How America Abandoned Syria's Kurds

The SDF bet on Washington, strangled Damascus, rejected a deal and paid the price

When people talk about the Kurds in Syria, they usually tell a story that begins in 2014 with ISIS, then ends with the SDF being portrayed as the heroic anti-terror force that “saved the world.” That story is not entirely false, but it is dangerously incomplete. And the incompleteness is not an accident. It is designed to hide the real tragedy: the Kurds did not lose because they fought ISIS. They lost because their leadership tied their national fate to American strategy, and American strategy was never designed to give the Kurds a lasting political future in Syria.

I want to be clear from the beginning. I have always had great respect for the Kurdish people, their culture, their resilience, and their sense of community. In my own life, Kurds were never my “enemy.” What I have opposed, for fourteen years, is a political approach by the Kurdish-led SDF that turned a legitimate Kurdish question into a lever for a foreign project against the former Syrian state.

And now, after the fall of Assad, we are watching the final act of that tragedy: the United States abandons the SDF, the Syrian Arab Army is dismantled, and Jolani’s al-Qaeda army marches into Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, and the oil fields, pushing toward Hasakah. The Kurds are left with nothing but bitter lessons that were predictable, avoidable, and repeatedly warned about.

The Kurdish Question Didn’t Begin with Washington

The Kurdish question in Syria predates the war, but the war accelerated it. And the first thing that mainstream narratives hide is that, in the early phase of the conflict, the former Syrian state was not at war with the Kurds in the north. On the contrary, in the first two years of the war, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the state provided tangible support and coordination to Kurdish areas and Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo, in Afrin, in Kobani, and in Hasakah.

That fact alone should force people to rethink the fairy tale that portrays the former Syrian government as uniformly and obsessively anti-Kurd. The Kurds were not treated as foreign invaders. They were part of the social fabric, and the state still viewed the north as part of a unified Syrian Republic: one state, many communities.

But wars evolve. And after 2012–2013, the war in Syria mutated into something far more internationalized and far more poisonous.

Turkey opened its borders for multinational jihadists. Gulf money and weapons flowed. The CIA’s pipeline—Timber Sycamore—expanded. The SAA, stretched thin and facing existential threats around Damascus, Homs, Aleppo, and the central corridor, began retreating from parts of the north and east.

Not because it “wanted” to abandon the Kurds, but because it could not defend every front at the same time. Hasakah and the northeastern borderlands became a vacuum zone, just as ISIS was rising and just as Turkey was turning northern Syria into a highway for foreign Takfiris.

The Kurds suddenly found themselves alone, facing a brutal reality: if the SAA cannot protect you, you must protect yourself.

This is where the Kurdish armed structures expanded. And at this point, any honest Syrian—including me—can acknowledge the legitimacy of Kurdish self-defense in the face of ISIS and the jihadist wave.

But the legitimacy of self-defense is not the same thing as the legitimacy of becoming a proxy state inside a state.

The American Entry: From “Support” to Takeover

Between 2013 and 2015, the United States moved into the vacuum. It began arming Kurdish units, not primarily because Washington suddenly discovered Kurdish rights, but because Washington needed a reliable ground instrument in Syria and a military unit it could control, fund, and direct without sending large numbers of Americans to die.

Then came September 2015, the turning point.

Russia intervened with airpower. ISIS convoys were bombed. Supply lines began to be destroyed. The SAA began regaining initiative. And what did Washington do?

It changed the plan.

One month after the Russian intervention began, the United States formed the “Syrian Democratic Forces” led by the Kurds, funded by the Pentagon, and presented to the world as a diverse, democratic, local force.

And let me say something that I always say: yes, the SDF fought ISIS. Yes, the Kurds paid with blood. And yes, credit is due for battles against the ISIS machine.

But if your budget comes from the Pentagon, then your mission is conditional.

Conditional on Washington’s interest, not yours.

A proxy force does not own its future. Its sponsor owns its future. And this is what Kurdish leadership refused to accept.

By the time ISIS was degraded into desert pockets, the contact line between the SAA and the SDF solidified along the Euphrates River: SDF on the eastern bank, the SAA on the western bank.

And that’s when the real strategic betrayal of Syria began, not only against the Syrian state, but ultimately against the Kurdish people themselves.

