Syria’s army advanced across swathes of the country’s north, dislodging Kurdish-led forces from pockets of territory where they had exercised de facto autonomy for more than a decade, in a campaign unfolding a day after President Ahmed al-Sharaa declared Kurdish a national language and granted the minority official recognition.
The push appeared aimed at consolidating state control after a March accord to integrate Kurdish-led units into government structures stalled. Kurdish authorities welcomed the decree as a “first step” but said it fell short of their demands for lasting political guarantees.
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The official SANA news agency said government troops entered Tabqa in Raqa province and expelled Kurdish fighters from the city’s military airport, while also announcing the capture of two oil fields nearby. The advances followed days of tension along the Euphrates River corridor and around key transport routes in northern Syria.
An AFP correspondent in Deir Hafer, some 50 kilometers east of Aleppo city, reported seeing several fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) leaving the town as residents returned under heavy army presence. Syria’s military said four soldiers were killed in the latest fighting, while Kurdish forces reported several of their fighters dead. Both sides accused the other of violating a withdrawal understanding.
Kurdish authorities imposed a curfew across parts of the Raqa region after the army designated a swathe of territory southwest of the Euphrates a closed military zone, warning it would target what it described as several military sites. The army urged the SDF to “immediately fulfil its announced commitments and fully withdraw to the east of the Euphrates River.” SDF commander Mazloum Abdi had pledged to redeploy forces from positions outside Aleppo, but the SDF said the government “violated the recent agreements and betrayed our forces,” citing clashes south of Tabqa.
The SDF controls large areas of Syria’s oil-rich north and northeast, territory seized during the civil war and the campaign against the Islamic State group over the past decade. Control of oil infrastructure and key highways remains central to leverage in any political settlement, and the latest moves suggested Damascus was tightening its grip on strategic assets.
International actors urged restraint. U.S. Central Command called on “Syrian government forces to cease any offensive actions in the areas between Aleppo and al-Tabqa.” The presidency of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region said U.S. envoy Tom Barrack met Abdi in Erbil, as Washington — which has long supported Kurdish units — balances ties with Syria’s new authorities. France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani also appealed for deescalation and a cease-fire, according to the French presidency.
Sharaa’s decree marked the first formal recognition of Kurdish rights since Syria’s independence in 1946. It declared Kurds “an essential and integral part” of the nation, made Kurdish a “national language,” and granted nationality to all Kurds — including the roughly 20 percent who were stripped of citizenship under a controversial 1962 census.
The Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast called the measure insufficient. “Rights are not protected by temporary decrees, but through permanent constitutions that express the will of the people and all components” of society, it said. In Qamishli, the main Kurdish city in the northeast, resident Shebal Ali, 35, said, “We want constitutional recognition of the Kurdish people’s rights.”
Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the decree “offers cultural concessions while consolidating military control,” arguing that it “does not address the northeast’s calls for self-governance.” He added that Sharaa “is comfortable granting cultural rights, but draws the line at power-sharing,” a strategy meant to “drive a wedge between Kurdish civilians and the armed forces that have governed them for a decade.”
Separately, the U.S. military said a strike in northwest Syria a day earlier killed a militant linked to a deadly attack on three Americans last month, underscoring the risk of escalation on multiple fronts even as ground lines shift in the north.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
