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Integration for Stability: The SDF’s Dissolution and Syria’s Security Order

Picture of Binar Faeq Karim

Binar Faeq Karim

Analysis Series

Analysis/0076/September/2026/London-Dialogue. 02 September 2026

Author: Binar Faeq Karem

The dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces marks a significant shift in Syria’s post-Assad transition. More than ending the SDF’s role as an independent armed force that had served as a principal local partner in the fight against ISIS, it has altered the security relationship between Damascus and Kurdish actors in northeastern Syria, reduced a major source of internal confrontation, and reshaped a regional fault line involving Türkiye and the United States.

The arrangement that led to the SDF’s dissolution did not resolve the Kurdish question in Syria. Rather, it changed the mechanisms through which that question is now contested: military confrontation has increasingly given way to integration, Kurdish cultural and political rights tend to be negotiated within state structures, and one of Syria’s most sensitive regional security disputes has been narrowed. Whether this transition produces durable stability will depend on how these arrangements are implemented and whether Kurdish cultural, political and security concerns can be accommodated within the emerging Syrian state.

Changing the Security Equation

The central difficulty between Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces was not whether some form of integration would take place, but whether the two sides could agree on its terms before their differences produced a wider confrontation. The March 2025 agreement between President Ahmed al-Sharaa and then-SDF commander Mazloum Abdi established a framework: a nationwide ceasefire, recognition of the Kurdish minority as an integral part of Syria with citizenship and constitutional rights, and the incorporation of northeastern Syria’s civilian and military institutions, border crossings, airport and oil and gas fields into the Syrian state. Yet the agreement defined the intended destination more clearly than the route towards it. Questions over detailed military command, internal security and the degree of authority that Kurdish institutions would retain remained unsettled.

Those unresolved questions became more consequential because they were being negotiated while the military balance was changing. Fighting in Kurdish-held areas of Aleppo in early 2026 displaced more than 140,000 people, exposing how quickly disagreements over integration could return to armed confrontation. Government forces subsequently advanced across areas previously controlled by the SDF, taking large parts of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor and pushing into Hasakah province, while important oil fields and other strategic assets shifted towards Damascus. Türkiye simultaneously maintained pressure on the SDF, which Ankara regarded as linked through its YPG component to the PKK, and continued to threaten military incursions if integration failed.

This altered the strategic choices available to the then-Kurdish-led administration. Preserving the previous arrangement no longer meant simply maintaining an established autonomy while negotiations continued. It increasingly meant attempting to defend that arrangement against a Syrian government that had demonstrated its willingness to advance militarily while facing pressure from Türkiye and diminishing certainty over long-term American protection. The successive ceasefires reached during the January confrontation reflected this narrowing room for manoeuvre. One temporary truce was extended after Syrian forces had surrounded remaining SDF strongholds, precisely because renewed fighting remained an immediate possibility.

It is within this context that Fethullah Husseini, representative of the then-Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, argued that without the agreement there would have been another war. His assessment reflected the strategic vulnerability confronting the Kurdish administration rather than simply support for the political terms of the settlement. “We cannot withstand another conflict,” Husseini said, adding that Kurdish-held geography was surrounded and under pressure and that the administration was moving “away from war and toward peace”.

The August dissolution is therefore better understood through the security equation it changed than through the organisational disappearance of the SDF itself. The previous arrangement had repeatedly allowed disputes over command, territory and political authority to acquire a military dimension. Once SDF fighters moved into Syrian military structures and the organisation ceased operating independently, maintaining those disputes no longer necessarily required maintaining a separate armed position from which to contest them. The result has been to narrow one of the principal pathways through which disagreements with Damascus could escalate into sustained fighting.

From Military Bargaining to Institutional Politics

The integration arrangements reveal an attempt to balance two objectives that had appeared increasingly difficult to reconcile: Damascus’s insistence on restoring central authority and Kurdish demands to preserve meaningful political and local representation. The compromise reached after the January fighting therefore did not simply require Kurdish forces to disappear into the national army. It created a northeast military division incorporating SDF fighters into three brigades alongside a separate Kobani brigade while providing for Kurdish appointments in central and local government and recognising Kurdish educational certificates. Local internal-security institutions were also expected to remain substantially Kurdish-staffed, albeit under Damascus’s authority.

This represents a narrower settlement than the decentralised political model Kurdish leaders had previously hoped for. Control of oil fields, border crossings and Qamishli airport shifted to Damascus, while expectations for constitutionally protected federalism or autonomy were significantly reduced. Yet the compromise preserved elements of Kurdish institutional participation rather than treating integration solely as military capitulation. The bargain is therefore based on an exchange: Damascus expands sovereign control over territory, resources and national security structures, while Kurdish actors retain channels for representation and some local influence within the emerging system. Whether that exchange remains acceptable to both sides will be more consequential than the formal disappearance of the SDF.

