Syrian Democratic Forces

Overview

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are a Kurdish-led military coalition formed during the Syrian civil war. Its units brought together Kurds, Arabs, Syriac Christians, Turkmen, Yazidis and other communities. The People's Defense Units (YPG) and its associated women's units remained its most influential forces, even as Arab recruitment expanded. By 2025, Arabs accounted for about 65,000 of an estimated 100,000 SDF fighters, a numerical majority that did not give Arab units equal influence over coalition leadership. Under commander Mazloum Abdi, the SDF became the principal local partner of the United States-led campaign against the Islamic State in northeast Syria.

With coalition support, the SDF captured territory formerly held by the Islamic State, including Raqqa, and later governed much of the land east of the Euphrates. At its greatest extent after the Islamic State's territorial defeat, it held roughly 30 percent of Syria. The force also guarded prisons holding Islamic State fighters and camps holding their relatives and other people associated with the group. Those responsibilities made its military position consequential beyond the territory it controlled. At the same time, its close relationship with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a United States-designated terrorist organization, complicated Washington's partnership and sharply worsened relations with Turkey.

Founding and ideology

The SDF emerged in 2015 from Kurdish forces and allied groups fighting the Islamic State. The YPG had been central to the defense of Kobani; Kurdish-led forces subsequently took the Tal Abyad district and advanced toward Raqqa. Formation of a broader coalition enabled Arab and minority fighters to join operations across areas with different populations. Its composition grew as the campaign moved into predominantly Arab territory. Abdi oversaw its development from a smaller Kurdish force into a large military partner of the United States. Military cooperation did not erase differences among its component forces or give every community the same role in command.

The YPG's political and leadership links to the PKK were a defining feature of the SDF. PKK leaders based in the Qandil Mountains exercised deep influence over Syrian Kurdish forces, including leadership development and promotion routes. Abdullah Öcalan's ideas continued to shape the Kurdish core after a 2020 effort to remove non-Syrian PKK cadres collapsed. The SDF nevertheless developed a distinct role in Syria, where Abdi advocated Kurdish rights, local self-government and a decentralized state. He rejected secession and pursued a negotiated place for SDF personnel and institutions within a unified Syrian army and state.

Öcalan's 2025 call for the PKK to disarm and dissolve did not itself disband the SDF. Abdi welcomed the call but maintained that it applied to the PKK, not the SDF's activities in Syria. Turkey pressed for its terms to cover the SDF as well. That disagreement reflected the larger dispute over whether forces organized around the YPG could retain local command or would enter a national army under Damascus's control.

History

The fight for Raqqa gave the new coalition a central place in the Syrian war. In November 2016, the SDF announced Operation Euphrates Wrath to advance on the Islamic State's Syrian stronghold. Its campaign was also a strategic race: a victory by Bashar al-Assad's coalition, backed by Russia, the Iranian regime and the terrorist organization Hezbollah, would have strengthened Assad's position, while a United States-backed capture offered another outcome. Turkey opposed a leading Kurdish role because victory could strengthen Kurdish forces across northern Syria. The SDF needed cooperation from local Arab tribes to take and govern the city, including communities whose members had previously pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

In February 2017, the SDF began a phase of operations intended to cut Raqqa's connections with Deir ez-Zor while advancing from the north and west. Coalition airstrikes destroyed Raqqa's two Euphrates bridges on February 3. United States Marines reached the city's outskirts in March to support the campaign. By late September, SDF forces controlled about 80 percent of Raqqa, while Islamic State fighters still held positions in the center. The city's capture was a major achievement of Operation Inherent Resolve and established the SDF as the principal armed power across much of northeast Syria. Islamic State cells continued to attack its forces around Raqqa with roadside explosives and shootings after the loss of the city.

Farther east, the SDF's September 2017 Island Storm offensive moved toward the Euphrates near Deir ez-Zor with coalition equipment, training, intelligence and logistics. SDF units approached from the northeast while Russian-backed Syrian forces, Shia militias and Hezbollah approached from the west and south. Oil and gas fields along the river's east bank were valuable strategic objectives: their revenue could help finance administration and reconstruction. Control of those fields also affected the contest among the SDF, Assad's government and the Iranian regime over eastern Syria. Between 2016 and 2019, the SDF and international coalition defeated the Islamic State's territorial rule in the areas the SDF subsequently controlled.

