SDF commander Mazloum Abdi dissolves the force after merger into Syria’s army
About 10,000 fighters have already joined regular brigades. Abdi spoke from the presidential palace in Damascus. The move ends more than a decade of Kurdish-led autonomy in the northeast.
Damascus2 min read
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Mazloum Abdi stood in the People's Palace in Damascus on 25 August and ended the Syrian Democratic Forces as an independent military organisation. "We announce today the end of the mission of the Syrian Democratic Forces and announce with full responsibility its dissolution as an independent military force," he said. The speech followed a meeting with President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani.
The framework was signed on 29 January, after government units took most of the northeast in a short offensive. Washington called that January text a historic milestone. Implementation dragged. On Tuesday Abdi said the integration of SDF units into the Syrian army was complete enough to retire the old name.
About 10,000 fighters have already entered regular formations. Senior SDF officials say the final number could reach 12,000. The first brigades were based in Hasakah, Qamishli, Derik and Kobani, each under former SDF officers. Three brigades went initially to the 60th Division and one to the 72nd. A later restructuring placed them under the new 2nd Corps. Sipan Hamo, who commanded the People's Protection Units that formed the SDF core, was appointed in March as deputy defence minister for the eastern territories.
Civilian staff and the Asayish internal security force are being folded into ministries in Damascus, the Interior Ministry in the Asayish case. Abdi used the palace speech to say Damascus would protect Kurdish-language education. He framed the last decade as a completed mission against Islamic State and the present as a phase whose headline is peace and participation in a new Syrian state.
The force that dissolved on Tuesday was built in 2015 with American airpower and advice. It held the prisons and camps that still hold thousands of IS suspects and their families. It also ran oil fields and border crossings that funded a proto-administration. Those assets are now, on paper, state property. Whether the men who guarded them take orders from the same chain that fought them in January is a different question. Navvar Saban, a researcher at the Arab Center for Contemporary Syrian Studies, said the formal merge is done and that a single military culture will take much longer.
Kurds in Qamishli received the news with mixed reactions, according to reporting from the city. Some saw an end to isolation. Others remembered the January offensive and do not trust the ministries that will now write their pay. Turkey, which spent years treating the SDF as an extension of the PKK, welcomed any step that removes a separate Kurdish command on its southern border. The United States, which no longer treats the SDF as its primary ground partner in Syria, called the January deal a milestone and has not disputed Tuesday's announcement.
What Abdi could not settle from the palace is command in a crisis. If Islamic State stages a breakout from al-Hol or a raid on a prison, the units that know the ground are now Syrian army brigades with new numbers. If those brigades hesitate, Damascus owns the failure. If they act as they did under the SDF patch, the dissolution will look like a change of stationery. The next test will not be a speech. It will be the first night someone opens a cell door in the east.
