No stability without partnership: Syria's warning to SDF

Shafaq News/ Recent statements and actions by the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) violate the agreement struck with transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa and risk “dangerous” breaches of the country’s sovereignty, Syria’s Presidency said on Sunday.

The pact, announced in March, was meant to be “a first step toward an inclusive national vision” that rejected any bid to impose partition and drew a “red line” under the unity of Syria’s land and people, the Presidency said in a statement carried by state media.

Warning of practices that suggest “dangerous trends toward demographic change” in parts of the northeast, the statement added that the SDF leadership could not monopolize decision-making in a region where “Arabs, Kurds, Christians and otherscoexist.”

“Confiscating the decision of any component and monopolizing its representation is unacceptable; there will be no stability and no future without genuine partnership and fair representation of all parties,” the statement said.

The presidency insisted that the rights of “our Kurdish brothers and all components of the Syrian people are safeguarded within the single Syrian state” and require no outside “guardianship.”

“The solution in Syria can only be Syrian, preserving the country’s unity and sovereignty and rejecting all forms of foreign interference,” it concluded.

The SDF did not immediately respond to the statement, but it has long argued that self-administration is needed to protect Kurds and other minorities after years of ISIS rule and Turkish incursions.