Kurdish-Led SDF Dissolves After Historic Merger with Syrian Army in Damascus

Kurdish fighters from the Qamishli Brigade, part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), participated in a military parade in Qamishli on August 21, 2026, during the funeral ceremony for three Kurdish fighters killed in previous battles in Aleppo's Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood in the north of Syria.

The head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who spearheaded the fight against the Islamic State group, announced their dissolution as part of a deal struck with the new authorities in Damascus. “We announce today the end of the mission of the Syrian Democratic Forces and declare, with full responsibility, their dissolution as an independent military force,” leader Mazloum Abdi said in a televised speech at the presidential palace on Tuesday evening.

The group once controlled a de facto autonomous zone in Syria’s northeast. Speaking in the news conference in Damascus, Abdi said the SDF has completed a merger with the Syrian army and would cease to operate as an independent force. The Kurdish-led force lost most of its territory in northeast Syria to a Damascus offensive in January and then signed the deal to merge with the government army.

The SDF was once the main partner of the United States in Syria as it battled the Islamic State group. But after the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December 2024, Washington formed close ties with the new government in Damascus led by interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of an Islamist insurgent group.

“Today we stand at a historic moment in which we turn an important page in Syria’s history and begin to open a new page titled peace, stability, and reconstruction,” Abdi said, reported the country’s Sana news agency.

“We want this day to be the beginning of a true transition from the battlefields to the fields of construction, and from the era of weapons to the era of peace,” he added.

On a cultural note, Abdi said that the president has noted the “preservation of our right to education in the Kurdish language,” adding that they would work to implement “education in the Kurdish language during the current year.”

“We want to build a new Syria for all its people—the Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens, and Assyrians—a unified and stable Syria that protects the future of its children and ensures a dignified life for its youth,” he said, as quoted by Sana news agency.

The United States also removed Syria from the state sponsors of terror list, a decades-old designation that came with severe economic restrictions, marking another step in warming ties between the countries following the 2024 ouster of Assad.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa hailed the move saying, “Syria shakes off a dark stain and tears away a painful chapter of its past to embark on a path of development, reconstruction and rebuilding.”