Israel’s strikes on the Abu al-Duhur base in northwest Syria were, on their face, about Turkey. US Special Envoy to Syria and Iraq Tom Barrack condemned the attack as an unnecessary escalation, warning that an unintended clash between Israel and Turkey could have spiraled into “World War III,” and suggested the strikes were meant to stop Turkish forces from expanding a training presence at the base.
But the episode points to a deeper, unresolved question hanging over Syria’s new army: who, exactly, is being folded into it — and who is being left out.
Nowhere is that question more fraught than with the Syrian Democratic Forces. Damascus launched a military offensive against the SDF explicitly to force the Kurdish-led group under central government authority — yet less than half of its fighters have since been integrated into the new national army.
Since declaring himself Syria’s interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa has been trying to build a national army out of factions that spent years fighting each other.
Over the summer, I traveled more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) across Syria to see how that process is actually playing out. I spoke with SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi, with Kurdish, Arab, and Syriac Christian units belonging to the SDF’s constituent factions, and with officials in Damascus.
What I found is a pattern, not an anomaly: some of Syria’s most capable units — the US-trained Syrian Democratic Forces — are being sidelined from the new Syrian Army.
Reportedly less than half of the SDF has been integrated so far, even as the government absorbs foreign jihadist fighters. The largest such group, the Turkistan Islamic Party has been folded wholesale into the Syrian Army’s 84th Division, and warlords sanctioned for serious human rights abuses have been promoted into positions of power.
If al-Sharaa genuinely wants a professional, non-jihadist national army — and Washington’s trust — full integration of the SDF, the partner force the US spent a decade training, should be the obvious move. The real question is why that hasn’t happened, and why the United States isn’t pushing harder to make it happen.
Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus. Photo: Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto via AFP
The Integration Deal
In January, al-Sharaa’s forces launched a multi-pronged offensive against the SDF, seizing large swaths of SDF-held territory.
It came on the heels of staggering sectarian violence against the Alawite minority in western Syria and the Druze minority in the south. The US-brokered January 29 Agreement ended the fighting and barred forces belonging to the Syrian Transitional Government (STG) in Damascus from entering Hasakah province, home to a dense mix of ethnic and religious minorities.
The same agreement stipulated that four SDF brigades would join the new Syrian Army: the Hasakah, Derik, and Qamishli brigades under Division 60, and the Kobani brigade affiliated with Aleppo. Kobani brigade commander Mahmoud Berxwedan has said only 12,000 of the SDF’s roughly 35,000 fighters have been integrated so far. What happens to the remaining 23,000 is unclear.
On August 25, SDF Commander Abdi formally announced the SDF’s dissolution as an independent force, framing it as the completion of the merger with the Syrian Army. But a name change on paper doesn’t resolve the underlying gap: by the SDF’s own numbers, less than half its fighters had actually been integrated at the time of that announcement, and the treatment of Kurdish, Arab, and women fighters on the ground remains unresolved.
Afrin and the Limits of ‘Integration’
Afrin is the most sensitive test case. The Kurdish-majority region of northern Syria was invaded and occupied by Turkey and Turkish-backed proxy forces in 2018.
Over the past year it’s been held up as a success story: Kurdish families displaced by the invasion have been allowed to return for the first time; Ilham Ahmad, co-chair of the Autonomous Administration’s Department of Foreign Relations, was able to visit; and the Turkish military has reportedly begun withdrawing, recently vacating one of its bases in the area.
Taken together, those developments suggested Damascus was finally asserting real control over Afrin.
What I witnessed told a different story. My trip was coordinated between the SDF and the Syrian government, and given the uncertain security situation, I traveled with an escort of Kurdish General Security personnel from Hasakah — former Asayish officers who had since been folded into the Syrian government’s General Security apparatus.
On arrival in Afrin, they were disarmed by local General Security forces, who were almost entirely Arab. These men were, on paper, colleagues: part of the same integrated force. In practice, one group had the authority to strip the other of its weapons, apparently on the basis of ethnicity alone.
It remains unclear who gave the order. Since Damascus itself had coordinated the visit, it seems unlikely the disarmament decision came from the government.
A more troubling explanation is that it reflects the continued, unofficial authority of former Syrian National Army (SNA) factions — Turkish-backed militias that were supposedly absorbed into the national army over a year ago, but still appear to answer to their own chain of command rather than to the central government.
Regardless of the source, what I saw firsthand is that Kurdish forces remain vulnerable to arbitrary treatment even after formally joining the same institutions as the men who disarmed them.
The incident is a reminder that integration can’t be declared complete just because units have been renamed or added to an org chart. Sustained US attention will be needed to ensure a new Afrin brigade is integrated in substance, not just on paper.
Arguably even more troubling is that two constituent SDF factions haven’t been included in the integration agreement at all: women in the YPJ and Arab commanders in the Northern Democratic Brigade. Both are integral to the SDF’s record against the Islamic State, and both have been loyal US partners since 2015.
Syrian Kurdish YPJ fighters, March 2015. Image: Kurdishstruggle/flickr CC BY 2.0
The Next ISIS Threat May Come From Women
For years, YPJ women were celebrated internationally for their role in the fight against ISIS. They were never only Kurdish: as I documented in my book Statelet of Survivors, Arab, Yezidi, and Syriac Christian women served in the YPJ too, despite its reputation as a Kurdish force.
Since al-Sharaa’s January offensive, some of the Arab women who fought in Raqqa and Manbij have been based in Hasakah following the SDF’s withdrawal from those areas.
