When the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced they would withdraw from the northeastern Syrian cities of Raqqa and Deir Az Zor on January 18, images immediately began to spread of spontaneous celebrations from populations in the two Arab-majority cities.

But the latest convulsion in Syria is a tale of two communities.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

“The reaction of the people of the region to the entry of the Syrian state and its control over the region is indescribable,” Adnan Khadeir, an Arab resident of Deir Az Zor, told Al Jazeera. “There was overwhelming joy at the liberation.”

Khadeir said many people in the region feared the SDF’s repression.

“I was unable to criticise the [SDF] and the biggest fear among the people of the region was forced conscription,” he said. “The situation is much better than before.”

But in areas of the northeast with larger Kurdish populations, residents told Al Jazeera that fear over the government’s military incursions had gripped the local population.

Though the area has also experienced many violent episodes during the last 15 years of war, particularly present in their minds was a repeat of sectarian killings similar to those that erupted along the Syrian coast involving Alawite in Latakia and Druze in Suwayda in the south in 2025.

“Fear is widespread, and it is a real fear based on documented experiences,” Abbas Musa, the coordinator of the Missing Persons’ Families Platform in North and East Syria (MPFP-NES), told Al Jazeera from Qamishli, a Kurdish-majority city on the border with Turkiye.

Damascus ‘has all the cards’

After the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024, the SDF controlled most of the country’s resource-rich northeast, about a quarter of Syrian territory.

Advertisement

Discussions ensued between the group and President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government about how to bring the region under the control of the new authorities and how to integrate SDF fighters into the government’s forces.

An agreement was signed on March 10 between the two sides, which promised the SDF’s integration into the new Syrian Armed Forces by the end of 2025. Still, disagreements remained over whether SDF fighters would integrate individually or retain their battalions. The SDF also wanted some form of autonomy or political decentralisation for the northeast.

But clashes in Aleppo and a rapid government offensive pushed the SDF back. The offensive was bolstered by an alliance of sorts with tribes in Deir Az Zor and Raqqa, and support from the US, which signalled that its yearlong support for the SDF may be ending.

“…the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired, as Damascus is now both willing and positioned to take over security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention facilities and camps,” US Special Envoy Tom Barrack wrote on social media platform X.

“It’s very much clear the US gave the green light for advances from the government in Deir Az Zor,” Thomas McGee, the Max Weber Fellow specialising on Syria at the European University Institute in Florence, told Al Jazeera.

With this new reality on the ground, a new deal was agreed on January 18 that gave more favourable terms to Damascus.

“The March agreement has been replaced by the January deal signed under military duress on Damascus’s terms,” Nanar Hawach, International Crisis Group (ICG)’s senior Syria analyst, told Al Jazeera. “Both parties have agreed to individual integration: SDF fighters join the Syrian army as individuals, not preserved units. This was Damascus’s core demand.”

Mazloum Abdi (also known as Mazloum Kobani), the SDF commander, has also reportedly been offered positions as either deputy defence minister or governor of Hasakah.

“It seems like the government has all the cards,” Alexander McKeever, author of the newsletter This Week in Northern Syria, told Al Jazeera from Damascus.

Kurdish fears

An extended 15-day ceasefire was agreed on Saturday, though analysts and observers said clashes were ongoing. They also said the ceasefire was likely brokered by the US to move ISIL (ISIS) fighters imprisoned in the area to Iraq, before the beginning of a more intense government offensive.

Many residents of Deir Az Zor and Raqqa celebrated the Syrian government’s entering their areas. Videos spread on social media of locals stomping on yellow SDF flags and waving the green, white and black Syrian flag. On Saturday, the Syrian Ministry of Justice announced it had released 126 juveniles from al-Aqtan, an SDF prison in the Raqqa province.

Advertisement

But as the Syrian Army continued its offensive, residents of Kurdish-majority areas have expressed fears that massacres inflicted on the coast or in Suwayda last year could repeat in the northeast.

Analysts said recent history has shaken this population to the core. From 2014 to 2017, a genocide of the Yazidi people, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority, was committed by ISIL. Other incidents involved Turkiye or Turkish-backed groups, some of which were incorporated into the Syrian army, including an invasion in Afrin in 2018. Many families are still displaced from Afrin.

“Kurdish fear is existential, grounded in what they’ve witnessed over the past year and experienced directly this month,” ICG’s Hawach said. “The Syrian army includes factions that view Kurds as enemies, not fellow citizens. This creates genuine fears about what government control could mean.”

In Kobane, a Kurdish-majority city on the border with Turkiye that is also known as Ain al-Arab, thousands of families have sought refuge after the fighting. Locals and analysts said the area was overcrowded to the point that some displaced families were sleeping in cars or crowding together in homes.

The United Nations says more than 134,000 people have been displaced in the Hasakah province of northeast Syria due to the clashes.

Locals in Kobane claimed the government had cut off water and electricity since January 17. The Syrian government denied it was besieging the area and that the Tishrin Dam, which provides electricity, had been damaged during the fighting.

The area is also undergoing an intense cold front of sub-zero temperatures, which locals call the worst in years. The Kurdish Red Crescent reported on Saturday that five children had frozen to death in the last week.

A UN convoy of 24 trucks arrived in Kobane on Sunday, carrying blankets and basic needs, but a resident, who asked their name be withheld for fear of retribution, told Al Jazeera, “It’s not enough.

“We don’t have vegetables, we do not have basic items such as sugar or rice,” they said. “There are half a million people, all without electricity and without water … and with major internet problems.”

‘The will of the Syrian government is not a military takeover’

In addition to the hardship, locals expressed fear that after the ceasefire period, government forces may enter Kurdish-dominant towns.

Musa, the coordinator of the Missing Persons group, said locals feared that sieges and service cuts would turn into policies of collective punishment, that national and religious minorities such as Kurds and Yazidis would be targeted or subjected to arbitrary arrests or enforced disappearances.

“The military escalation, the imposition of severe restrictions on movement, and the cutting off of basic services have led to widespread displacement and an unprecedented state of collective fear, particularly in predominantly Kurdish cities like Kobane and Hasakah, in addition to the serious repercussions of what happened in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighbourhoods of Aleppo,” Musa said.

Advertisement

Syrian government officials expressed awareness of concerns from locals in northeast Syria.

“The suspicious emotions are understandable after decades of marginalising discrimination and most recently after the systematic propaganda against the state itself, plus, of course, I will not hide behind my fingers, the violations that took place in Suwayda and on the coast,” Obayda Ghadban, a researcher with the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Al Jazeera.

“The will of the Syrian government is not a military takeover; it is an option, but it is directed to a political solution, and we hope it is the one that will prevail. Not the military or security option,” Ghadban emphasised.

He said President al-Sharaa and the government are committed to ensuring Kurdish rights, including through a presidential decree from Friday, January 16.

But government assurances have done little to ease the angst of many of Syria’s Kurdish community and other minorities in the country’s northeast. Locals said that for goodwill to be gained, the government could reopen roads, restore basic services, give access to humanitarian organisations and ensure civilians are protected.

“What we are witnessing is a true test for the transitional government: Either it protects civilians and their rights, or the region slides into a deeper humanitarian and human rights catastrophe, the price of which will be paid by future generations,” Musa said.