As Syrian Internal Security forces raised Islamist-associated banners and chanted the takbir while entering Hasakah, Kurdish residents are asking whether integration means partnership — or a change of occupier.
Syrian government forces entering Hasakah this week were filmed chanting the takbir and carrying banners associated with Islamist factions, according to Turkish outlet T24 — footage that has unsettled Kurdish residents in a region Damascus insists it is integrating, not conquering.
The images matter because of what came before them. When Interior Ministry convoys first entered Hasakah and Qamishli in February, they carried the Syrian tricolour and officials spoke of “a new chapter away from revenge and division.” This week's deployment — armoured vehicles, anti-aircraft guns, religious sloganeering — reads differently to a population that has spent a decade under secular, multi-ethnic self-rule.
Command Without Consent
The optics are not incidental to the substance. Behind the convoy, Damascus has installed its own men in every position that matters: Marwan al-Ali coordinating security, Imad Fawaz al-Ayash heading military police, Tahir Obit al-Bilal running military security. Former Asayish personnel are being absorbed into the new apparatus, but strictly as subordinates — disciplinary authority, military police and command all sit with Damascus appointees. Local officials describe this as routine implementation of the January integration deal, not a political statement. That framing is difficult to sustain once the units doing the absorbing are seen invoking God's greatness in a region that is religiously and ethnically mixed, and where the SDF's own civil order was explicitly secular.
A Familiar Pattern
Hasakah is not isolated. Kurdish flags were torn down in Raqqa and Kobani earlier this year; Nowruz celebrations in Afrin saw assaults and coerced insults against Kurdish symbols; Arabic-only signage replacing Kurdish lettering triggered protests in Hasaka in spring.
Damascus has paired each episode with real concessions — Presidential Decree No. 13 recognising Kurdish identity and language, citizenship for stateless Kurds, Sipan Hamo's appointment as deputy defence minister for the east. But the pattern holds: inclusion at the top, coercive symbolism on the ground.
What 'Integration' Actually Means
The unresolved core of the deal — Damascus's demand that the all-female YPJ disband rather than integrate as a unit — hints at where this is heading. Civil administration stays, for now, in local hands; security and command do not. Qamishli, Derik and the Semalka crossing are next.
Framed by Damascus as an orderly handover, the Hasakah deployment looks to many Kurds like something closer to a rebranded conquest: the flag has changed, but so, visibly, has the character of the forces now patrolling their streets. Whether Syria's transition can be called democratic may depend less on the agreements signed in Damascus than on which symbols its enforcers choose to carry into Kurdish cities.
Photo: T24