recognising Kurdish as a national language, an unprecedented step since Syria’s independence in 1946.
“I want to say that the phase of integrating military, security and administrative institutions into national state institutions is complete and finished,” Abdi, who heads the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said at an event in Qamishli in northeastern Syria.
As part of the deal’s implementation, government forces entered the cities of Hasakeh and Qamishli, and Damascus took over the management of Qamishli airport and key oil fields. It amassed around 100,000 fighters, according to Abdi, and was composed of Kurds and Arabs.
But Arabs within their ranks defected en masse after Sharaa’s army took control of two previously Kurdish-held provinces, Raqa and Deir Ezzor, leaving them with half the strength they had before, according to Syria specialist Fabrice Balanche.
