Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, declared his group's dissolution Tuesday evening in a televised address at the presidential palace in Damascus, formally ending the Kurdish-led force that led the ground campaign against the Islamic State across northeastern Syria.
"We announce the end of the mission of the Syrian Democratic Forces and announce with full responsibility its dissolution as an independent military force," Abdi said.
Abdi framed the announcement as a turning point. "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," he said. "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."
The dissolution follows a merger agreement between the SDF and the government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who took power after the ouster of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Under the deal, the SDF agreed to integrate its fighters into the Syrian national military. In return, Damascus recognized Kurdish cultural, civil and educational rights, including the right to instruction in the Kurdish language—a concession al-Sharaa committed to implementing within the current year.
The integration process took more than seven months to finalize, delayed by unresolved disputes over the SDF's heavy weapons and the status of the YPJ, the force's all-women fighting unit. The YPJ sought integration into the Ministry of Defence as professional soldiers, citing their combat record against the Islamic State. Damascus offered only a path into the Ministry of Interior as police officers. That dispute was among the central reasons the formal dissolution was not announced until now.
The SDF's loss of autonomous control in northeastern Syria accelerated after a government offensive in January 2025 stripped the group of most of the territory it had administered as a de facto self-governing zone. That military pressure brought the two sides to the negotiating table and ultimately produced the merger deal.
For more than a decade, the SDF had been the primary partner of the United States in Syria. Washington armed, trained and coordinated with the group through a sustained campaign that dismantled the Islamic State's territorial hold across the Euphrates Valley and the Syrian-Iraqi border region. At its peak, the SDF administered a broad swathe of northeastern Syria under an autonomous administration that operated schools, courts and security forces largely independent of Damascus.
That relationship changed rapidly after Assad's fall. Washington redirected its engagement toward al-Sharaa's new government in Damascus, leaving the SDF without its principal international backer at a moment when it faced both military pressure from the Syrian army and unresolved political negotiations over integration terms.
Under the 50-year rule of the Assad dynasty, Kurds faced systematic marginalization—large numbers were denied Syrian citizenship, and Kurdish-language education was banned. The deal Abdi announced preserves Kurdish linguistic and cultural rights in law, a departure from five decades of official policy.
Questions remain about how integration will function on the ground. The SDF administered a population across a wide area, and folding its fighters, command structures and civil institutions into the Syrian state is a process that Tuesday's announcement begins rather than completes. The status of heavy weapons and the practical absorption of YPJ fighters into a ministry that neither side has publicly agreed on remain unresolved in practice.
Abdi acknowledged the weight of what the force had carried. The SDF had "carried a heavy responsibility during one of the most difficult periods in Syria's history," he said, but added that circumstances had changed and the country had entered a new phase.
