Syria’s interim government signed a deal Monday (March 10, 2025) with the Kurdish-led authority that controls the nation’s northeast, together with a ceasefire and the merging of the most important U.S.-backed power there into the Syrian military.
The deal is a serious breakthrough that might deliver most of Syria below the management of the government, which is led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that led the ouster of President Bashar Assad in December.
The deal was signed by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
The deal to be applied by the finish of the yr would deliver all border crossings with Iraq and Turkey, airports and oil fields in the northeast below the central government’s management. Prisons the place about 9,000 suspected members of the Islamic State group are additionally anticipated to come back below government management.
Rights for Kurds
Syria’s Kurds will achieve their “constitutional rights” including using and teaching their language, which were banned for decades under Mr. Assad. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds, who were displaced during Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, will return to their homes. Thousands of Kurds living in Syria who have been deprived of nationality for decades under Assad will be given the right of citizenship, according to the agreement.
The deal also says all Syrians will be part of the political process, no matter their religion or ethnicity.
People have a good time, after the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which controls a lot of Syria’s oil-rich northeast, signed a deal agreeing to combine into Syria’s new state establishments
| Photo Credit:
Reuters
Syria’s new rulers are struggling to exert their authority throughout the nation and attain political settlements with different minority communities, notably the Druze in southern Syria.
Worst preventing
Earlier on Monday, Syria’s government introduced the finish of the army operation towards insurgents loyal to Assad and his household in the worst preventing since the finish of the civil struggle.
The Defense Ministry’s announcement got here after a shock assault by gunmen from the Alawite group on a police patrol close to the port metropolis of Latakia on Thursday spiraled into widespread clashes throughout Syria’s coastal area. The Assad household are Alawites.
“To the remaining remnants of the defeated regime and its fleeing officers, our message is clear and explicit,” mentioned Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Hassan Abdel-Ghani. “If you return, we will also return, and you will find before you men who do not know how to retreat and who will not have mercy on those whose hands are stained with the blood of the innocent.”
Abdel-Ghani mentioned safety forces will proceed trying to find sleeper cells and remnants of the insurgency of former government loyalists.
Attacks on Alawite group
Though the government’s counter-offensive was in a position to largely comprise the insurgency, footage surfaced of what seemed to be retaliatory assaults concentrating on the broader minority Alawite group, an offshoot of Shia Islam whose adherents stay primarily in the western coastal area.
Sajid Allah Al-Deek, a safety official in the coastal area, advised The Associated Press that safety forces had been deployed in the space from the Latakia governorate to Jableh and that the coastal freeway is functioning once more after being closed due to the preventing.
“The civilians have begun returning to their homes,” Al-Deek mentioned, including that authorities have began detaining these blamed for acts of violence.
Imad Baytar mentioned his father, who labored for a taxi firm, had gone from Jableh to Damascus and on his means again over the weekend “he was killed in the checkpoint.” Baytar blamed Assad supporters for the killing.
1,130 dead in clashes
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said 1,130 people were killed in the clashes, including 830 civilians. The AP could not independently verify these numbers.
Al-Sharaa said the retaliatory attacks against Alawite civilians and mistreatment of prisoners were isolated incidents, and vowed to crack down on the perpetrators as he formed a committee to investigate.
Still, the events alarmed Western governments, who have been urged to lift economic sanctions on Syria.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a statement Sunday urged Syrian authorities to “hold the perpetrators of these massacres” accountable. Rubio said the U.S. “stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities.”
Published – March 11, 2025 12:58 pm IST
