Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi on Thursday said the integration of the Kurdish administration within Syria’s state institutions was complete, marking the end of the Kurds’ long-held dream of autonomy.
Amid the violence, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed on January 16 a decree enshrining the Kurds’ national rights and recognising Kurdish as a national language, an unprecedented step since Syria’s independence in 1946. The January agreement, signed by Abdi and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, followed clashes between Syrian Kurdish fighters and the new authorities’ forces that saw the Kurds lose swathes of territory they held in the oil-rich north and northeast.
“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. “Our struggle will continue, to cement our people’s rights in the constitution. In February, Noureddine Ahmed Eissa, a Kurd from the city of Qamishli, was appointed governor of Hasakeh. In March, senior Kurdish military official Sipan Hamo was appointed regional assistant defence minister.
As part of the deal’s implementation, government forces entered the cities of Hasakeh and Qamishli, and Damascus took over the management of Qamishli airport and key oil fields. But even as the new administration in Damascus grants them more rights than their predecessors, integration essentially puts an end to the Kurds’ dream of autonomy.
