The agreement between Syria’s interim government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to integrate Kurdish forces into state institutions is being read by commentators as a step towards establishing unified state control over armed actors and offering a degree of decentralization to Kurdish-majority areas. However, such readings miss a critical issue. The settlement disadvantages the SDF, reversing much of its conflict-born territorial and resource gains, and has been effectively imposed by a shift in US support towards the Syrian government. Kurdish leaders understand that such support may yet again shift, as geopolitics and history have taught them. They may thus just be awaiting a more opportune moment, whilst abiding by the agreement.
Whether the resulting settlement holds, and whether it advances durable state-building, hinges on a fundamental question: What kind of governance order is this settlement producing? Early indicators point to a fragile governance order marked by elite power-sharing. Contested security integration and institutional fragmentation are symptoms of competition among elites over rules and resources. The settlement displaces conflict into state institutions and defers its underlying causes. Reduced to an elite ‘deal’, decentralization is not inherently stabilizing. It risks reinforcing fragmentation and elite competition within the state rather than building a shared political order. However, if approached as a participatory and inclusive political process anchored in local rights, needs and interests, decentralization can strengthen state-building and foster more durable state–society relations.
Contested security integration
The deal anchors the interim government’s monopoly over violence. Formal SDF integration into the state army and the Ministry of Interior is underway, with the SDF retaining elements of command and territorial control in a few Kurdish-majority areas, notably Kobani and Al-Hasakeh. In practice, however, the process remains uneven and marked by mutual suspicion. Negotiations and disagreements persist over the scale and terms of integration. This includes the absorption of Asayish (the internal security and police force of the Kurdish-led Administration in Syria) personnel, the restructuring of command hierarchies, senior appointments, the future role of women fighters and specialised units, and the surrender of heavy weaponry to the state. These tensions are political at heart.
The interim government remains centralised and views the settlement through the lens of state authority. The Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant Kurdish political party in northern Syria, seeks conditional cooperation, aiming to preserve the arrangements and autonomy of its distinct governance model. Disagreements over appointments, institutional roles, and the scope of authority reflect deeper contestation over power and recognition between competing elites, risking subordination of the local community to elite interests.
Displacement of conflict into state institutions
The deal recasts the political struggle over authority as a technical process of institutional integration among governing elites. Experiences from Lebanon’s Taif settlement and post-2003 Iraq suggest that this kind of security integration shifts the locus of conflict from the battlefield to state institutions. The central questions become who writes the rules and controls resources. For instance, who appoints officials, how systems like education and media are shaped, and who controls oil revenues, taxation and border crossings.
Rules and resources are critical. Together, they structure governance and confer authority, capacity and legitimacy on those steering it. Control over resources depends on the ability to define and enforce rules; control over rules, in turn, is shaped by access to resources. As these two dimensions are reconfigured simultaneously, institutions become the primary arena through which power is exercised and contested.
On rules, SDF integration has produced overlapping and contested decision-making arrangements. The appointment of officials is particularly fraught. The PYD wants appointments made in blocs to retain leverage, while the interim government favours individual appointments to dilute it. The structure of administrative hierarchies and the legal frameworks that underpin them are similarly unsettled.
On resources, territorial consolidation has enabled the interim government to extend authority over strategic assets, particularly oil infrastructure and border crossings. Yet control remains contested. The Kurdish leadership, for instance, wants a share of the income from the Semalka and Nusaibeen border crossings. More broadly, both sides have yet to demonstrate that resource revenues translate into tangible benefits for local communities. Nor have either shown that governance rules are fair and oriented towards building state-society relations.
Stabilization without a social contract
Communities encounter the state through everyday interactions over service provision, security and rulemaking. Where these interactions remain exclusionary or are mediated through narrow elite networks, authority is likely to be experienced as detached from people’s everyday realities and imposed from above. In a context as socially fragmented as Syria, this risks deepening recourse to sub-state and cross-border forms of identification and mobilization, whether along religious, ethnic or tribal lines.
Reducing this risk requires genuine local participation and inclusion that can renegotiate the relationship between state and society. As it stands, the deal does not do this. It mainly reorders authority among governing elites, raising the prospect of a hollow social contract grounded in securitization and patronage rather than shared political community.
Conclusion: Towards more stable grounds
A viable policy option for both national actors and external actors invested in Syria’s stabilization is available. This requires moving beyond decentralization deals centred on security and elite power-sharing towards a relational approach to the state that genuinely serves local communities. This means grounding state-building in state–society relations rather than in institutional design alone.
Three priorities follow. First, placing local communities at the centre of governance. This means prioritizing participatory political processes that shape how authority is exercised, and anchoring in clear arrangements for command, oversight and accountability. This will encourage a form of decentralization that builds legitimacy and embeds authority within society, making state-building more durable.
Second, protecting and expanding independent civic and political space. Independent civil society groups and networks, professional associations, unions and community-based organizations provide the connective tissue between state and society. Supporting them allows legitimacy to emerge through engagement rather than imposition.
Third, addressing the institutional drivers of governance: rules and resources. Clarifying who sets the rules of governance, how, and with what oversight – appointments, legal frameworks, administrative hierarchies, educational curricula, and so on – must go hand in hand with transparent and accountable management of resources such as oil revenues, taxation and border crossings. Without this alignment, institutions will remain arenas of elite competition over power rather than vehicles for public service.
Ultimately, territorial reunification and security integration are not the same as building a political community. This moment offers an opportunity to rethink decentralization – not as concession to one group or another, but as a national political bargain that allows different communities to be represented within a shared state. Otherwise, Syria risks building a state on moving sands: territorially consolidated but politically challenged and endlessly unsettled.
