Syria's government and Kurds still at odds over merging forces after latest talks, US envoy says

DAMASCUS, Syria — A U.S. envoy said on Wednesday that Syria's central government and the Kurds remain at odds over plans on merging their forces after the latest round of talks, a persistent obstacle as the new authorities in Damascus struggle to consolidate control after the country's yearslong civil war.

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who is also a special envoy to Syria, told The Associated Press after meetings in Damascus, the Syrian capital, that there are still significant differences between the two sides. Barrack held talks with Mazloum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led and U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces, and Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

The development comes after a move by the Trump administration took effect this week, revoking a terrorism designation of the former insurgent group led by al-Sharaa, which was behind a lightning offensive last December that ousted Syria's longtime autocrat Bashar Assad.

Revoking the designation was part of a broader U.S. engagement with al-Sharaa's new, transitional government.

A deal vague in details

In early March, the former insurgents — now the new authorities in Damascus — signed a landmark deal with the SDF, a Kurdish-led force that had fought alongside U.S. troops against the militant Islamic State group and which controls much of northeastern Syria.

Under that deal, the SDF forces would merge with the new Syrian national army. The agreement, which is supposed be implemented by the end of the year, would also bring all border crossings with Iraq and Turkey, airports and oil fields in the northeast under the central government's control. They are now controlled by the SDF.

Detention centers housing thousands of Islamic State militants, now guarded by the SDF, would also come under government control.

However, the agreement left the details vague, and progress on implementation has been slow. A major sticking point has been whether the SDF would remain as a cohesive unit in the new army — which the Syrian Kurds are pushing for — or whether the force would be dissolved and its members individually absorbed into the new military.

Barrack said that is still ''a big issue'' between the two sides.

‘Baby steps'

''I don't think there's a breakthrough,'' Barrack said after Wednesday's meetings. ''I think these things happen in baby steps, because it's built on trust, commitment and understanding."

He added that "for two parties that have been apart for a while and maybe an adversarial relationship for a while, they have to build that trust step by step.''

Also, Turkish-backed factions affiliated with the new Syrian government have over the years clashed with the SDF, which Turkey considers a terrorist group because of its association with the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which had waged a decades-long insurgency within Turkey before recently announcing it would lay down its weapons.

The United States also considers the PKK a terrorist group but is allied with the SDF.

Barrack said that though ''we're not there'' yet, Damascus had ''done a great job" in presenting options for the SDF to consider.

"I hope they will and I hope they'll do it quickly,'' he said.

From skepticism to trust

A key turning point for Syria came when U.S. President Donald Trump met with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May and announced that Washington would lift decades of sanctions, imposed over Assad's government.

Trump took steps to do so after their meeting and subsequently, the U.S. moved to remove the terrorist designation from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, al-Sharaa's force that spearheaded the offensive against Assad.

The U.S. played a key role in brokering the deal announced in March between al-Sharaa's government and the SDF and has urged the Syrian Kurdish authorities to integrate with Damascus.

Barrack said Washington has ''complete confidence in the Syrian government and the new Syrian government's military,'' while the SDF has been a ''valuable partner'' in the fight against IS and that the U.S. ''wants to make sure that they have an opportunity ... to integrate into the new government in a respectful way.''

The U.S. has begun scaling down the number of troops it has stationed in Syria — there are about 1,300 U.S. forces now — but Barrack said Washington is in ''no hurry'' to pull out completely.

Prospects of Syria-Israel ties

In the interview with the AP, Barrack also downplayed reports of possible breakthroughs in talks on normalizing ties between Syria and Israel.

''My feeling of what's happening in the neighborhood is that it should happen, and it'll happen like unwrapping an onion, slowly ... as the region builds trust with each other,'' he said without elaborating.

Since Assad's fall, Israel has seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in Syria bordering the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and has launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria. Israeli soldiers have also raided Syrian towns outside of the border zone and detained people who they said were militants, sometimes clashing with locals.

Israeli officials have said they are taking the measures to guard their border against another cross-border attack like the one launched by the Palestinian militant Hamas group on Oct. 7, 2023 in southern Israel that triggered the latest war in the Gaza Strip.