Syrian Kurdish leader says integration with Damascus complete

Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said on Thursday that the integration of the Kurdish administration within Syria’s state institutions was complete, months after an agreement on the matter was reached.

The Kurds, backed by the United States, had built a self-governing administration with its own civilian and military institutions in the north and northeast following the outbreak of the country’s civil war in 2011, and spearheaded the battle against ISIS until its territorial defeat in Syria in 2019.

“I want to say that the phase of integrating military, security, and administrative institutions into national state institutions is complete and finished,” Abdi, who heads the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said at an event in Qamishli in northeastern Syria.

“From now on, we begin a new phase.”

The announcement follows months of negotiations between the two sides after the agreement, which called for the full integration of civil and military Kurdish institutions into the state – a move Washington deemed “historic.”