August 31, 2026 | The National Interest
Saying Goodbye to the Syrian Democratic Forces
During the fight against ISIS, the SDF proved that the Kurds were useful allies to the United States. Now they may prove equally useful to the new Syrian government.
August 31, 2026 | The National Interest
Saying Goodbye to the Syrian Democratic Forces
During the fight against ISIS, the SDF proved that the Kurds were useful allies to the United States. Now they may prove equally useful to the new Syrian government.
Excerpt
On August 25, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazloum Abdi announced the dissolution of the Kurdish-led alliance of militias. Abdi commanded the SDF throughout the last decade during its battle with ISIS in central and eastern Syria alongside the United States. He then navigated competing Turkish, Iranian, Russian, and US influences in Syria. With the SDF’s dissolution, the new Syrian government will have an opportunity to benefit and learn from the US-backed force’s accomplishments.
The US-led Operation Inherent Resolve backed the SDF’s creation as a counter-force to defeat ISIS in 2014. ISIS had at that point swept across a wide swath of Syria and Iraq, leaving massacres and destruction in its wake. It targeted minority groups, such as the Yazidis in Iraq, for extermination and enslavement. Defeating ISIS was a complex endeavor since it required the cooperation of various and fractious groups on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border.
The SDF was the main US partner force in Syria. It’s worth recalling that back in 2015, when the SDF was founded, Syria was partly controlled by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which Russia and Iran supported. Consequently, Washington did not view Assad as a reliable partner in the fight against ISIS. The other alternative was the Syrian rebel groups, some of which were backed by Turkey. Ankara suggested using these groups to help fight ISIS. However, the groups were not well organized at the time, and the United States had already found partnering with the rebel groups against the regime to be a complex operation with mixed results.
The SDF grew out of the Kurdish Syrian People’s Defense Units (YPG). Turkey accused this group of close links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the United States and Turkey label as a terrorist group. A direct partnership with the YPG was, therefore, out of the question. The United States and the anti-ISIS forces took a novel approach and crafted an umbrella group of militias including more groups beyond the Kurdish minority in eastern Syria. The Kurds had largely freed themselves from ISIS control by this time, having held off ISIS at the siege of Kobane in late 2014.
Seth Frantzman is the author of Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machine, Artificial Intelligence and the Battle for the Future (Bombardier 2021) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.