The outlines of a plan to merge the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its affiliated civil administration, the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), with the central government in Damascus are becoming legible as both parties redouble efforts to implement the integration deal signed by transitional president Ahmed al-Sharaa and SDF commander-in-chief Mazlum Abdi on March 10 of this year. To build on recent momentum in security integration and ensure that military and political arrangements will last, Syria must commit to a constitution that preserves and expands the rights and freedoms to which communities in the northeast have become accustomed.

Back from the Brink

The latest progress in integration talks was spurred on by a dangerous bout of escalation: a night of clashes in Sheikh Maqsoud, the Kurdish neighborhood of Aleppo controlled by the DAANES since the early days of the Syrian war. On October 6, STG forces violently dispersed a crowd of civilian demonstrators who had gathered to protest road closures blocking entry and exit to the area. The situation ultimately devolved into armed clashes between the STG and DAANES internal security forces, with both sides reporting casualties.

Syrian Kurds feared that the violence would spiral into a full-on ethnic conflict across the north, similar to the sectarian clashes that saw as many as 1,500 Alawites and hundreds of Druze killed by government-affiliated forces earlier in the year or Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) abuses against Kurdish, Yezidi, Alevi and Christian communities in occupied Afrin and Ras al-Ain. Instead, a ceasefire was declared in the early hours of October 7. The next day, a DAANES delegation went to Damascus to meet with Sharaa and other Syrian officials in the presence of U.S. diplomats. A larger security delegation including Kurdish, Arab, and Christian SDF and ISF leaders followed. Speaking to the Associated Press on October 16, Mazloum Abdi said that the two sides had agreed in principle on the integration of the SDF and ISF with the Syrian Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior.

Integration Without Equality?

Progress on military integration is necessary for security and stability in Syria. Both the SDF and STG understand that large-scale conflict between them would be devastating for their respective political projects and constituents alike. For the international community, successful implementation of the March 10 deal is important to tackle threats like ISIS, reassure governments and corporations that renewed violence won’t threaten economic recovery, and avoid a slide back into civil war. However, security arrangements alone are not enough to do this.

First, institutional structures are impermanent. Some of the security integration frameworks that have been floated are positive in terms of addressing the concerns of Kurds, religious minorities, and women. Yet they could all be changed with nothing more than a presidential decree even if implemented as described by SDF leaders tomorrow. Communities in northeast Syria expect irreversible progress towards full and equal participation in their state.

Second, both the Syrian state and its current leadership have severe legitimacy deficits in the northeast. Before 2011, Kurdish communities largely experienced Syria as something akin to a foreign occupier that extracted resources and cheap labor from their regions and punished them for expressing their identity. The new leaders of that state were once part of Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that fought against the YPG/J and targeted Kurdish, Yezidi and Christian civilians until it was expelled from areas around Afrin and Ras al-Ain in 2013.  In conversations with civilian Kurds of different political perspectives across multiple visits to northeast Syria since the fall of the regime, the only positive sentiments I have encountered towards the STG are cautious optimism about its cease-fire with the SDF and hope that it might bring some much-needed economic recovery to the country. Following attacks on Druze and Alawite communities, many compared the STG to ISIS. To be acceptable as a governing authority in the northeast, the STG will have to overcome the legacy of both the Baath regime that preceded it and its own jihadist past and show that it can approach the peoples of the region as citizens, not enemies.

Third, failing to guarantee constitutional rights may set the stage for future anti-state mobilization — even if SDF leaders can get an integration deal across the finish line. Syrian Kurds today are the largest organized minority in the country. Their support for issues related to identity and culture today exists prior to political affiliation. If today’s leaders cannot meet the demands of their constituents, then new organizations may emerge, or parts of existing organizations may defect and keep up the fight. Turkey and Iran provide natural experiments. Neither state guarantees the rights of Kurdish communities in its constitution. As a result, both civilian Kurdish opposition movements and armed resistance organizations have been active for decades. Turkey has tentatively brought an end to the PKK’s armed struggle through a political process in which Kurds expect major legal and political reforms, while Kurdish opposition activity is accelerating in Iran following the government’s crackdown on the Kurdish-led ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ uprising in 2022.

A Constitution for All

For integration talks to move forward, the next steps must be impossible to take back, address the state’s legitimacy deficit with communities in the northeast, and remove potential causes of future violence or unrest. Specific amendments to the transitional constitutional declaration to guarantee equal rights for all of Syria’s communities and a clear, time-bound pathway to a permanent constitution that enshrines these rights for good will bring success on all three counts.

There are four areas where North and East Syria’s Social Contract and the STG’s Constitutional Declaration diverge on the matter equal rights for certain groups of Syrians. These are not the only constitutional issues relevant to the integration debate: the transitional constitutional declaration also contains many provisions that concentrate power in Damascus to a degree that many in the northeast find unacceptable. Decentralization is an equally important topic in integration talks. However, the structure of government and the protection of basic rights are separate issues. Under any political framework to which the two sides agree, citizens will expect and demand a constitution that guarantees their rights and freedoms. Therefore, negotiators should start by focusing on these four issues:

• Culture and Identity: The Constitutional Declaration retains ‘Syrian Arab Republic’ as the name of the state and contains no reference to Kurds or Syria’s other non-Arab communities. The Social Contract includes no ethnic designations – the region formally dropped ‘Rojava,’ or ‘Western Kurdistan,’ as a name in 2017 on pluralist grounds despite criticism from many Kurds. It includes specific articles that recognize Kurdish, Syriac-Assyrian and Yezidi communities and makes reference to many other ethnic and religious groups.
• Language Rights: Article 4 of the Constitutional Declaration makes Arabic Syria’s sole official language – meaning that only Arabic can be taught in schools or used in public administration. Article 6 of the Social Contract states that “all languages in the geography of North and East Syria are equal in all areas of social, educational, and cultural life. Every people or cultural group has the right to organize its life and conduct its affairs in its mother tongue.” Article 7 recognizes Kurdish, Arabic and Aramaic as official languages.
• Freedom of Religion: Article 3(1) of the Constitutional Declaration stipulates that the president must be Muslim and that Islamic law is ‘the principal source of legislation.’ The Social Contract establishes no official religion and imposes no religious test on any public office.
• Status of Women: Article 21 of the Constitutional Declaration references women but makes no reference to equality. Instead, it says that Syria will ‘preserve the social status of women, protect their dignity and their role within the family and society, and guarantee their right to education and work.’ In the Social Contract, women are guaranteed equality in all areas of public and private life under Articles 25, 26 and 51.

To resolve these discrepancies, negotiators should work towards a constitutional framework that recognizes Syria’s ethnic and religious diversity, grants no ethnic or religious group enjoys privileges over any other, and expands the equal rights and protections to which residents of the northeast are accustomed nationally. This new framework should be codified in amendments to be announced and ratified prior to the December 31 deadline for the implementation of the March 10th agreement, possibly in conjunction with visible first steps on security cooperation. This would accelerate irreversible progress towards a new, unified Syria to which all people belong.

(Photo: SANA)