Turkish military pressure repeatedly altered the coalition's priorities. During Turkey's 2018 campaign in Afrin, the United States continued supporting SDF operations against the Islamic State in eastern Syria but withheld support from Kurdish forces in Afrin. SDF fighters moved from the lower Euphrates Valley to the Afrin front, slowing operations against the Islamic State. The loss of Afrin became one of the autonomous administration's major territorial setbacks. Turkey and the United States also disputed the SDF's position in Manbij, which the mixed Arab–Kurdish force had taken from the Islamic State in 2016. A subsequent United States–Turkish roadmap for Manbij reflected Ankara's opposition to enduring YPG influence there. An Islamic State suicide bombing against a joint American–Kurdish patrol in Manbij on January 16, 2019, killed 19 people, including four Americans and five Kurdish personnel.

Turkey's later offensive threatened to divide SDF-held territory. After United States troops left Kobani, the SDF invited Syrian government troops into northern border areas, and government forces deployed in the city. Abdi identified Islamic State threats, Turkish attacks, the coronavirus pandemic and an economic blockade as pressures on northeast Syria from 2020 onward. Agreements involving the United States and Russia restrained further Turkish attacks along parts of the border, but they did not resolve the territory's political status.

Assad's government fell on December 8, 2024, opening a new contest over northeast Syria. Syria's new leadership, headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, negotiated with the SDF while fighting continued between Kurdish-led and pro-Turkish forces. By January 28, 2025, al-Sharaa and Abdi had discussed the force's place in a future Syrian army, without settling an integration timetable or the extent of local autonomy. Abdi said the SDF had neither attended Syria's Victory conference nor participated in the decision to appoint al-Sharaa president. Turkey's foreign minister threatened military action in January if the new Syrian government did not act against Kurdish forces.

Al-Sharaa and Abdi signed an agreement on March 10, 2025, to integrate SDF-held institutions into the Syrian state. It provided for state management of northeastern border crossings, an airport and oil and gas fields, while leaving the practical organization of armed forces to further talks. An April 1 arrangement provided for the SDF's formal withdrawal from Aleppo city, joint security checkpoints and a prisoner exchange. A delegation from eastern Syria met the government in Damascus on June 1 to negotiate the integration of military and civilian institutions. By year's end, however, the March agreement remained stalled. Disagreement centered on command of SDF fighters, guarantees for Kurdish rights, local self-government and the power concentrated under al-Sharaa. Fear of the new government's jihadist origins added to SDF resistance to an unprotected transfer of authority.

Structure and leadership

Abdi commanded a coalition whose military strength depended on both its Kurdish core and large Arab contingents. The YPG and associated women's forces remained the most influential units, while Arab formations provided substantial manpower in Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and other areas. The SDF's political counterpart, the Syrian Democratic Council, participated in debates over the territory's future. Qamishli served as an administrative center with military, security and civilian offices. The SDF protected the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, whose institutions governed territory across northeast Syria, including parts of Hasakah governorate.

That administration faced criticism over weak services, suppression of dissent and uneven local representation. In Deir ez-Zor, Arab grievances over governance and local autonomy helped drive resistance to SDF rule. The Assad regime and Iranian regime also sought to exploit unrest to weaken United States-backed control; neither outside involvement nor local grievances alone explains the conflict. In August 2025, members of the Al Naim, Al Bushaaban, Qais Aylan and Al Baqara tribes called for general mobilization against the SDF across Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Hasakah. Hasakah mattered for its oil fields, locally recruited forces, American presence and Islamic State detention sites. In Qamishli, overlapping SDF and Assad-era government control had also given Iranian-backed militias room to expand their influence near coalition forces.

Funding and sponsors

The United States-led coalition provided equipment, training, intelligence and logistical support for SDF operations against the Islamic State. About 2,000 American advisers helped build Kurdish military capabilities during the 2018 campaign. Several hundred American troops were still supporting operations against Islamic State remnants in SDF-held territory east of the Euphrates in 2024. This partnership helped defeat the group's territorial rule and sustain operations afterward, while the SDF's close PKK ties imposed a serious political and strategic cost on United States relations with Turkey.

