SDF commander Mazloum Abdi ends the force as a separate army in Damascus

Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said in Damascus on Tuesday that the SDF's mission is over and that the force will no longer exist as an independent army. He said its fighters had completed their integration into the Syrian army. The statement closes a chapter that began when the SDF, backed by the United States, fought Islamic State and built a civilian administration across much of the northeast. At its height that administration ran about a quarter of Syria, including oil fields and border crossings.

President Ahmad al-Sharaa's government treats the announcement as a recovery of territory, oil and state offices. Damascus has taken most of the land the SDF held, plus key oil and gas kit, border posts, Qamishli airport and the institutions of the Autonomous Administration. A March 2025 deal between al-Sharaa and Abdi had already called for civilian and military bodies in the northeast to fold into the state. Implementation stalled through 2025. Fighting with former Syrian National Army factions continued. After the year-end deadline passed, government forces moved on Kurdish-held parts of Aleppo and then across large SDF areas. Ceasefires in late January 2026 froze the line.

What has actually merged

By early May four SDF brigades had been listed under the Ministry of Defence. An SDF-nominated assistant defence minister was named. About 600 detainees were exchanged. Civil administration in former SDF towns passed to the transitional government on paper. Analysts who watch Hasakah say Kurdish offices, checkpoints and salary systems still run in parts of the province. Education certificates issued by the Autonomous Administration are not fully recognised. The Women's Protection Units, the YPJ, do not yet have a settled status. Border crossings, oil receipts and seats in any future parliament remain bargaining chips.

The SDF after the defection of most Arab units had already shrunk toward its Kurdish core, the People's Protection Units. Abdi's Tuesday speech therefore describes a political end-state more than a sudden disarmament. Soldiers who stood in Hasakah on Wednesday were described as former SDF. The uniforms can change faster than who collects the wheat tax.

Why the timing matters

The United States used the SDF as its ground partner against Islamic State and still has an interest in the camps and prisons that hold IS suspects. Those facilities were on the list of items negotiators said had been largely settled. If that is true, the camps now sit under Damascus with American eyes still on them. If it is only partly true, the gap is a security problem, not a footnote.

Al-Sharaa gets the map he wanted: one army, one set of crossings, one claim on the oil. Kurdish councils get appointments that so far have gone mostly to Sunni Kurdish men, with women and religious minorities under-represented in the new posts. The Autonomous Administration's experiment in shared local rule is being filed into ministries. Abdi can say the force completed its mission. The mission that remains is whether those ministries pay salaries, run schools and hold the camps without a second war in Hasakah.