Syrian government troops kept up their dizzying advance against the Syrian Democratic Forces on Sunday, gaining nearly full control of Raqqa, the erstwhile capital of the Islamic State, which was seized almost nine years ago by the Kurdish-led militia with the help of the United States.
Hours later, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced what amounted to the effective capitulation of the Kurdish-led militia that is widely viewed as having some of the toughest and bravest women and male fighters in the region. Syrian state media published an image of Sharaa holding the text of an agreement whose terms broadly favor Damascus, according to images of the text circulated online. The agreement is said to have been endorsed by the SDF commander in chief, Mazlum Kobane, who was meant to have traveled to Damascus today to sign the document in the presence of the US Syria envoy Tom Barrack. Kobane is said to have ultimately signed the document remotely, rather than in person in Damascus.
In a post on X, Barrack commended the sides for their “constructive efforts” and for “paving the way for renewed dialogue and cooperation toward a unified Syria.”
“Two great Syrian leaders, driven by the shared visions of liberating their country and people from tyranny, have now come together to forge a brighter future for all Syrians,” Barrack noted.
The United States commends the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) for their constructive efforts in reaching today’s ceasefire agreement, paving the way for renewed dialogue and cooperation toward a unified Syria.
Two great Syrian leaders, driven by the…
— Ambassador Tom Barrack (@USAMBTurkiye) January 18, 2026
The SDF commander had not publicly commented on the accord as of the time of publication of this article. If anything, the visions of the two men could not be further apart. Sharaa insists on a tightly centralized model of government. The Kurds have been campaigning to preserve their autonomous civilian and military structures consolidated over nearly 14 years of US-protected self rule. Sharaa is an Islamist, whereas Kobane and the SDF are determinedly secular and actively promote gender equality.
The agreement, if fully implemented, would likely mark a definitive end to the Syrian Kurds’ hopes for political autonomy and a massive political win for Sharaa as he seeks to extend his grip over the country after a year of shaky and violent rule that saw the mass killings of Alawites and Druze last year. Observers say many of the agreement’s provisions will take months, if not years, to be enforced.
An Arabic language version of the agreement bore Kobane’s signature and was shared by Syrian information minister, Hamza al-Mustafa, on X.
The agreement establishes a comprehensive ceasefire across all frontlines and lines of contact between the SDF and government forces and calls for the full and immediate military and administrative handover of the Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor governorates — along with all border crossings, oil fields and gas fields in the region — to the Syrian government. It also calls for the full integration of the SDF military and security personnel into the structures of the Syrian ministries of defense and interior on an individual basis. This represents a major concession by the SDF, which had been pressing to retain several divisions and brigades. Damascus had initially agreed on the latter, but hardened its position after an earlier meeting between the sides on Jan. 4. All the SDF was left with was a local police force for the town of Kobani, which borders Turkey.
However, heavy weapons are to be withdrawn from Kobani, which became a symbol of Kurdish resistance when it was besieged by ISIS in 2014. In another critical change, administration of ISIS prisons and camps housing militants’ families will be transferred to the central government. Guardianship of those facilities had been a key source of leverage for the SDF in its dealings with the US-led coalition against ISIS.
There is no reference to self-rule or full ethnic rights. Instead, the agreement references Friday’s surprise decree signed by Sharaa, which designates Kurdish as a “national,” but not official, language and recognizes the March 21, Kurdish New Year, as an official holiday.
The speed with which Sharaa’s forces took over Arab-majority areas — they did so in 48 hours — is likely to have hastened Kobane’s apparent decision to cave to US pressure and sign the deal. Arab tribes defecting from the SDF in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in large numbers will not have helped its case.
But the biggest factor is the lack of US backing. The “betrayal,” as many angry Kurds on social media framed it, was in hindsight hardly one at all. A now retired top State Department official, Jonathan Cohen, had described US policy towards the SDF as early as 2017, saying relations were “temporary, transactional, and tactical,” during a panel at the Middle East Institute in Washington. Successive US administrations have studiously avoided cultivating political ties with the SDF, treating it largely as a “security company,” a regional official told Al-Monitor.
Another factor is the Jan. 6 deconfliction deal between Syria and Israel that was reached in Paris through US mediation.
The agreement appears to have persuaded Israel to ease its rhetoric promoting Druze and Kurdish autonomy, as well as its repeated military strikes on Syrian targets.
There was no reaction from any Israeli leaders as government forces took control of Syria’s largest oil fields in the eastern part of Deir ez-Zor from the SDF earlier in the day. They include control of the Al-Omar and Tanak fields, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
On Saturday, the Syrian military captured another key city, Tabqa, that is situated next to Syria’s primary reservoir on the Euphrates River, Lake Assad.
Scenes of local Arabs welcoming their town’s liberation by government forces proved what the Syrian Kurdish leadership long denied, that with Bashar al-Assad overthrown in December 2024, they no longer wanted to be ruled over by them.
A return of the Arab-majority territories has been a long-running demand of Sharaa in US-brokered talks for the Kurdish-run third of the country to be reintegrated with Damascus. Without the oil fields, the Syrian Kurdish administration will be deprived of the bulk of its income, making their entity ever more unviable.
The integration talks have teetered on the brink of collapse since Jan. 6, when Damascus sent its forces against two Kurdish-majority neighborhoods in Aleppo demanding that armed Kurdish fighters leave the city, which they did after days of heavy clashes. In a bid to further deescalate tensions, Kobane ordered the withdrawal of his troops from Deir Hafer and Meskeneh, east of Aleppo, ahead of what US diplomats and Iraqi Kurdish officials hoped would be a groundbreaking meeting between the SDF commander and Barrack on Saturday in Erbil.
It was widely assumed that Sharaa’s troops would halt their advance and not cross east of the Euphrates river which has served as an informal line demarcating the areas under SDF control from the rest of the country.
However, the meeting ended inconclusively as government forces escalated their offensive, and a day later, “it was all over,” in the words of a Syrian Kurd involved in track two diplomacy between the sides who spoke on background to Al-Monitor.
Another big winner is Turkey. The agreement mirrors nearly all of the conditions it has been seeking from Syrian Kurdish officials, namely the complete dismantling of the SDF and disempowerment of the autonomous administration. The agreement also notes that the SDF is committed to the ejection of all non-Syrian members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leaders and members “outside the borders of the Syrian Arab Republic to ensure sovereignty and regional stability.” It does not say where the PKK militants would go.
Ankara has touted the close links between the SDF and the PKK as justification for multiple invasions of northern Syria where it is believed to have more than 10,000 troops. Since 2024, Turkey has been in secret talks with the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in quest of an agreement that would dissolve the PKK along with the SDF over which he also holds some sway. The PKK announced in May last year that it was disbanding and laying down its weapons in response to Ocalan’s call for them to do so in a message that was released in February. The SDF, unlike Ankara, insisted that Ocalan’s orders did not apply to them. As of today, that point is looking moot.
