ISTANBUL — Syria’s government said Sunday that it had signed a “ceasefire and full integration” agreement with a powerful Kurdish-led militia that controlled large swaths of territory in the country’s northeast — a critical step, if the agreement is implemented, toward unifying a fractured Syria after years of civil war and the precipitous fall of its dictatorship.
There was no immediate statement on the agreement from the Kurdish-led group, the Syrian Democratic Forces, a longtime military ally of the United States in the battle against the extremist Islamic State militant group. In a post on X, Tom Barrack, the U.S. envoy to Syria, hailed the agreement while saying that the “challenging work of finalizing” its details “begins now.”
The announcement late Sunday came after a day of stunning battlefield developments, with Syrian state media saying that government forces, allied tribal fighters and locals had captured key cities and towns that had been controlled for years by the SDF. Tensions between the government and the SDF had simmered for more than a year, since rebels led by Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa toppled the dictatorship of former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
Sharaa has long insisted that the SDF, which over the past decade has claimed territory and declared autonomy in a large swath of northern and eastern Syria, integrate with the new Syrian government. But a March agreement between the two sides aimed at that goal was not implemented by its deadline, at the end of last year.
The ceasefire agreement Sunday called for the “full and immediate administrative and military” handover by the SDF to the government in three provinces, as well as the surrender of Syria’s border crossings and oil and gas fields, according to a text of the deal posted by the country’s information minister — conditions that seemed to spell the end of a Kurdish proto-state that had sprung up in the chaos of Syria’s 13-year civil war.
Before the announcement, clashes between government forces and the SDF pitted two of Syria’s most powerful armed groups against each other in a long-feared confrontation that posed a dilemma for the United States, which is allied with both.
Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported Sunday that government forces had seized SDF-controlled territory in Tabqa, on the Euphrates River, a dividing line between the two forces and the site of Syria’s largest dam. The Syrian Ikhbariya news channel also reported that the SDF had been expelled from Raqqa city, after what it called a local uprising, and what it said were mass defections by SDF forces.
The city, it said, would be handed over to the Syrian government, amid reports that SDF fighters had also lost control of territory to local forces in the Deir al-Zour province, as well as several important oil fields there.
In a statement Saturday, U.S. Central Command said it was urging the Syrian government to “cease any offensive actions” between the city of Aleppo, in northern Syria and Tabqa — before Syrian media reported that government forces had taken Tabqa.
Beyond the statement, there was little sign Sunday that the Trump administration was intervening to protect its Kurdish allies, once its only Syrian partner against the Islamic State group. In recent months, though, the United States has touted Syrian government forces as a critical counterterrorism partner, as part of a broader vote of confidence in Sharaa’s government that has included the lifting of Assad-era sanctions against the country.
Sunday’s territorial losses, and the ceasefire agreement that followed, marked a stunning turn of fortune for the SDF, which received global recognition for its sacrifices fighting Islamic State militants after they seized control of large areas in Iraq and Syria beginning in 2014. The SDF received weapons and other support from the United States and remained a key ally, continuing to guard prisons holding Islamic State captives and their families.
Going forward, Syria’s government would assume “full legal and security responsibility” for the camps, Sunday’s ceasefire agreement said.
The clashes between the SDF and the government were the latest violent convulsions that have shaken the country since the fall of Assad. Since taking power, Sharaa, a former leader of a Sunni Islamist rebel faction that was once affiliated with al-Qaeda, has sent his forces to put down armed challengers in the south of the country, in the city of Sweida, and on its coast, in confrontations that have killed thousands of people.
There were signs that the government conducted its latest offensive against the SDF with more care, or at least, tried to convey that sense. After days of armed clashes between SDF and government forces in the city of Aleppo and its surrounding areas this month, Sharaa issued a decree Friday recognizing Kurdish as a national language and granting citizenship to Kurds who lost their status in Syria more than 60 years ago, among other measures.
Analysts said the government, which had gained little trust from Syria’s minorities, would have to do more to dispel minority fears. “The fact is that apolitical Kurds in northern Syria are rightfully afraid of undisciplined government forces,” Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group, wrote on X, before the ceasefire was announced.
“They have seen what happened in Sweida and in the coast and cannot take chances with their lives. While this operation has been relatively restrained, it’s on Damascus to continue reassuring Kurds there’ll be no repeat of past disasters,” she wrote.
If the SDF autonomous region was seen as a haven by many Kurds, Arab-majority areas under the group’s control chafed under its rule, complaining of heavy-handed tactics by its fighters and forced recruitment into its armed cadres. And Turkey, Syria’s northern neighbor, viewed the SDF as a threat, because of its links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which fought a long insurgency against the Turkish state.
Before the ceasefire was announced, the rapid and violent unraveling of the status quo was rattling some of Syria’s foreign backers. French President Emmanuel Macron, in a post Sunday on X, said he had spoken with Sharaa and expressed his “deep concern” at the Syrian government’s offensive.
“A permanent ceasefire is necessary, and an agreement must be reached on the integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces into the Syrian state, on the basis of the exchanges from last March. The unity and stability of Syria depend on it.”
Zakaria reported from Damascus, Syria.
The post Syria says it has reached ceasefire with U.S.-backed Kurdish militia appeared first on Washington Post.
