After weeks of on-and-off clashes, the Syrian government and a Kurdish-led militia agreed on Sunday to an immediate cease-fire and to merge the militia fully into the national military forces, according to the state media and a Kurdish official.
The Syrian government will also take over much of a semiautonomous region that has long been under Kurdish control, according to a 14-point agreement. It followed two days of significant territorial gains by the government, which took strategic assets like dams and oil fields that were held for years by the militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces.
This is not the first time that the government and the S.D.F. have reached such a deal. But this time around, the Kurds found themselves in a much weaker negotiating position after the battlefield losses.
“This looks like the end of the S.D.F.,” said Lara Nelson, the policy director at Etana Syria, a research organization.
The leaders of the Kurds, Syria’s largest ethnic minority, have long sought a degree of autonomy from the central government in Damascus. During Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, the Kurdish forces took advantage of the chaos to carve out a semiautonomous region in the northeast. They established a political administration, school system and their own laws, which they did not want to lose.
The United States has partnered with both the Syrian government and the militia. Despite months of negotiations that the United States has facilitated to bring its allies together, the S.D.F. had resisted calls to submit fully to the new government’s authority. Even after an agreement was reached last March for the militia to integrate into the national military, talks about implementing the accord stalled and sporadic clashes between the two sides broke out.
As part of the new deal, the S.D.F. agreed to hand over the northern province of Raqqa and the eastern province of Deir al Zour to full government control. That will leave only one province, northeastern Hasakah, in the militia’s hands. The government will take charge of all border crossings, and President Ahmed al-Sharaa will appoint the provincial governor.
Government institutions in the northeastern province dominated by Kurds will also come under the central government’s authority, according to the agreement, which was confirmed by Abdul Karim Omar, the head of the Kurdish region’s international relations department.
The government will also take control of Syria’s gas and oil fields, nearly all of which have been under S.D.F. control.
Damascus is also to assume complete legal and security responsibility over prisons holding more than 8,000 Islamic State members captured during the civil war and over the sprawling Al-Hol detention camp, which houses their family members. Many of them are non-Syrians.
The fate of the Al-Hol camp and the prisons has been of particular concern to the U.S.-led international coalition, which has backed the Syrian Democratic Forces for years and partnered with it to fight the Islamic State.
The tensions between the government and the S.D.F. have put the United States in a difficult position as it has tried to balance between two Syrian partners.
Large parts of the region that the militia has controlled — namely Raqqa and Deir Ezzour Provinces — are predominately Arab, and residents had long chafed under the Syrian Democratic Forces’ Kurdish administration.
“So it was really easy for the interim government forces to capitalize on the longstanding deep anger against the Kurds,” Ms. Nelson of Etana Syria said.
“This is a game changer,” she added, especially as it gives the government access to parts of Syria rich in resources, including wheat and oil.
Unlike some of the prior negotiations in which the S.D.F. would have joined the military in its own battalions, now it appears that under the agreement they will join as individuals, said Aaron Y. Zelin, who studies jihadist movements at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“It weakens the hands of the S.D.F.,” he said. “The question is more than anything of implementation; obviously, we saw with the March 10 agreement that it wasn’t really implemented. But the government now has a ton more leverage.”
In the days leading up to the agreement, Syrian government forces captured strategic towns, dams, airports and oil fields in the country’s north and east, dealing significant territorial defeats to the S.D.F.
The U.S. special envoy to Syria, Thomas J. Barrack Jr., who met with President al-Sharaa shortly before the agreement was announced, commended both sides and said in a statement on social media that the deal paved the way for renewed dialogue and cooperation.
“The challenging work of finalizing the details of a comprehensive integration agreement begins now, and the United States stands firmly behind this process at every stage,” he wrote.
Clashes broke out between the government and the militia this month in the northern city of Aleppo, and the confrontations continued to spread across the country’s north, despite short-lived interim agreements to restore calm.
On Sunday, the Syrian military captured the Euphrates Dam, one of the country’s most important water and hydroelectric facilities, according to the state news media. Energy Ministry officials told the state media that controlling the dam in Raqqa Province in the north would help the government maintain water and electricity supplies nationwide.
On Saturday, government forces captured a smaller dam, two oil fields and a military air base from the S.D.F.
The country’s energy and resource infrastructure is in shambles after the civil war, and until the latest advances, the militia controlled many of Syria’s energy resources.
For Mr. al-Sharaa’s government, the territorial gains were a boost to its efforts to consolidate control and authority over all of Syria, efforts that have been rejected by some ethnic and religious minorities.
Fighting between its two Syrian allies presented a dilemma for the United States, which remains focused on eliminating Islamic State remnants in Syria. On Saturday, Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, urged Syrian government forces to “cease any offensive actions” in areas east of Aleppo.
“Aggressively pursuing ISIS and relentlessly applying military pressure requires teamwork among Syrian partners in coordination with U.S. and coalition forces,” he said in a statement.
The United States partnered with the S.D.F. beginning in 2015 to defeat the Islamic State, which had taken over large parts of Syria during the civil war. A U.S.-led international coalition armed, trained and backed S.D.F. fighters militarily.
The Trump administration also established warm ties with Mr. al-Sharaa’s government, and they have cooperated against the Islamic State.
At the core of the tensions between Mr. al-Sharaa’s government and the S.D.F. has been the question of who should govern Syria. Since ousting the longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Mr. al-Sharaa has established a centralized government in Damascus dominated by loyalists from his former rebel group. His government has been criticized loudly by the Kurds and by others as not inclusive enough of minorities.
On Friday, in moves seen as an overture to Kurds, Mr. al-Sharaa issued a decree recognizing Kurdish as a national language, alongside Arabic, and adopted Nowruz, the Persian New Year, widely celebrated by Kurds, as an official holiday.
Muhammad Haj Kadour and Reham Mourshed contributed reporting.
Raja Abdulrahim reports on the Middle East and is based in Jerusalem.
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