The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) held a conference in Hasakah on August 8 entitled “Unifying the Position of the Components of Northern and Eastern Syria.” Along with representatives from the region who attended in person, the conference virtually hosted Hikmat al-Hijri, a spiritual leader of the Druze community, and Ghazal Ghazal, head of the religious committee of the Alawite Islamic Council. 

The conference, held under the slogan “Together for Diversity that Strengthens Our Unity, and Partnership that Builds Our Future,” issued a statement describing the SDF as a vital building block for a new Syrian national army, and arguing that the Autonomous Administration in northeastern Syria provides a collaborative model that can be developed. The statement also called for the establishment of a decentralized state and a review of the interim Constitutional Declaration and Syria’s current administrative divisions, in line with the country’s demographic and developmental realities and reflecting the geographical, historical, and cultural specificities of local communities. 

The statement reiterated the SDF’s commitment to the agreement signed by its Commander Mazloum Abdi and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on March 10, and to the outcomes of the “Kurdish Unity Conference” held on April 26. 

Several motives prompted the SDF to hold the conference, most notably: 

• The declining prospect of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its Syrian branch, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), establishing Kurdish rule in northeastern Syria. This has forced them to reach out to other communities, particularly the Arab tribes, who constitute the majority of the region’s population. The PYD appears to have concluded, after the wave of violence in Suwayda in July, that the Arab tribes will not acquiesce to Kurdish rule, and that what happened in Suwayda could be repeated in the Jazira region of Al-Hasakah were the SDF to press forward with its project. 

• The lack of any external support should the SDF engage in armed conflict with the Syrian government, as demonstrated in the coastal region and Suwayda. Israeli support is beyond the SDF’s reach, and Russia is in the process of turning a new page with Damascus following Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani’s visit to Moscow and meetings with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov—as well as meetings between the countries’ respective defense ministers and intelligence chiefs. Furthermore, the SDF has failed to transfer negotiations to Paris, one of the three capitals the SDF had been counting on as an alternative to fading support from Washington. 

• The red line set by the U.S. and world powers, declaring that the SDF must not cause the kind of chaos that would lead to a security breakdown and allow Islamic State group fighters to escape its prisons in the region, allow the jihadist organization to regroup, or give it access to the tens of thousands of IS family members detained in camps. Washington has openly insisted on the need to implement the March 10 agreement, which it sponsored. 

• The seriousness of Türkiye’s refusal to allow the establishment of a Kurdish enclave on its borders, even if this requires it to intervene militarily to preserve its national security. After 40 years of fighting with the PKK, which ended with a deal under which the party agreed to cease its armed struggle against Ankara and begin surrendering its weapons, Türkiye will not allow northeastern Syria to fall outside the full control of the Syrian government and transform it into a base threatening Turkish national security and hosting PKK members who reject the agreement, alongside as well as members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). There is near-unanimous support for the Turkish position from key powers, with the exceptions of Israel and Iran. 

Finally, the SDF hoped to achieve another key goal from the conference: strengthening its negotiating position vis-à-vis the Syrian government over the implementation of the March 10 agreement. It was notable that the conference statement acknowledged the group’s commitment to the accord and reflected its attempts to secure greater gains from it, given the insistence of Damascus on the need to implement the deal within the agreed timeframe, one based on broad international support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian state.