Syria’s government signs breakthrough deal with Kurdish-led authorities

Syria’s central government has reached a deal with the Kurdish-led authority that controls the country’s north east, including a ceasefire and the merging of the main US-backed force there into the Syrian army.

The deal was signed on Monday by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

The deal marks a major breakthrough that would bring most of Syria under the control of the government led by the group that led the ousting of President Bashar Assad in December.

The deal to be implemented by the end of the year would bring all border crossings with Iraq and Turkey in the north east, airports and oil fields under the control of the central government.

Syria’s Kurds will gain their rights including teaching and using their language, which were banned for decades under Mr Assad.

Hundreds of thousands of Kurds who were displaced during Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war will return to their homes.

The deal also says all Syrians will be part of the political process, no matter their religion or ethnicity.

Syria’s new rulers are struggling to exert their authority across the country and reach political settlements with other minority communities, notably the Druze in southern Syria.

Earlier on Monday, Syria’s government announced the end of the military operation against insurgents loyal to Mr Assad and his family in the worst fighting since the end of the civil war.

The Defence Ministry’s announcement came after a surprise attack by gunmen from the Alawite community on a police patrol near the port city of Latakia on Thursday spiralled into widespread clashes across Syria’s coastal region. The Assad family are Alawites.

“To the remaining remnants of the defeated regime and its fleeing officers, our message is clear and explicit,” said Defence Ministry spokesperson Colonel Hassan Abdel-Ghani.

“If you return, we will also return, and you will find before you men who do not know how to retreat and who will not have mercy on those whose hands are stained with the blood of the innocent.”

Mr Abdel-Ghani said security forces will continue searching for sleeper cells and remnants of the insurgency of former government loyalists.

Though the government’s counter-offensive was able to largely contain the insurgency, footage surfaced of what appeared to be retaliatory attacks targeting the broader minority Alawite community, an offshoot of Shia Islam whose adherents live mainly in the western coastal region.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said 1,130 people were killed in the clashes, including 830 civilians. The Associated Press could not independently verify these numbers.

Mr Al-Sharaa said the retaliatory attacks against Alawite civilians and mistreatment of prisoners were isolated incidents, and vowed to crack down on the perpetrators as he formed a committee to investigate.

Still, the events alarmed Western governments, who have been urged to lift economic sanctions on Syria.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a statement on Sunday urged Syrian authorities to “hold the perpetrators of these massacres” accountable. Mr Rubio said the US “stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities”.