Sheikh Maqsoud and the Changing Course of SDF Integration

Conduct of the Syrian army and what the loss means for Damascus-SDF negotiations

On January 10, forces of the transitional government in Damascus took full control control over Aleppo city for the first time since they had entered the area in November 2024. Since then, three neighborhoods - Ashrafiyah, Beni Zeid, and Sheikh Maqsoud - had remained under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which also controls the northeast of the country. SDF units had controlled Sheikh Maqsoud, a majority Kurdish neighborhood, for the entire war, but had expanded to the other two neighborhoods when regime forces in the city collapsed amidst the Syrian opposition’s offensive on November 27, 2024.

The five-day battle for the neighborhoods this month marked the first major turning point in the year-long Damascus-SDF negotiations over the broader fate of the autonomous Kurdish government and its armed force. Control over these three neighborhoods allowed the SDF to periodically close the main northern entrances to Aleppo via sniping and drone attacks. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, SDF snipers had killed 65 civilians in just the first two months after the fall of the regime. The April 1 agreement between the two sides had, theoretically, demilitarized the neighborhoods. Yet the SDF had maintained heavy weapons such as anti-aircraft machine guns, rockets, and an extensive stockpile of weaponized drones, and had continued expanding its tunnel system throughout the neighborhoods.

After nine months of stagnating talks on Damascus-SDF integration, the territorial changes this past week have reset the table. Yet despite the diplomatic gains the successful operation has brought Damascus, it also refocused the domestic and international spotlight on the conduct of its armed forces. Syria’s new army has, in its one-year history, built a long record of human rights abuses and war crimes, particularly when used against minority dissident movements. It had been six months since the last government military operation prior to the Aleppo battle; how did the Ministry of Defense’s conduct change, if at all, this time? And what does the victory in Sheikh Maqsoud mean for Damascus-SDF negotiations going forward?

Changing Conduct of the Syrian Army

This was the government’s third major military operation since December 2024. The prior two operations in the coast in March and Suwayda in July had seen widespread human rights abuses, field executions, and looting against Alawi and Druze communities. Despite their differences, both operations were heavily marred by a lack of a clear chain of command and coordination between the various government forces, the participation of unauthorized armed security personnel and civilians, and extensive violations against civilians as well as captured militants.

The battle in Aleppo differed significantly from both of these previous events in, 1) how the military leadership commanded the operation, 2) the army’s ability to keep non-authorized armed men out of the battle, and 3) the type and scale of violations.

These changes began at the highest levels of command. Damascus took a more slow and methodical approach to the clashes in Aleppo. Political and military leaders in Damascus made repeated attempts at negotiating an end to the fighting, even as they mobilized army units and after beginning operations, according to several mediators involved. Government media was also highly transparent about who was leading this battle, publishing pictures of the MoD operations room. From these, it is clear that the battle was commanded by the MoD’s Chief of Staff, the Deputy Minister of Defense for the Northern Region, the commanders of the 60th, 72nd, and 98th Divisions, and the commander of the Ministry of Interior’s Internal Security in Aleppo.

With this more structured senior-level command chain came a more deliberate approach towards the deployment of government forces in the battle. A smaller number of units were brought to the city compared to what was used in Suwayda or the coast, and this time there was close coordination between the MoD and MoI, with police units deploying rapidly into civilian areas as they were captured and senior MoI commanders directly overseeing the detention of POWs.

The coordination between the two ministries was crucial for addressing several of the government’s major failures in the prior operations. As outlined in depth by a recent al-Majalla article:

“To prevent any acts of revenge or abuses during the military operation, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior, through their checkpoints, prohibited the participation of any personnel from either ministry whose name was not on the list of forces authorized to enter the two neighborhoods.”

Syria expert Elizabeth Tsurkov had spoken with one soldier, based in rural Aleppo, who had tried to join the battle on his own but was prevented by his unit commander. A General Security officer she spoke with in Aleppo city confirmed that they had been tasked with ensuring no one other than the approved units were entering the frontlines. The inability to do this had been a major problem in both prior massacres, and it is an important baseline ability for the government to prevent unauthorized armed men from entering conflict zones.

