Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa reached out to prominent Kurdish leaders early last week in a bid to solidify a fragile ceasefire and ease long-running tensions in the country’s northeast, Kurdish sources told Middle East Eye.
The sources said that on Tuesday, less than 48 hours after a ceasefire was signed between Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Sharaa visited the Kurdish-majority city of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, where he held a private meeting with 15 influential community leaders.
The visit came on the heels of an unannounced tour of Syria’s Tabqa Dam, which government forces recently captured from SDF forces, the sources said.
During the meeting in Kobane, a town that was ravaged by fighting between the so-called Islamic State group (IS) and Kurdish fighters in 2015, Sharaa told the Kurdish leaders that their rights would be protected under his new government.
The sources said Sharaa also said that for the first time since the country’s founding, Kurdish civil and cultural rights would be recognised.
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For years, the SDF governed vast swathes of northeastern Syria and acted as Washington’s key partner against IS. But a shift in US policy last month saw Washington pivot towards Sharaa’s transitional government, a move critics say weakened Kurdish leverage.
In the weeks that followed, Syrian government forces consolidated their control of the country’s north, seizing former SDF-held areas including Aleppo, Raqqa and Deir Ezzor.
Government troops also captured key oilfields, agricultural land and prisons holding suspected IS fighters.
The Kurdish sources told MEE that Sharaa, emboldened by the 18 January ceasefire deal, strongly criticised the SDF during the meeting.
“They do not care about Kurdish rights. All they want is a piece of land to control and fight from,” Sharaa reportedly told the leaders about the SDF.
“I will not allow this to happen. We want to stop the fighting [and unify Syria],” he added.
The sources said that the Kurdish delegates left the meeting feeling largely reassured despite concerns persisting over broader political questions.
Barrack left visibly angry
Sharaa’s outreach with the Kurds came days after he hosted SDF chief Mazloum Abdi in Damascus.
As reported by MEE last week, the ceasefire deal was signed a day after Abdi held a tense meeting with the US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack.
During that meeting, Barrack – who has repeatedly advocated for a unified state – accused Abdi of trying to drag Israel into Syria’s internal matters and of delaying the implementation of a March 2025 integration deal that was supposed to see the SDF merge with the Syrian army by the end of 2025.
Two separate Syrian sources told MEE that in the wake of that meeting, on 19 January, Sharaa hosted Abdi in Damascus, where they held a five-hour meeting.
The sources said that Sharaa told Abdi to implement the previous day’s ceasefire agreement and offered him the opportunity to nominate candidates to serve as deputy minister of defence and the governor of Hasakah.
Exclusive: US envoy accused SDF chief of trying to drag Israel into internal Syria matters, sources say
Sharaa also told Abdi to provide a list of candidates who would represent Hasakah governorate in the People’s Assembly.
However, Abdi reportedly walked back on the commitments he signed, and demanded full autonomy for Hasakah governorate, the integration of the SDF into the Syrian army as military units rather than as individuals, and a five-day period to discuss the terms of the agreement with other SDF commanders, during which the Syrian army would halt its advance on the Jazira region.
The sources said that Barrack, who attended the first half of the meeting, left visibly angry after Abdi reneged on the deal he had brokered.
The sources said that Barrack briefed Washington shortly afterwards, prompting US President Donald Trump to call Sharaa.
During the call, Trump stressed the need for Syria’s unity and urged Sharaa to secure detention facilities holding suspected IS fighters, which the SDF had reportedly evacuated without coordination with Damascus.
MEE reached out to the US State Department for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Neither the Syrian government nor the SDF has publicly commented on the details of the meetings.
Sharaa, whose forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in a lightning offensive in late 2024, has vowed to bring all of Syria under state control, including the remaining SDF-held areas in the northeast.
Under the ceasefire announced earlier this month, Damascus gave the SDF four days to present a plan for merging its remaining enclaves, pledging that government forces would not enter Hasakah or Qamishli if an agreement was reached. The ceasefire was extended by 15 days soon after it expired on Saturday.