I recently met Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa with a small group of journalists and scholars at the People’s Palace in Damascus. The conversation lasted more than two hours and spanned sectarian conflict and reconstruction, Israel and Turkey, Russia and the U.S., the Islamic State, and the restive northeast. But what stuck with me was much simpler. The most urgent question for Syria’s stability after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad 10 months ago has shifted from who rules Damascus to how Syrians share power beyond it.
Just this week, deadly clashes erupted between the Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces in Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh. A ceasefire followed with quiet help from U.S. and Turkish interlocutors, but the clash is a warning of how fast Syria could slide back into war.
The Kurds deserve credit as the bloc that first forced the conversation in Damascus toward decentralization and wider representation. They pushed Damascus to speak the language of devolved powers in an ethnically and religiously diverse country. But that change is now at risk because factions within the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) think time is on their side again. Many Kurds think that if the SDF holds the fort just a little longer, it can deliver a better bargain or even a new, friendlier regime in Damascus.
The early promise of a Kurdish deal
Things had been looking up until recently. On March 10, with a blend of American mediation and pressure, the SDF’s leader Mazloum Abdi accepted a year-end deadline to fold SDF forces into Syrian state structures. A framework agreement, signed by both Abdi and Sharaa, was hailed by supporters on both sides as a workable formula to avoid what many saw as inevitable violence in the diverse eastern region. The deal was soon followed by Kurdish Nowruz cultural celebrations in the Syrian capital, unprecedented in more than half a century of Assad rule.
During our meeting, Sharaa revealed that Turkey had planned to launch a military operation to expel the Kurds from the northeast after the Assad regime fell on Dec. 8. Turkey, a key backer of the operation that toppled Assad, views a Kurdish government in the northeast as a national security threat, as it could inspire similar demands by its own Kurds and fuel insurgency along the borders. Sharaa said he halted the operation and proposed achieving the same objective through dialogue.
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Sharaa’s thinking, his aides told me, is guided by a sense of both danger and opportunity. A forced takeover of the Kurdish-held zone, even if quick, could fuel a long insurgency Syria can do without. He has resisted that path when pressed by supporters demanding a decisive and rapid victory. He also sees Kurdish reintegration as a counterweight within his own system, where hardline Islamists may oppose his views.
The two sides began negotiating specifics after the deal in March. Damascus insisted on rebranding the SDF, retraining, and integrating it under a national chain of command. Kurdish negotiators have presented practical questions, including what happens to the 12,000 female fighters currently within the SDF? How are they reintegrated into an army dominated by men long accused of abuses against Kurdish women?
According to an informed Kurdish source, the only cultural concession Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani was willing to offer was a mere three hours of after-school Kurdish language instruction. Damascus offered the SDF’s Deputy Defense Minister and cabinet seats. Kurdish negotiators countered that titles without real budgets and oversight are ceremonial unless enshrined in constitutional provisions.
Damascus also accuses the Kurds of stalling by demanding lengthy engagements on every detail, an impossible task during a postwar transition. Sharaa has proposed the Assad-era Law 107 as a legal framework for decentralization, which he said would accomplish “about 90% self-governance” for the Kurds.
There were other obstacles from the start. Damascus issued a constitutional declaration days after the March 10 deal that emboldened hard-liners and weakened Abdi’s position, reaffirming the state’s name as the “Syrian Arab Republic” and stipulating that the President must be Muslim and that Islamic jurisprudence is the principal source of legislation—core sticking points for the more secular Kurds.
But the most serious blow to the talks came in July. Following a deadly and failed bid by Damascus to take over the Druze stronghold of Sweida in southern Syria, Abdi refused to go to Paris for talks planned that month, telling confidants he did not want to attach his name to a regime he thought might collapse. I was privy to multiple reports, circulating within prominent Syrian circles critical of Sharaa, that Israel and the UAE had information that Sharaa would not last beyond the end of the year or, at the latest, mid-2026. An independent Damascus source said Israel had communicated the same message to Druze and Kurdish factions in the summer. This forecast, he said, was seen as an invitation to wait.
There was also a growing feeling that a few more mistakes in Sweida and in coastal Latakia, where Syrian forces massacred Alawites in early March, and the world could turn against the new President. Notable criticisms or calls for change from Sharaa’s Sunni base emerged such as Syrian tycoon Ayman al-Asfari, who was among dozens of signatories on a July 23 statement demanding an inclusive government and new constitution.
In the northeast, the SDF chaired a conference on Aug. 8 that drew in Druze leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajari by video, Alawite figures, including members of the former Assad regime, and an array of Arab tribal figures. Damascus called it separatist theater and froze the Paris track. Around the same time, Israeli strikes on Damascus and continued clashes in Sweida hardened the idea, inside parts of the Kurdish movement, that the center could break.
Momentum for talks resumed after Sharaa’s historic visit to the U.S. in late September to address the U.N. General Assembly, with a renewed sense that he was here to stay, and amid chatter of a security pact between Syria and Israel. The SDF have since reaffirmed their seriousness about reintegrating with Damascus, a clear departure from their post-Sweida rhetoric. Ilham Ahmad, a senior SDF official, is prepared to relocate to the capital for daily talks, according to sources close to her.
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Meanwhile, Ankara and Damascus have signaled their patience is running out, and that failure to reintegrate by the deadline will provide cover for military action. Already, according to a well-placed Turkish source, Ankara disliked the long, 10-month horizon in March.
Sharaa was blunt in our meeting: “The northeast is a national security issue for Turkey,” he said. “They won’t accept the status quo.” The only time I noticed he was irritated in the meeting was when he followed that sentence with urging the SDF to use the opening, as if to say their time was running out. He called the foot-dragging “militia thinking,” which he said he recognized from experience during his wartime days as the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Militia leaders, he said, do not recognize the wider reality around them and struggle to take a decisive decision as they try to manage internal factionalism.
What comes next?
The SDF still has a choice to push the conversation forward. They can use the alliances they forged in the fight against Islamic State to press for decentralization, by codifying what was won in principle through an amended Law 107, a policy many Syrians beyond the Kurdish areas support. Or they can hold out to see if Sharaa remains in power. The latter course could lead to renewed violence and is counterproductive, as Turkey, Syria, and the U.S. for the first time now all agree that the northeast should return to Damascus’s control.
The risks should not be understated. Eastern Syria is where risks of ethnic tension, tribal mobilization, and jihadist resurgence converge, if talks fail. In my conversations with Arab constituents there, it is clear many are itching for war and do not prefer a settlement that keeps Kurds in government, even if not in power. “Only Sharaa is holding us back now,” one tribal notable told me recently. War would also mean no deliberate, orderly transfer of some 12,000 Islamic State detainees from Kurdish to Syrian state prisons.
A flawed but peaceful compromise spares the region new bloodshed and insurgency, and pushes Syria toward a less centralized form of governance. It hinges on inclusive thinking from Damascus, and, crucially, realistic adjustments from Kurdish leaders.
Let us hope, for all involved, that cooler heads prevail.
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