Aug 28 (Reuters) – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa appointed the former commander of a now-dissolved Kurdish-led fighting force as a presidential adviser on Friday, reflecting a rapprochement \u200cbetween the two long-time civil war adversaries.<\/p>\n
For over a decade, Mazloum Abdi led \u200cthe Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which aligned with the U.S. to fight Islamic State and seize swathes of northern \u200band eastern Syria during the country’s war to create a semi-autonomous zone.<\/p>\n
After former President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in late 2024 by a rebel coalition led by Sharaa, Syria’s new Islamist-led authorities insisted that SDF-run territory and institutions must be integrated into the state.<\/p>\n
The integration process stalled for \u200cmore than a year, until a \u2060lightning January offensive by Syrian government forces against Abdi’s fighters produced a roadmap to merge the SDF into the Damascus-based authorities.<\/p>\n
Abdi announced on \u2060Tuesday that the SDF would formally dissolve, hailing the start of a new phase of “peace and participation in the construction of the new Syria”.<\/p>\n
His appointment as a presidential adviser was announced in a \u200bdecree issued \u200bby Sharaa. It was not clear whether the \u200brole would be purely ceremonial.<\/p>\n
APPOINTMENT FOLLOWS \u200cYEARS OF DISTRUST<\/p>\n
Under Abdi, the SDF and its affiliated institutions introduced governing structures that were co-chaired by a man and a woman in a bid to foster equality.<\/p>\n
It fought ultraconservative groups, including Islamic State and al Qaeda’s local branch, which was once headed by Sharaa, before he broke off ties with the organisation.<\/p>\n
Under the integration, SDF fighters are being incorporated into \u200cSyria’s Defence Ministry, including senior figures who had been \u200bcritical of the ruling Syrian administration.<\/p>\n
During the fighting in \u200bJanuary, leading Kurdish commander Sipan Hamo \u200bsuggested Israel should carry out airstrikes on Syrian troops. After the integration \u200cdeal was announced a few weeks later, \u200bhe was appointed deputy \u200bdefence minister.<\/p>\n
The question of how the SDF’s female fighters will be integrated into the nation’s armed forces, which otherwise have no female troops, has yet to be \u200bresolved.<\/p>\n
Turkey, a close ally of \u200cSharaa, welcomed the dissolution of the SDF, which it long accused of links to \u200bits own outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Hatem Maher;Writing by \u200bNayera Abdallah;Editing by Maya Gebeily and Helen Popper)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug 28 (Reuters) – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa appointed the former commander of a now-dissolved Kurdish-led fighting force…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[73423,672,73334,73424,3884,279,1433,30223,351,2667,26080,95,35906,10741,2507],"class_list":["post-268105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-abdi","tag-ahmed-al-sharaa","tag-aug-28","tag-bashar-al-assads","tag-islamic","tag-islamic-state","tag-kurdish","tag-mazloum-abdi","tag-reuters","tag-sdf","tag-sharaa","tag-syria","tag-syrias","tag-syrian","tag-syrian-democratic-forces"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117173315338797730","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}