Ever since former dictator Bashar al-Assad was rushed out of Damascus as his hollowed-out dynastic regime collapsed in December 2024, Syria has existed somewhere between hope and anguish. On the one hand, the new Syrian government under the stewardship of Ahmed al-Sharaa, an Al-Qaeda commander in his past life, has done a fairly remarkable job reaching out to the West—first and foremost the United States—in the hope of attracting the foreign investment his country so desperately needs. Yet on the other, Syria is still a country in turmoil, with the periodic eruption of inter-communal violence leading to some doubts in Washington that Sharaa is up to the task of unifying Syria after early 14 years of civil war.
Sharaa, however, took a big leap toward that goal over the weekend. Much like his rapid success against Assad’s forces more than a year ago, his troops managed to claim swaths of territory from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-supported militia that carved out a semi-autonomous fiefdom in northern and eastern Syria. The military pressure quickly pushed the SDF back from territory it captured immediately after Assad’s fall. Money-making assets like oil fields, dams and gas facilities previously under the SDF’s control were suddenly re-taken by Sharaa’s forces. Sensing that his forces were outmaneuvered, the SDF’s top general, Mazloum Abdi, had no choice but to sign a political agreement with Damascus that effectively folds the Kurdish-dominated government into the Syrian state.
The relationship between Sharaa and the SDF has been on the brink from the moment Assad jetted to Moscow for a life of luxurious exile. At bottom, the two sides have competing interests. Sharaa’s government has one goal above all else: consolidate its authority across the state. The SDF and the Kurdish administration in the east were aiming for a decentralized state system, in which the haven they carved out years ago—complete with separate institutions, different demographics and their own de-facto army—was preserved to the maximum extent. Facilitated in part by the Trump administration, Sharaa and Abdi’s representatives tried to square this circle through diplomacy—in March, the two signed an agreement that called for a nationwide ceasefire, guaranteeing the rights of Syria’s minority communities and the integration of the SDF into the Syrian state.
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