The transition of senior Kurdish figures illustrates this change in bargaining more clearly. Sipan Hamo, a senior SDF commander, became deputy defence minister responsible for eastern regions, while Mazloum Abdi was appointed a presidential adviser only days after formally dissolving the organisation he had commanded. These appointments do not in themselves resolve Kurdish concerns. Their importance lies instead in the movement of political and security bargaining from negotiations between separate armed leaderships towards interactions within state institutions.

That distinction also exposes the principal risk to the settlement. Integration changes where disputes are negotiated without necessarily resolving what they are about. Kurdish demands concerning cultural rights, education, local administration, security and political representation remain, while Damascus continues to favour a strongly centralised state. Trust between the two sides also remains fragile. Chatham House’s assessment of the January settlement noted that Kurdish officials would probably continue seeking the maximum local authority available under the agreement while Damascus would seek to limit it.

The durability of the current de-escalation will therefore depend less on symbolic appointments than on whether these new institutional channels acquire credibility. If Kurdish participation becomes meaningful and the agreed political and cultural guarantees are implemented, disagreements that previously carried a military dimension can increasingly become disputes over policy and institutional authority. If integration becomes indistinguishable from political marginalisation or excessive centralisation, the settlement may suppress rather than resolve the grievances underlying the Kurdish question.

Narrowing a Regional Fault Line

The consequences extend beyond the relationship between Damascus and Kurdish actors because the SDF had become embedded in a wider regional contradiction. For Türkiye, the SDF represented a direct security concern because Ankara views it as linked to the PKK; for Washington, the same organisation became the principal local partner in the campaign against ISIS. The result was an unusual strategic arrangement in which the United States armed and supported a force that its NATO ally regarded as hostile, while Türkiye repeatedly intervened militarily in northern Syria to prevent Kurdish territorial consolidation. The future of the SDF was consequently not only an internal Syrian question but one capable of drawing external actors more deeply into Syrian instability.

The political environment surrounding that contradiction has now shifted. Ankara welcomed the SDF’s dissolution and integration, reflecting its longstanding objective of preventing a separate Kurdish armed structure from becoming permanent along its southern border. Türkiye, nevertheless, continues to maintain forces in northern Syria and has indicated that their presence will continue until Ankara considers its security concerns resolved. Dissolution therefore does not eliminate Turkish-Kurdish tensions, but it changes the object around which much of that confrontation had developed.

That shift is reinforced by developments inside Türkiye. Abdullah Öcalan’s call for the PKK to disarm was followed by the organisation’s decision to end its armed struggle, and in August the Turkish parliament approved a legal framework facilitating the disbandment and reintegration process. The Kurdish question in Türkiye and Syria remains politically distinct, and treating them as interchangeable would obscure substantial differences between them.

Washington’s changing position has also narrowed the regional fault line. American support had been critical to the SDF’s expansion and survival during the anti-ISIS campaign, but the fall of Assad changed Washington’s strategic calculations. As the United States increasingly embraced al-Sharaa’s government as its principal Syrian partner, indefinite support for a separate SDF military structure became harder to reconcile with Washington’s support for Syrian political consolidation and its relationship with Türkiye. During the January crisis, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack stated that the SDF’s original anti-ISIS purpose had “largely expired” and urged Kurdish actors to pursue their interests through integration with the new state.

Dissolution therefore does not produce regional stability by itself. Türkiye remains militarily present in Syria, Kurdish political guarantees remain subject to implementation, ISIS continues to present security challenges, and the broader Syrian transition remains vulnerable to domestic and external pressures. What has changed is narrower but still consequential: a dispute that previously connected Kurdish-Damascus tensions with Turkish security policy, the U.S.–Türkiye relationship and competing visions for Syria’s territorial order has become less militarised.

Conclusion

The SDF’s dissolution has not settled the questions surrounding Kurdish rights, representation, local administration and security concerns. Its significance lies instead in changing how those disputes are managed. A confrontation that had repeatedly risked returning to the battlefield is now increasingly being channelled through state structures, while the integration process has narrowed a regional security dispute involving Türkiye and the United States. As Fethullah Husseini argued, the alternative to the agreement was another war. The longer-term test is whether Damascus can turn this de-escalation into a durable political accommodation that addresses Kurdish political, cultural and security concerns without allowing unresolved disputes to become sources of renewed armed conflict.

Picture of Binar Faeq Karim

Binar Faeq Karim

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