SDG General Commander Mazlum Abdi announced in a statement at the People’s Palace in Damascus that, under the agreement reached with President Ahmed Şara, the SDG had been dissolved as an independent military force and the process of integration into the Syrian army had been completed.
Abdi said that SDG members would henceforth contribute to the reconstruction of Syria. He said progress had been made with the Damascus administration on the right to education in Kurdish and that efforts would be made to implement decisions in this area within this year. The statement came two days after Abdi said on August 23 that the integration was targeted for completion within August.
Why it matters
This development means that the relationship between the SDG and the Damascus administration will be conducted not through a separate military structure but through new arrangements within the central state institutions. The process directly concerns the restructuring of the Syrian army and those who will take part in postwar reconstruction efforts, particularly SDG members. The progress made on education in Kurdish also creates a new area of implementation in terms of cultural and administrative rights, alongside military integration. However, it remains unclear how these decisions will be implemented on the ground, how the institutional details of the integration will take shape, and within what scope the steps related to education in Kurdish will be carried out during the year. For this reason, the statement sets out the framework of a process whose consequences will become clear during the implementation phase, rather than representing a completed transformation.