In addition to this, military, police, and local government officials coordinated extremely closely to create daily humanitarian pauses and facilitate the evacuation of civilians from both the SDF-held areas and from government-held neighborhoods close to the fighting. These displaced people were met by civil defense and humanitarian workers and brought to more than a dozen aid centers and temporary shelters within Aleppo city and the Afrin and Azaz countryside. The army, as reported by al-Majalla, also published 12 detailed coordinates and maps of the main SDF command and weapons storage points which would be targeted each day, helping to reduce the number of potential civilian casualties.

As a result of these efforts, more than 155,000 civilians were able to flee to fighting, with most having already returned to their homes since the battle ended. The resources and coordination placed on the humanitarian response during the battle, combined with the seemingly effective efforts to prevent unauthorized armed groups from entering the area, resulted in far fewer civilian deaths than in the coast and Suwayda operations. At the end of the battle, SDF leadership reported that 47 civilians had been killed in Sheikh Maqsoud. However, this number may rise, with neighborhood officials reporting on January 13 that 271 people are still missing.

Altogether, the MoD’s continued efforts at professionalizing its force - from the senior levels down - has clearly had some impact. That being said, government forces still committed violations throughout the operation, yet the scale and types of crimes are very different from the prior operations. According to initial assessments by the Kurdish human rights organization Hevdesti, there is widespread documentation of “public humiliation, threats, arbitrary detention, and degrading treatment” towards civilian detainees and SDF prisoners (much of this is easily verifiable in public footage). These types of violations, particularly the degrading treatment of detainees, shows a continued failure by the Ministry of Defense to enforce discipline across its forces.

The Syrian army’s conduct in Aleppo was inarguably improved compared to that of the coast and Suwayda, particularly with regards to the extreme reduction in violations against civilians, such as executions, looting, and beatings. Furthermore, the coastal massacres in particular were dominated by field executions of detained insurgents, something which, based on initial assessments, seems to have at least been very rare during the Aleppo operation. Still, the widespread use of derogatory language and physical mistreatment of captured SDF fighters shows that the government has failed to fully ingrain respect for human rights and fear of accountability among all members. Despite the structural and behavioral improvements that have been made, the MoD must continue to address this lack of discipline and the recurring violations that we have seen.

Potential Impacts on Future Negotiations

How Damascus’ forces behaved during the Aleppo operation will be closely examined by the international community and will have a large impact on their reaction to any future clashes between Damascus and the SDF. Unfortunately, it seems all but guaranteed that fighting will now expand to the eastern front. Damascus will continue to maintain a diplomatic line to the SDF, but the negotiating positions between the two sides have now been reset, with Damascus clearly in the stronger position.

This most recent round of fighting began on January 5 in eastern Aleppo, along the Deir Hafer frontline, when an SDF suicide drone struck a STG Military Police truck. The attack came one day after the last round of direct talks between the two sides following months of negotiations on how the SDF could integrate into the new state. As Charles Lister wrote in a recent piece, Damascus had been offering the SDF a security-focused deal which would see the SDF’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) integrated directly into local Ministry of Interior units, the SDF itself being restructured into three divisions which would be responsible for Hasakah, Deir Ez Zor, and Raqqa, the YPJ and counter-terrorism forces being given their own regiments, and several senior MoD positions assigned to SDF commanders, including the Deputy Minister for the Eastern Region. In exchange, these forces - essentially just the SDF but restructured and with new names - would have to report to Damascus.

Yet the SDF’s leadership has repeatedly rejected this offer on several grounds. The most critical dispute, according to several involved mediators, was over access to the northeast. In the last series of talks just before the outbreak of clashes in Aleppo, the SDF had insisted that the integration deal would have to require any police or military convoy of more than five cars receive SDF permission and escort to enter the northeast. In other words, the SDF’s territory would remain semi-autonomous. SDF negotiators were over the past year seemingly pursuing a strategy of drawing out the negotiations in the assumption that Damascus’ position would weaken; whether through internal divisions or international intervention against the new government.

