Justify distrust: Damascus and Kurds resume fighting after truce

The crisis of trust between Damascus and the Forces of Democratic Syria (SDF) formations has jeopardized the implementation of the announced truce in the northeast of the country, as the Kurdish National Council told Izvestia. A day after the signing of the document, fighting continued in the region, and negotiations between President Ahmed al-Sharaa and SDF commander-in-chief Mazlum Abdi ended in vain. Against the background of the intervention of US President Donald Trump, who tried to stop the escalation through a telephone conversation with the Syrian leader, the "historic agreement" risks never becoming the beginning of a political settlement of the Kurdish issue.

Damascus sets new conditions

Damascus' attempt to translate the military offensive in northeastern Syria into a political deal with the Kurdish SDF has run into an old problem unresolved over the years of confrontation - a deep crisis of trust between the parties.

The truce announced the day before between Damascus and the SDF was in danger of collapse the very next day. Talks between Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and SDF Commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi ended unsuccessfully on January 19, and clashes continued in the northeast of the country.

Shortly after the meeting between the Syrian president and the commander-in-chief of the SDF, at which it was supposed to finalize the ceasefire agreement, al-Sharaa had a telephone conversation with US President Donald Trump. According to Al-Monitor, the American leader called for an end to armed clashes between government forces and Kurdish formations. Trump has secured a promise not to send Damascus troops to Al-Hasaka (a Kurdish-majority area under the control of the SDF), which the Syrian army has already approached. Damascus also announced an agreement to continue the joint fight against the Islamic State group (IS, an organization recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia).

It is worth noting that the ceasefire agreement reached on January 18, which the US Special Representative for Syria, Tom Barrack, called a historic step, actually meant that the SDF accepted almost all of Damascus' demands as part of the integration deal concluded by the leaders in March 2025. The signing of the document was accompanied by an offensive by government forces that drove the Kurdish forces out of the predominantly Arab strongholds of Raqqa, Tabqa and Deir ez—Zor, where the country's main oil resources are concentrated.

However, a senior Kurdish official, Fawza Yusuf, told Amargi on January 19 that the meeting had not brought "any positive result," and Damascus demanded "the complete surrender of the Kurds." According to Al-Monitor sources, al-Sharaa has put forward new conditions, including the transfer of control to the government of Al-Hasakah. Allegedly, Abdi refused, pointing out that the text of the agreement had already been signed and additional concessions were unacceptable.

Shelal Gedo, a member of the Secretary General of the Kurdish National Council (an umbrella structure of 15 Kurdish parties that emerged in 2011 under the patronage of the President of the Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, Massoud Barzani), told Izvestia that the failure of the meeting between al-Sharaa and Abdi was due to deep accumulated distrust between the parties. He noted that mutual understanding was lost during the joint work of the parties in the opposition camp of the old regime of Bashar al-Assad, this negative experience and sharp differences of opinion affected all subsequent attempts at rapprochement.

Gedo pointed out that the lack of mutual guarantees, the contradiction of political and military interests, as well as the influence of regional and international factors only increased the gap in trust.

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Damascus gained control of oil and gas fields in the country

Damascus has taken steps to accelerate the reintegration of the Kurds: al-Sharaa signed a decree recognizing their language as a "national language" and restoring citizenship to all Kurds deprived of it after the 1962 census. Combined with military pressure, these measures were supposed to promote disarmament and institutional integration of the autonomy.

— An important historical step on the part of the Syrian government is the adoption of the law on the rights of the Kurdish people. For the first time, the official Syrian president recognized the existence of the Syrian Kurds, their culture and language, and also established the Nowruz holiday as a national Syrian holiday, making it an official weekend, and banned incitement of hatred against Kurds throughout the country," said Shelal Gedo.

Kurds are losing territorial control

The ceasefire and integration package announced on January 18 provided for the inclusion of SDF fighters in the security structures of Damascus, the transfer of control of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor to the central government, as well as control over border crossings, oil fields, prisons and camps with captured IS militants.

For the SDF, this means the loss of key levers of influence — heavy weapons, control over resources, and administrative subjectivity. The reintegration of Kurds into government structures is a long and ambiguous process. The United States supports this format, while Turkey traditionally views the SDF as an affiliated structure of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party. Washington promises guarantees for the rights of the Kurdish minority in the new Syria, but it is not certain that it will be able to secure their constitutional consolidation.

According to orientalist Kirill Semenov, it is incorrect to talk about the existence of Kurdish autonomy in Syria. He emphasizes that the Kurds have never had a formal autonomous status within the SAR. On the contrary, the political and administrative format that existed in the northeast of the country was the autonomous administration of Northern and Eastern Syria, an alternative project of Syrian statehood created with the support of the West and the United States in opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

In this sense, the project itself, according to his assessment, was initially utopian in nature and could not exist in the long term in the conditions of the restoration of a centralized Syrian state.

Kirill Semyonov also noted that the Kurds lived compactly in the majority in only two areas, which they still control today, while the rest of the territories of the autonomous administration of Northern and Eastern Syria were predominantly Arab. Therefore, they objectively could not be the basis for Kurdish territorial autonomy. Oil fields, fertile lands along the Euphrates and key resources were located on the lands of Arab tribes that were part of the autonomous administration, but were not related to the Kurdish national project.

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Now these tribes have openly declared their support for Damascus, which has predetermined the transfer of most strategic regions of the northeast of the country under the control of the central government. In these circumstances, the talk of Kurdish territorial autonomy loses its practical meaning. On the other hand, the format of cultural and linguistic autonomy looks like the most stable compromise within the framework of a centralized Syria, the expert explained to Izvestia.

— The loss of control over the provinces of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, where the majority of the population are Arabs, does not mean undermining the Kurdish specificity. On the contrary, it can help create more favorable conditions for a just solution to the Kurdish issue in Syria," said Shelal Gedo.

Meanwhile, after reports of the failure of negotiations in Damascus, the SDF leadership announced a general mobilization, calling for "joining the resistance." Damascus, in turn, has made it clear that it is not ready to leave the province under the control of the SDF and demands a final response. Otherwise, the Syrian authorities intend to "resolve the issue of Al-Hasakah by force."

At the same time, the SDF announced the loss of control over the Al-Shaddadi prison, where thousands of ISIS supporters are being held, due to attacks allegedly linked to Damascus by armed groups. The authorities in Damascus denied this, accusing the SDF of deliberately releasing ISIS supporters and using the terrorist threat to exert pressure.