Damascus appoints local executives in Assad’s home town as the Kurdish language fight moves inside the presidency
Latakia’s governor installed interim executive offices in Qardaha and 13 towns “until new elections,” with no date set. In the north-east, Mazloum Abdi is lobbying for Kurdish as an official language from an advisory chair rather than a command post.
Latakia Governor Ahmad Ali Mustafa issued decisions on Wednesday 30 September forming interim executive offices for the Qardaha city council and 13 town councils in the governorate, with the offices assuming the full powers and responsibilities of the councils until new elections are held, according to Syria TV, carried by the Syrian Observer on 1 October. The named appointees include Majed Salim Habib in Qardaha, Ahmad Aziz Saqr in Ain al-Sharqiya, Ahmad Adnan Jadid in Ain al-Arous, Ziad EzzEddin Nasser in Hammam al-Qarahta and Milad Ali Saeed in Beit Yashout. No election date was given. Qardaha is the Assad family’s home town and the symbolic centre of Alawite Latakia. The report is single-outlet in English and the text of the gubernatorial decision was not retrieved.
On 30 September, Mazloum Abdi — adviser to the Syrian presidency since 27 August and former commander of the dissolved SDF — said efforts were continuing to make Kurdish an official language in Syria and urged families to send their children to schools where Kurdish is taught, The New Arab reported. The same piece notes a demonstration in Qamishli on 22 September at which protesters demanded the right to education in Kurdish. The military file is closed on paper: Anadolu’s January factbox set out the ceasefire and integration terms, including SDF withdrawal east of the Euphrates and handover of territory and institutions to Damascus, and the Media Line reported on 26 August that Abdi had announced the SDF’s dissolution into state institutions — though other outlets reported he stopped short, with the Women’s Protection Units question still open.
Both files run against the same absence. Security Council Report’s October forecast, published 1 October, says Deputy Special Envoy Claudio Cordone and an OCHA representative are expected to brief the Council this month on political and humanitarian developments; Cordone told the Council on 22 June that “there has been no progress on the implementation of the September 2025 roadmap of confidence-building and reintegration in Sweida.” The legitimacy architecture above these appointments is itself provisional: two-thirds of the October 2025 parliament was chosen by electoral colleges and the remainder appointed by al-Sharaa, and the Constitutional Declaration sets a five-year transitional period.
Assessment: Read the coast and the north-east as one question with two answers. In Latakia the interim government is filling local executive seats by decree and calling them placeholders for an election it has not scheduled; in Qamishli the argument has moved from who holds the rifles to whose language the schools teach. Resist the replacement narrative on Qardaha: several appointees carry conventionally Alawite names, and the decision text is not public. Abdi’s position is the sharper test. He traded a command for an advisory chair, and language rights are the first thing he is asking the chair to deliver. If nothing arrives by the constitutional committee, the Qamishli street will draw its own conclusion about what integration bought.