Then Damascus took Sheikh Maqsoud in five days, suffering minimal losses, and showing a marked improvement in the behavior of its forces. Sheikh Maqsoud had been under the control of the YPG, which forms the core of the SDF, since 2012 and had withstood attacks from opposition factions in 2016. The rapid loss of this symbolically and strategically important neighborhood has not just exposed the weakness of the SDF, but the SDF’s failure to genuinely engage in diplomacy before and during the operation has undermined its legitimacy as a negotiating partner. The battle also undermined the SDF’s domestic and international image by exposing its continued and self-admitted use of child soldiers and suicide bombers, and its ongoing recruitment of ex-regime soldiers tied to Alawi insurgent groups.

The final hours of the Sheikh Maqsoud operation saw ongoing negotiations for the surrender of the remaining SDF fighters in the neighborhood, who were offered safe passage to the northeast. Amid these talks, the SDF launched more than a dozen suicide drones at Aleppo city, likely from their positions in Deir Hafer in the eastern Aleppo countryside. One of these drones struck the Aleppo Municipal Office at the same time or just after a press conference was held there by the Minister of Information, Minister of Social Affairs, and Governor of Aleppo. Another suicide drone attack was reported around 7pm hitting near a mosque in the city center.

These final attacks ensured that the tensions between the two sides will now expand east. On January 14, the Ministry of Defense announced that it would open a humanitarian corridor on the Deir Hafer front from 9am until 5pm for civilians to leave the frontline. It appears that Damascus is pursuing the same strategy it used in Aleppo: keeping the door open to a peaceful withdrawal of SDF forces and continuing integration talks while making it clear that it will use military force otherwise to achieve confined objectives.

The SDF will not be able to hold Deir Hafer, a rural area entirely consisting of Arab villages that it only took from the retreating Assad regime forces in early December 2024. Once Damascus’ forces have reached the Euphrates, either by force or by negotiation, there will likely be another military pause and new round of talks. This time, however, the SDF’s position will be far weaker and its room to maneuver far smaller.

The SDF’s leadership can still gain something from engaging earnestly with Damascus and through the existing third-party mediators. The previous deal, including three military divisions and senior leadership positions, may now be off the table. But Damascus has already pursued a localized approach to both its administrative and security structures. Securing genuine local governance and a central role in local security for Kurdish communities in the northeast is not out of reach.

Finding a Peaceful Resolution

The SDF-Damascus dispute has come to a head, with Damascus likely to re-enter the northeast in the coming months, if not weeks. How this happens remains to be seen. Damascus has clearly shifted its approach to the SDF, opening the door to a military ‘solution’ to the long-standing dispute, but at the same time it has not closed the door to a diplomatic approach.

In his January 13 interview, President Sharaa spoke at length about the rights and roles of Kurds in Syria, including that, “The rights of the Kurdish community are also non-negotiable: their right to citizenship, participation in parliament, holding sovereign positions, and so on.” Kurdish political and citizenship rights are not at threat by this new government.

However, there are still serious risks that renewed violence between Damascus and the SDF will result in human rights violations from both sides. The current frontlines are now along entirely Arab regions, but this does not mean that the prisoner mistreatment violations committed by the Syrian army will not be repeated against Arab detainees. The Aleppo operation was a success for Damascus, but it has sharpened international scrutiny towards its military’s conduct. A diplomatic solution between Damascus and the SDF would still benefit each side more than a drawn out military confrontation which will see new civilian displacements, deaths, and destruction.

New diplomatic talks should now shift away from the pure security focus of the past several months, given the SDF’s weakened military position. Instead, talks should focus on securing Kurdish cultural, language, and political rights, enshrining women’s participation in governance in the northeast, and ensuring that Kurdish communities will continue to have a role in their local security.