Residents greet Kurds displaced by the Syrian civil war as they return to their hometown of Ras al-Ain (Sere Kaniye) under an agreement reached in January 2026 between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian government, in Hassakeh, Syria, Aug. 10, 2026. (Credit: Orhan Qereman/Reuters)
Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said on Thursday that the integration of the Kurdish administration within Syria's state institutions was complete, months after an agreement on the matter was reached.
The Kurds, backed by the United States, had built a self-governing administration with its own civilian and military institutions in the north and northeast following the outbreak of the country's civil war in 2011, and spearheaded the battle against the Islamic State group until its territorial defeat in Syria in 2019.
The January integration deal with the new authorities in Damascus, who are now favoured by Washington, shattered the community's long-held dream of autonomy.
"I want to say that the phase of integrating military, security, and administrative institutions into national state institutions is complete and finished," Abdi, who heads the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said at an event in Qamishli in northeastern Syria.
"From now on, we begin a new phase."
The announcement follows months of negotiations between the two sides after the agreement, which called for the full integration of civil and military Kurdish institutions into the state, a move Washington deemed "historic."
It had followed clashes between Syrian Kurdish fighters and the new authorities' forces that saw the Kurds lose swathes of territory.
During the violence, on January 16, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed a decree enshrining the Kurds' national rights and recognizing Kurdish as a national language, an unprecedented step since Syria's independence in 1946.
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