Control of oil and gas fields gave the SDF-held administration a potential source of revenue for governing and rebuilding northeast Syria. Abdi's March 2025 agreement contemplated transferring management of those fields, along with border crossings and an airport, to Syrian state institutions. Their value made any settlement about integration more than a question of military ranks. They also made Hasakah and the eastern Euphrates attractive targets for rivals seeking to weaken the SDF or the American position.

Attacks and operations

Beyond the campaigns for Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, the SDF conducted continuing operations against Islamic State cells and guarded people captured during the war. In 2023, it oversaw more than 20 detention centers holding approximately 9,000 Islamic State fighters. The Provincial Internal Security Forces center in Hasakah was the largest of these facilities and held most of the fighters detained in Syria. The SDF also held people linked to the Islamic State from more than 60 countries. An August 2025 count recorded about 43,250 people classified as noncombatants in eastern Syrian camps, including approximately 25,000 children younger than twelve. Their custody posed an enduring security and humanitarian challenge.

Conditions in that system affected children as well as captured fighters. On January 31, 2023, the SDF transferred at least ten foreign, non-Iraqi boys from al-Hol to the Orkesh child rehabilitation center in Hasakah without giving their families a reason. Child-soldier recruitment also remained a subject of complaints concerning the SDF. The force investigated some abuse complaints and punished some members. Those steps did not settle wider concerns about recruitment, detention practices or accountability within the institutions it controlled.

The SDF's operations also brought it into direct confrontation with Syrian government forces. On October 6, 2025, local Kurdish fighters and government-aligned security forces clashed in Aleppo's Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods. A United States-mediated ceasefire followed on October 7. The renewed fighting exposed the limits of the earlier Aleppo withdrawal arrangement and of the March integration agreement. It also left Kurdish-majority neighborhoods vulnerable to a larger confrontation as Damascus sought greater control.

Designations and international status

The SDF was a United States military partner against the Islamic State and was not itself designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Its relationship with the PKK, which the United States does designate as a terrorist organization, remained central to criticism of that partnership. Turkey treated the YPG's leading role and PKK links as a threat and opposed continued SDF autonomy along its border. These disputes shaped the Afrin campaign, the Manbij roadmap and later negotiations with Damascus. The SDF's documented battlefield role against the Islamic State and the controversy over PKK influence are both essential to understanding its international position.

The force's external relationships extended beyond Washington and Ankara. Contacts with the Sulaymaniyah-based Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, including interactions involving Bafel Talabani, strained that party's relations with Turkey. A drone strike near Sulaymaniyah Airport targeted a convoy carrying Abdi and three United States military personnel. Within Syria, the SDF's position also depended on arrangements with successive governments in Damascus, Russia's role along the border and the ability of Iranian-backed forces to exploit divided local control.

Current status

Negotiations over the March 2025 agreement continued without practical progress through late 2025. Abdi announced an agreement in principle on a mechanism for military integration in mid-October, but Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said on November 13 that talks had produced no practical result. Damascus later presented an integration proposal and reviewed the SDF's response. One framework would place SDF personnel in three Syrian army divisions and two special battalions. A later requirement that fighters, including those from the YPG core, join individually would give Damascus command over personnel formerly organized in SDF units. The SDF had sought local control of its forces and opposed Syrian army entry into its territory without adequate security guarantees, particularly after sectarian violence by forces aligned with Damascus.

Fighting escalated in January 2026. Syrian army units surrounded Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh, and on January 7 declared them closed military zones, warning civilians to avoid SDF positions. Government forces then advanced through contested territory west of the Euphrates, including Deir Hafer and Maskanah, and took Tabqa in Raqqa province. The confrontation reached territory near SDF-held Islamic State prisons. On January 15, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Turkey preferred a peaceful settlement but regarded force by Syria's government as an option. Turkey's opposition to lasting SDF autonomy continued to press on Damascus's negotiations.

On January 18, the SDF and Syrian government announced a tentative ceasefire that called for transferring administration of Islamic State detention facilities and camps to the government. Fighting continued on January 19 near facilities holding detainees. The situation around sites including Al-Shaddadi exposed the danger of a rapid change in prison control during active combat. Reports that the SDF had regained Ghweiran prison likewise did not immediately end the crisis there: Islamic State fighters still held part of the facility. After battlefield setbacks in mid-January, the SDF reached a January 30 understanding allowing Damascus to expand security control in remaining SDF areas. The future command of its fighters, the protection of local communities and responsibility for Islamic State detainees remained central to the force's place in Syria.