The government of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of the al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), signed an agreement on Sunday with American-allied Kurdish forces in the country that dramatically strips away the latter’s autonomy in exchange for Damascus recognizing “Kurdish cultural and linguistic rights.”
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led military force that liberated the former Islamic State “caliph” capital Raqqa with American help, has struggled in the past year to establish a normalized relationship with Sharaa’s jihadi government. The SDF and its political analog, the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), operated largely independently of the former regime of Bashar Assad, who fled the country in December 2024 after HTS had seized control of Aleppo, prompting the collapse of Assad’s armed forces before marching onto the capital.
Read Full Article: https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2026/01/19/syrias-jihadi-government-cuts-deal-for-takeover-of-u-s-friendly-kurdish-forces/
