Security forces with Syria's new government inspect police vehicles in the town of Jableh on March 10. (Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images)
BEIRUT — Syria’s interim government on Monday reached a landmark deal with Kurdish-led authorities to bring the oil-rich northeast under its control, a major win for President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has said he wants to unify the nation but is now under scrutiny after a wave of sectarian killings roiled the country’s northwest over the weekend.
The agreement was signed in Damascus during a meeting between Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish majority militia backed by the United States. It recognizes Kurds, who make up about 10 percent of the population, as “an indigenous community of the Syrian state” and guarantees them full political and constitutional rights. The deal also calls for the integration of “all civil and military institutions in northeastern Syria” with the administration in Damascus, giving Sharaa and his government access to the region’s airports, border crossings and lucrative oil fields.
The Kurds had carved out a semiautonomous region in the midst of Syria’s civil war, and their fighters, backed by U.S. airpower, vanquished the Islamic State group in 2019. Then Syrian rebels led by Sharaa, a onetime insurgent, toppled President Bashar al-Assad in December, and negotiations began to bring the SDF and the territory it controlled under the rule of the new Syrian state.
“In this sensitive period, we are working together to ensure a transitional phase that reflects our people’s aspirations for justice and stability,” Abdi posted on X. “We are committed to building a better future that guarantees the rights of all Syrians and fulfills their aspirations for peace and dignity. We consider this agreement as a real opportunity to build a new Syria that embraces all its components.”
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The statement announcing the agreement came just hours after interim authorities said they had ended military operations against Assad loyalists in northwestern Syria. Over the weekend, hundreds of people were killed after clashes between largely Sunni government forces and a nascent insurgency spiraled into sectarian violence against Alawite communities in Tartus and Latakia, along the Syrian coast.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights, which has tracked abuses in Syria since 2011, documented at least 779 deaths between March 6 and March 10, executive director Fadel Abdul Ghany said. Assad is a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that governed Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority for nearly five decades.
The fighting in Syria’s Alawite heartland erupted on Friday after a government convoy was ambushed in Beit Ana, a town in Latakia province. Locals there said the attack was in response to the violence and discrimination they’ve faced since the new government took over. The ensuing gun battles — and later, massacres — were the bloodiest since Assad’s fall.
In an interview with Reuters on Monday, Sharaa acknowledged that armed groups who once fought Assad descended on the coast and “many violations occurred.” The operation against former regime’s remnants “became an opportunity for revenge,” he said, adding that the killings threatened efforts to unify Syria. It “will impact this path,” Sharaa told the news agency, but vowed to “rectify the situation as much as we can.”
Hundreds of government forces were also killed in the fighting, Sharaa and human rights monitors said. He also appointed a committee, including Alawites, to investigate the killings.
In a statement, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Hassan Abdul Ghani said government forces were able to “neutralize the security cells and the remnants of the defunct regime” and that plans were in place to continue pursuing Assad loyalists. He said the ministry would cooperate with the committee.
“We will give the investigation committee the full opportunity to uncover the circumstances of the events, verify the facts and provide justice to the oppressed,” Abdul Ghani said.
But while the violence appeared to slow on Monday, many residents are still displaced and say they are afraid to go back home. One resident from Barmiya in Tartus province, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said that she was still hiding in the woods after fleeing gunmen she described as targeting Alawites. “Our only sin is that we are Alawites,” she said in a phone interview. “We are honorable Alawites. We have nothing to do with the rest of the [former] regime.”
Many Syrians have fled into neighboring Lebanon, which already hosts an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees. Around 100,000 people, mainly Alawites and Shiite Muslims, also crossed into Lebanon after Assad was overthrown.
On Monday, Syrian state media reported that military police arrested two fighters who were shown in a video clip “committing illegal and bloody violations against civilians in a coastal village.” It was unclear to which faction the fighters belonged.
Abbie Cheeseman in Beirut and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed reporting.