Fighting between the central government in Damascus and the previously U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) appears to have subsided after a tumultuous start in 2026, leaving many lingering questions. While the most significant exchange of territorial control since the Assad regime’s December 2024 collapse marks a decisive moment in the country’s transition, Washington’s imposed ceasefire that ended the fighting between the two major actors hardly resolves their differences in a way that assures long-term stability for Syria. Rather, it marks a potential turning point in efforts to unify the country while furthering the U.S. military withdrawal from it.
he hostilities that began in the northern neighborhoods of Syria’s second city of Aleppo and expanded eastward—eventually reaching the Kurdish-majority governorate of Hasakah—occurred with overt U.S. backing. From talks in Paris to repeated meetings between U.S. officials and Syrian actors on both sides of the fighting, Washington expressed increasing cynicism in the years-long negotiations between the parties, ultimately opting for the Turkish-Damascus position. Doing so fostered the central government’s offensive and the SDF’s capitulation on most of their points in the unification talks.
Syrian president Ahmed al-Shara seems to have overstepped, however, in aggressively advancing his forces deep into Syria’s northeast in mid-January after his government and the SDF reached a U.S.-brokered ceasefire to halt fighting along the banks of the Euphrates River. Washington attempted to step in more forcefully to prevent what it likely deemed a potential public relations disaster, highlighting real fears of ethnic cleansing and targeted violence against the Kurds by the Syrian army.
In this context, the Trump administration could not be seen as backing yet another ethnic massacre in the country, previously witnessed in the country’s northwest and south in 2025. Amid calls to renew sanctions against the central government, the Trump administration imposed a ceasefire between the parties.
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