Part 4 of a series on minorities in Syria.
Part 1, A Must Watch Documentary, can be read here.
Part 2, A country being emptied, can be read here,
Part 3, Diplomatic treachery and media malpractice, can be read here.
The collapse of Kurdish self-rule in northeastern Syria did not come through diplomacy or reconciliation. It arrived through force-by siege, intimidation and calculated violence, followed by a coerced agreement that formalized surrender. In a matter of weeks, a people who had governed themselves for nearly a decade and served as the West’s most reliable partner against ISIS were stripped of regional sovereignty and left exposed to a regime and militias that had already demonstrated their intent.
What unfolded over the past month was not a sudden breakdown. It was the final phase of a campaign long in preparation. Syrian government forces, backed by Arab militias and enabled by Turkey, launched a coordinated assault on Kurdish-held territory-targeting infrastructure, civilian morale, and political leverage simultaneously. Electricity was cut. Roads were closed. Artillery and drones followed. When Kurdish defenses finally buckled, the resulting agreement did not protect Kurdish rights or security. It codified defeat.
This was not peace. It was capitulation under fire.
For years, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) formed the backbone of the international campaign against ISIS. They fought street by street, town by town, sustaining catastrophic losses-more than 11,000 dead-while liberating territory and guarding detention facilities holding thousands of ISIS fighters and family members. Their sacrifices spared Western forces from bearing the full human cost of that war.
Yet when the SDF came under direct assault, the alliance collapsed. Kurdish leaders appealed for mediation, ceasefire enforcement and deterrence. None arrived. Instead, Washington signaled disengagement. Senior U.S. officials began speaking of “integration" even as Kurdish towns were shelled and civilians fled. The message, delivered through silence and omission, was unmistakable: Kurdish utility had “expired," the exact word used by U.S. ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack.
That signal mattered. It emboldened Damascus and its allies, removed the last restraint on escalation and accelerated the assault. The agreement that followed, which was signed under duress, forced the Kurds to relinquish control over their security, borders and governance, dissolving the autonomy they had built since 2014.
The campaign against the Kurds followed a deliberate sequence. First came pressure: economic strangulation, infrastructure sabotage and psychological warfare. Then came violence-often carried out by allied Arab militias, allowing the regime plausible deniability while achieving the same result. Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo, Raqqa and surrounding areas were assaulted. Civilians fled en masse toward Hasakah and Qamishli, abandoning homes they may never reclaim.
Arab militias aligned with Damascus played a central role. Reports described house-to-house intimidation, arbitrary detentions and public humiliation intended to degrade Kurdish identity. Kurdish women and children were among those abducted. Entire families disappeared into militia-controlled areas, their whereabouts unknown.
This violence was not random or undisciplined. It was instrumental-designed to empty territory, break resistance and force political surrender without the burden of prolonged urban warfare.
Turkey’s role in this collapse was neither peripheral nor passive. Ankara has long viewed Kurdish self-rule in Syria as an existential threat, regardless of the SDF’s role in defeating ISIS. Over the past month, Turkish pressure intensified-diplomatic, military and logistical-aligning seamlessly with Damascus’s objectives.
Turkish-backed actions destabilized detention facilities holding ISIS members, further weakening Kurdish leverage. Drones struck near prisons. Chaos followed. Each incident compounded the same message: Kurdish control was temporary, conditional and dispensable.
The assault that culminated in the surrender of Kurdish sovereignty was not solely Syrian. It was engineered regionally, with Turkey as a dominant architect and beneficiary.
As Kurdish forces were pushed back, the security architecture they maintained began to unravel. ISIS detainees escaped from facilities amid the chaos of handovers and attacks. Al-Hol camp-already a radicalization incubator-had housed an estimated 7,700 ISIS terrorists and 3500 women and children, the largest ISIS terrorist prison in the world.
This outcome was entirely predictable. The SDF’s ability to guard thousands of hardened jihadists depended on territorial control and international backing. Once both were withdrawn, collapse was inevitable. Kurdish commanders warned of this repeatedly. Their warnings went unheeded. No one knows the precise figure, but anywhere from 350 to 2,000 ISIS terrorists escaped. Each one is a ticking time bomb. Videos surfaced of Syrian security forces celebrating the release of ISIS terrorists from the camps.
Initially, the plan was to have the Syrian Army take control of all ISIS prisoners.
But even U.S. officials realized that this was a recipe for disaster, having witnessed the jihadists in the Syrian Army flex their muscles. So, in the past two days, the United States took charge of 5,700 ISIS terrorists and shipped them to Iraq to be held by Iraqi authorities. (Iraq itself has been notorious for the mass escapes and the release of terrorists, hardly providing a measure of confidence to U.S. military officials, who spoke on background to express their deep concern about this entire process.)
The irony is stark: In the name of “stability," policies were pursued that made a resurgence of ISIS more likely. The very force that dismantled the caliphate was sidelined, while jihadist networks exploited the vacuum.
The agreement forced upon the Kurds did not include enforceable protections for civilians, cultural rights or political representation. It transferred authority upward without safeguards downward. In effect, it granted Damascus-and its allied militias-a free hand.
Since the signing, intimidation and displacement have continued. Kurdish communities now live under the shadow of forces that openly question their loyalty and legitimacy. The surrender of sovereignty did not end violence; it normalized it.
This is what makes the agreement so dangerous. It transformed an active assault into sanctioned dominance, stripping the Kurds of the one thing that had protected them: self-governance backed by international partnership.
Throughout this period, Tom Barrack’s public posture reinforced the regime’s advantage. His statements minimized Kurdish relevance while praising the assumed capacity of Damascus to manage security. He did not publicly condemn attacks on Kurdish civilians. He did not demand accountability for militia abuses. He did not condition engagement on protection. Silence, in this context, was not neutral. It functioned as an endorsement.
What happened to the Kurds is not unique. It follows a similar model applied elsewhere in Syria: Isolate a community, question its loyalty, apply force, extract submission and then present the outcome as reconciliation. The Kurds were simply the most recent-and the most strategically consequential-target.
Their betrayal carries consequences far beyond Syria. It signals to partners everywhere that alliances are conditional, sacrifices fungible and protection temporary.
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth of a four-part series “The silent genocide of Syria’s minorities" that documents the systematic destruction of Kurdish self-rule in Syria and the coordinated persecution of the country’s other religious minorities-Christians, Druze, Yazidis and Alawites-through siege, massacre and forced displacement. It includes eyewitnesses, interviews with representatives of Syrian minorities, unreleased U.S. intelligence reports, confirmed videos, and documented atrocities. The series exposes how Western silence and media malpractice enabled a jihadist regime to implement a deliberate strategy of demographic cleansing.This is happening now. The first three parts of the serie, links to which are at the start of this article, were sent to Arutz Sheva by the authors and posted two weeks ago. Part 4 is reposted from JNS.