The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led militia that spearheaded the fight against the Islamic State group and once controlled roughly a quarter of Syrian territory, announced its formal dissolution on Tuesday, closing a decade-long chapter of de facto Kurdish autonomy in the country's northeast.
Speaking at a televised press conference from the presidential palace in Damascus, SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi declared "the end of the mission of the Syrian Democratic Forces" and its "dissolution as an independent military force." He said the announcement followed the completion of the integration of SDF fighters into brigades of the Syrian national army. Abdi also announced the dissolution of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and its affiliated civilian institutions, which have now been folded into the Syrian state.
"Today we stand at a historic moment in which we turn an important page in Syria's history," Abdi said, according to the state news agency SANA, framing the move as a shift "from the battlefields to the fields of construction."
The dissolution caps an agreement signed in January between Abdi and interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, brokered with mediation from Washington and Paris and later endorsed by Ankara. The deal came after government forces launched an offensive that stripped the SDF of much of the territory it held in Syria's oil-rich north and northeast. As part of the accompanying political concessions, al-Sharaa issued a decree recognizing Kurdish as a national language eligible for school instruction, adopting Nowruz as a national holiday, and restoring citizenship to tens of thousands of Kurds in Hasakah province who had been stripped of it under a 1962 census.
The SDF was formed in 2015 at Washington's instigation after Kurdish fighters repelled IS from Kobane, becoming the United States' principal ground partner in the campaign that territorially defeated the jihadist group four years later. But Washington shifted its backing toward the new authorities in Damascus following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, easing pressure on the SDF to hold out. Notably, the dissolution came just a day after the United States formally removed Syria from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation in place since 1979.
Turkey, which has long designated the SDF's core faction, the YPG, as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), welcomed the move as central to restoring Syria's territorial integrity. Ankara's position was strengthened by the parallel disarmament process underway with the PKK itself, following Abdullah Öcalan's call for the group to dissolve and a subsequent framework law passed by the Turkish parliament in August. The integration agreement also reportedly requires the departure of non-Syrian PKK-linked figures from Syrian territory.
Analysts describe the SDF's dissolution as a major political victory for al-Sharaa, bolstering his government's claim to unified national authority after nearly 14 years of civil war. Most of Syria is now under central government control, with the notable exception of Druze-held Sweida province in the south, where tensions with Damascus remain unresolved following last year's sectarian violence.