Bowing to US pressure, Syrian military advances, Kurdish-led SDF agrees to Sharaa's terms

Syrian government troops kept up their dizzying advance against the Syrian Democratic Forces on Sunday, gaining nearly full control of Raqqa, the erstwhile capital of the Islamic State, which was seized almost nine years ago by the Kurdish-led militia with the help of the United States.

Hours later, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced what would amount to the effective capitulation of the Kurdish-led militia that is widely viewed as having some of the toughest and bravest women and male fighters in the region. Syrian state media published an image of Sharaa holding the text of an agreement whose terms broadly favor Damascus, according to images of the text circulated online. The agreement is said to have been endorsed by the SDF commander in chief, Mazlum Kobane, who was meant to have traveled to Damascus today to sign the document in the presence of the US Syria envoy Tom Barrack.

The agreement establishes a comprehensive ceasefire across all frontlines and lines of contact between the SDF and government forces and calls for the full and immediate military and administrative handover of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor governorates to the Syrian government.

Earlier government forces took control of Syria’s largest oil fields in the eastern part of Deir ez-Zor that were formerly under the SDF’s control, including the Al-Omar and Tanak fields, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. On Saturday, the Syrian military captured another key city, Tabqa, that is situated next to Syria’s primary reservoir on the Euphrates River, Lake Assad.

A return of the Arab-majority territories that are home to the bulk of Syria’s oil wealth has been a long-running demand of Sharaa in US-brokered talks for the Kurdish-run third of the country to be reintegrated with Damascus.

The talks have teetered on the brink of collapse since Jan. 6, when Damascus sent its forces against two Kurdish-majority neighborhoods in Aleppo demanding that armed Kurdish fighters leave the city, which they did after days of heavy clashes. In a bid to further deescalate tensions, the SDF commander in chief, Kobane, ordered the withdrawal of his troops from Deir Hafer and Meskeneh, neighborhoods east of Aleppo, ahead of what US diplomats and Iraqi Kurdish officials hoped would be a groundbreaking meeting between the SDF commander and Barrack.

The meeting ended inconclusively as the government forces escalated their offensive, in what many feared could be the start of protracted warfare between Washington’s top ally against ISIS and its new regional ally, Damascus.