The interim government has now told all of them they are not welcome in the new Syrian army. Most of the 89 other members of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS have stayed silent on the issue.
I met YPJ spokeswoman Ruksen Mohamed and two other YPJ members at a base in Hasakah. On their shelves sat several plaques from US Special Operations Command, including one thanking them “for your enduring partnership and friendship with Combined Special Operations Joint Task Force – Levant.”
These are women who fly drones, fight on the front lines, manage logistics, and gather intelligence in hostile environments. Bringing them into the Ministry of Defense wouldn’t be charity — it would strengthen the professionalism of the Syrian army.
Instead, Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra is refusing to let women join the ministry at all. Asked how he justifies the policy, the YPJ women told me he simply believes it is “against Islam.”
That claim doesn’t survive contact with the region around him: every country bordering Syria — Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel — allows women to serve in its defense ministry, as do other Muslim-majority states across the region.
Jordan first allowed women into its armed forces in the 1950s; more than 18,000 now serve, including in its medical corps. In 2014, Maj. Mariam al-Mansouri became the UAE’s first female fighter pilot, flying F-16 combat missions against ISIS in Syria. In 2020, Lebanon’s Zeina Akar became the first female defense minister in the Arab world.
As one YPJ commander put it to me: “the same patriarchal mentality that existed under the Assad regime continues under al-Sharaa.” The YPJ offered a concession — remaining based in northeast Syria rather than serving in Damascus — in case the government wasn’t ready to accept women in the defense ministry itself. That was refused too; they were told their only option was the Ministry of Interior.
The YPJ has consistently framed its demands around equal rights and equal participation for women in Syrian society, and the Constitutional Declaration — ambivalent as it is on other fronts — backs them up.
Article 10 explicitly prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, gender, or affiliation. By that measure, it’s the YPJ whose position aligns with Syria’s own founding document, not the transitional government’s.
Ambassador Barrack’s team should weigh that when deciding whether to back the YPJ’s push for inclusion: this isn’t a special exception, it’s a claim already written into Syria’s constitution.
Barring women from an entire ministry sets a troubling precedent for a government claiming to build an inclusive Syria, and the stakes go beyond precedent.
More than 15,000 people, most of them women and children, escaped ISIS detention facilities during al-Sharaa’s offensive against the SDF. A UN report published earlier this month found ISIS in Syria is now prioritizing the recruitment of “women facilitators.”
The YPJ is an asset al-Sharaa cannot afford to sideline. If Damascus won’t recognize that, American officials should treat their inclusion as a condition of continued support.
‘Arabs in the SDF Are the Biggest Losers of the Integration Deal’
Given that the interim government insists on calling its forces the Syrian Arab Army, one might expect Arab commanders to have an easy path into its ranks.
The experience of Abu Omar al-Idliby suggests otherwise. He commands the Northern Democratic Brigade, is an Arab from Idlib, and has been part of the SDF since its founding in 2015. I’d interviewed him several times before for my book, and met him again on this trip.
“Arabs in the SDF are the biggest losers,” he told me. Despite his years of service, he and his unit haven’t been included in the integration agreement.
Much has been written about the Arab factions that defected from the SDF during the January offensive; almost nothing has been written about the Arab units, like his, that stayed loyal. Al-Idliby believes HTS regards him as a traitor for choosing the SDF over them.
Several sources told me General Mazloum has been given to understand that he should no longer speak on behalf of all of northeast Syria — or even the SDF he’s commanded for a decade — but only on behalf of Kurds.
That may be an attempt to diminish the influence of a popular general. It also leaves SDF-aligned Arabs like al-Idliby stranded: still loyal to a force whose commander is no longer permitted to speak for them, and still unwelcome in the Syrian Arab Army that seems intent on punishing him for choosing the Kurdish-led SDF.
Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Photo: Mohamad Daboul/AFP
The Cost of Getting This Wrong
This marginalization is happening even as the Pentagon continues funding the SDF and other vetted forces. Recent security incidents — including bombings near the Damascus hotel where French President Emmanuel Macron was staying — are a reminder of how badly the SDF’s counterterrorism expertise is still needed.
After a decade of training and millions of dollars invested, the United States has a direct strategic interest in seeing SDF units integrated in a way that is dignified and meaningful, not token.
Cutting them out weakens the new army, entrenches the very divisions al-Sharaa says he wants to overcome, and squanders an investment that could otherwise help stabilize Syria at a critical moment.
Successful integration would strengthen Syria’s army. Mishandled, it risks restarting the conflict. Kurdish security officers disarmed by their Arab counterparts in Afrin despite being formally part of the same force; decorated SDF women barred from a ministry that calls their exclusion religious doctrine; an Arab commander punished for choosing to fight in the Kurdish-led SDF instead of HTS — these aren’t isolated grievances.
They’re the same failure recurring: a government that promises integration while building an army that still divides Syrians by gender, ethnicity, and old loyalties.
Washington spent a decade building the SDF into Syria’s most capable counterterrorism force. As al-Idliby put it, the men who stayed loyal are now the ones paying for it.
The United States should not stand by while that investment is dismantled — before the cracks in this process become the fault lines of the next war.
Amy Austin Holmes is the author of three books, including most recently Statelet of Survivors: The Making of a Semi-Autonomous Region in Northeast Syria published by Oxford University Press.
Dr Holmes teaches at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in DC, and is a Research Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University.
She previously served at the State Department through a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Defense Post.
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