Kurdish-led forces in Syria dissolve after merging with army

Group’s leader calls for ‘preservation of our right to education in the Kurdish language’.

The head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which spearheaded the fight in Syria against the ISIL (ISIS) armed group, has announced its dissolution as part of a deal struck with the government 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,” Mazloum Abdi said on Tuesday evening in a televised speech at the presidential palace in Damascus.

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The SDF once controlled a de facto autonomous zone in Syria’s northeast. Abdi said the group 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 northeastern Syria in January during a government offensive and then signed the deal to merge with the army.

The SDF was once the main partner of the United States in Syria as it battled ISIL. But after the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Washington formed close ties with the new government in Damascus, led by interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the opposition forces that overthrew al-Assad.

Mazloum Abdi, foreground, leader of the SDF, arrives at the presidential palace in Damascus on August 25, 2026, to announce the armed group’s dissolution [Bakr Alkasem/AFP]

“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 was quoted as saying by the state news agency, SANA.

“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 al-Sharaa has recognised 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, Turkmen and Assyrians – a unified and stable Syria that protects the future of its children and ensures a dignified life for its youth,” he said, according to SANA.

Abdi’s announcement came a day after the US removed Syria from its “state sponsors of terrorism” list, a decades-old designation that came with severe economic restrictions. It marked another step in closer ties between the two countries after the ouster of al-Assad.

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.”