Longtime American allies who have been guarding tens of thousands of Islamic State fighters and their families agreed this week to be integrated into the Syrian armed forces.
While the deal marks a major victory for the country’s interim leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, it has been a brutal blow to the fighters, who are mainly ethnic Kurds.
Many Kurds have been left shell-shocked by the fighting with Syrian forces, the rapid shift in the balance of power and the loss of territory, with some saying they felt bereft after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) had made sweeping contributions in the fight against ISIS.
“Everyone has abandoned us,” Saleh al-Ali, a resident of Kobani, a Kurdish-majority city in the Ayn al-Arab district in northern Syria, told NBC News this week.
Al-Ali, who said he works at a poultry farm in the Hasakah countryside, said he had traveled with his wife, their three young daughters and his ailing mother to the area about a week ago when clashes broke out between Syrian government forces and the SDF. The family tried to return to Kobani, but the roads were cut off, forcing them to flee for safety toward Qamishli.
“We used to feel safe with the American military presence in northeast Syria,” said al-Ali, 41. “We believed they were our guarantee and would never abandon us — especially after we sacrificed tens of thousands of our young people fighting alongside them against ISIS and helping rebuild what ISIS had destroyed.”
Syria’s new leadership has struggled to consolidate authority in the war-ravaged country since the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, led by al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group. While al-Sharaa has vowed to build a more unified and representative Syria, his rule has struggled with deep divisions and deadly sectarian clashes across the country.
In a recent push, Syrian forces gained control over the Deir al-Zour and Raqqa provinces, plus parts of Hasakah province, with the SDF further announcing its withdrawal from al-Hol camp, where thousands of people with alleged links to ISIS are held, as Syrian government forces advanced into Hasakah.
Much of the territory, which also includes Syria’s biggest oil fields, a major hydroelectric dam and agricultural regions, was captured from the Islamic State by the SDF when the Kurdish-led force was the main U.S. partner fighting the jihadists in Syria.
'Significant blow'
Integration has largely been forced on the Kurds by Washington and the government in Damascus, Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based Chatham House think tank, said Thursday.
“This is a significant blow,” Vakil said, adding that many see the development as the “loss of hard-won autonomy rather than a genuine power-sharing arrangement.”
“The prevailing sentiment is one of anxiety and political marginalization rather than reconciliation,” she said.
Under a deal announced Tuesday, which came after Syrian forces seized swaths of territory in the northeast, the SDF was given four days to agree on integrating into the state, with its key ally, the United States, pushing it to accept.
U.S. envoy Tom Barrack welcomed the truce as an “inflection point, where former adversaries embrace partnership over division,” as he made clear the SDF’s role as a key ally in battling the Islamic State had become obsolete with the emergence of a new central power to partner with.
He said the U.S. had “no interest in long-term military presence; it prioritizes defeating ISIS remnants, supporting reconciliation, and advancing national unity without endorsing separatism or federalism.”
“This moment offers a pathway to full integration into a unified Syrian state with citizenship rights, cultural protections, and political participation,” Barrack added.
Barrack is the ambassador to Turkey, a NATO member wary of the SDF’s links to its own Kurdish population. Iran and Iraq also have significant Kurdish communities.
ISIS fears grow
The SDF blamed “international indifference” toward ISIS for the withdrawal, as concerns grow of an ISIS resurgence in Syria.
The SDF and Syrian government are trading blame over a mass prison escape in the town of Shaddadeh amid a breakdown in the truce between the two sides.
“This mutual understanding and joint cooperation between us and the international coalition — led by the United States — created a kind of stability in our regions from 2015 until 2025,” one senior SDF commander told NBC News. “But now, it seems the circumstances and international interests have changed.”
“The Americans have once again proven that they abandon their partners and allies solely for the sake of their own interests,” he said on condition of anonymity because he wanted to speak openly about sensitive subjects. “This is clear if you look at current U.S. policy across the world.”
“After years as Washington’s primary partner against ISIS, the SDF now faces abandonment in strategic terms,” Vakil said, with the reality playing out on the ground reinforcing fears among Syrian Kurds that “their role was transactional and temporary, and that their future security and political rights will now depend largely on a Syrian state that has historically been hostile to Kurdish autonomy.”
Qutaiba Idlbi, the director of American affairs at the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told NBC News on Wednesday that the government’s approach was “guided by de-escalation, civilian protection, equal citizenship, and the enduring defeat of ISIS.”
He said Syria’s leadership understood concerns from the Kurdish community “after years of conflict and trauma,” and that “their cultural, civil, and linguistic rights are guaranteed.”
Both sides have accused the other of indiscriminate violence.
The SDF commander expressed little optimism, however, saying it was not only Syrian Kurds who could suffer the consequences of the shifting landscape after Washington’s withdrawal.
“Let me say this frankly: The SDF will not lose alone,” he said. “The United States will lose along with it — and the results will become clear.”
