Three weeks after the SDF dissolved itself, the north-east is fighting over schools

The sequence is firmly established. On 19 January 2026 the SDF agreed to cede military, administrative and territorial control across much of the north-east under a fourteen-point, US-brokered ceasefire and integration agreement negotiated through envoy Tom Barrack; Anadolu Agency published the full terms, which included withdrawal of YPG/SDF formations east of the Euphrates and the handover of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor governorates, the ISIS detention camps, the border crossings and the oil fields to Damascus. Anadolu is Turkish state media and describes the SDF as dominated by “the terrorist group YPG”; it is cited here for the text of the terms, not the characterisation. On 25 August, from the People’s Palace in Damascus, Abdi announced the end of the SDF’s mission and its dissolution as an independent force. Two days later Sharaa appointed him Adviser to the Presidency, per Arab News.

What that produced is now visible in the north-east’s complaints, and they are no longer about command structures. Across ANHA’s 17 and 19 September indices: students in Qamishli concluding a sit-in for mother-tongue education; a Hasakah workshop on the status of the Kurdish language; the Tel Tamr Women’s Council calling Kurdish a cultural and linguistic right; a school strike in Deir ez-Zor over the abolition of the Euphrates Educational Complex; residents of the Deir ez-Zor countryside demanding the reversal of a decision to close several educational complexes. The same indices show Abdi meeting the presidential adviser for tribal affairs and the governor of Aleppo on the return of residents, and holding a public meeting in Kobani. ANHA is the outlet with the strongest interest in documenting this particular grievance, and none of these items was corroborated elsewhere.

There is one fixed date against which all of it will be measured. The FY2026 NDAA, signed 18 December 2025, repealed the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, but required the President to certify to Congress on a recurring basis for four years that Damascus is acting against ISIS and other terrorist groups, removing foreign fighters from government, upholding religious and ethnic minority rights, refraining from unprovoked military action against neighbours including Israel, implementing the 10 March 2025 government–SDF agreement, and conducting credible investigations into post-December 2024 abuses. Reporting on the interval conflicts: Just Security describes a 180-day cycle, Karam Shaar Advisory a 120-day one.

Assessment: Integration did not end the north-eastern question; it relocated it. A dispute over brigade structures is negotiable between commanders. A dispute over whether Kurdish is taught, and whether AANES-era educational administration is absorbed or abolished, is constitutional, and the January agreement was silent on it — as SyriacPress’s own headline on the dissolution conceded. Abdi’s dual position, presidential adviser in Damascus and public figure in Kobani, is the mechanism holding that silence together, and it is not obviously durable. Watch the YPJ: reporting on whether it was ever actually dissolved remains contradictory, and that is the quietest available place for the deal to fail.