Oil, Wheat, Sanctions, and the Slow Suffocation of Syria

After the war’s heaviest phase, Syria was not only destroyed by fighting. It was strangled by sanctions and economic siege. And in that strangulation, the SDF became a tool.

The American occupation forces embedded with the SDF occupied around half of Syria’s oil and gas fields, and large sections of its agricultural wealth, including key wheat areas and border crossings.

Syria needed fuel for electricity, heating, transport, and reconstruction. Syria needed wheat to feed its people. But the former Syrian government—already under sanctions—was blocked from accessing its own resources.

And who enforced that reality on the ground?

The SDF, embedded with American troops, acted as the battering ram of an occupation project.

This is the part that Kurdish leadership and many Western commentators still refuse to face: whether the SDF intended it or not, the outcome was that it helped keep Syria poor, divided, and incapable of recovery.

Not because the Kurds “hate Syrians,” but because the American strategy was designed to deprive Damascus of leverage, to make the state collapse economically if it couldn’t be toppled militarily.

And then Kurdish leadership made the fateful decision: instead of treating this arrangement as temporary war logic, they treated it as the road to permanent political autonomy.

Damascus Offered a Deal, and SDF Gambled for More

Here we get to the core strategic mistake.

Assad’s Damascus offered the Kurds administrative decentralization: managing local affairs, education, language rights, cultural expression, and administrative control.

The SDF leadership rejected it.

They demanded political decentralization, meaning a constitutionalized political entity with de facto state-like powers.

And they made this demand while sitting on the border of Turkey, a NATO state with the second largest army in the alliance, a state that has twenty million Kurds inside its own borders and views any Kurdish political entity next door as an existential contagion.

If you ever want a simple definition of strategic illiteracy, it is this: demanding a Kurdish political autonomy in northeastern Syria while assuming Turkey will accept it.

Turkey would never accept it. Not under Erdoğan, not under any Turkish government.

And Washington knew it. Everyone in Washington knew it. Turkey’s red lines are older than the SDF.

So the SDF leadership bet on the Americans. They believed Washington would protect them and eventually deliver political decentralization.

This is what I called in the livestream: they misread the room. They misread the regional climate. They misread the hierarchy of priorities.

Because when the interests of planners in Washington change, a proxy is disposable.

Assad’s Warning, and the Curse of “America as Your Cover”

Assad warned them years ago. Many analysts warned them. Even in the Arab world, there is an old saying: if your only cover is America, you are naked.

The point is not that Damascus was angelic. The point is that Damascus was local. Syria is your home geography. Syria is your social fabric. Whatever you negotiate with Damascus, you negotiate with someone who has to live on the same land tomorrow.

But the United States? It can leave. It can trade you. It can “recalibrate.” It can decide you are an inconvenience.

And that is exactly what happened.

The U.S. support for the SDF was never a Kurdish liberation project. It was a Syria destruction project: deprive Damascus of grain and resources, block reconstruction, keep Syria divided, and use the SDF as leverage. Once the SAA was dismantled and once the map could be redrawn through a new order, the Kurdish project became unnecessary.

The Fall of Assad and the Collapse of the Kurdish Dream

Now comes the moment where everything accelerates.

Assad falls. The SAA is destroyed. The national framework that could have negotiated and guaranteed any form of decentralization is shattered.

And what happens next?

The Americans abandon the SDF, exactly as was predicted, because Washington’s priority is no longer to keep multiple centers of power in Syria. Washington now wants one address, one phone call, one “sheriff” who can sign agreements and manage the territory, especially in a new Syria shaped by Turkey, Qatar, and U.S. officials.

Meanwhile, Jolani’s army, backed by Turkey and tolerated by the West, moves forward.

Raqqa falls. Deir Ezzor falls. The oil and border crossings fall. Jolani’s forces push toward Hasakah.

And the Kurdish leadership is left with the ruins of its own bet.

The SDF did not get political decentralization. It did not even secure administrative decentralization. What it got was surrender, defeat, and humiliation.

The tragic irony is unbearable: they rejected administrative decentralization from Assad’s Damascus—something they could have secured years ago—and now they face a far worse reality under a supremacist and sectarian Takfiri force that does not even pretend to respect pluralism.

As I said in the livestream, we are now watching statues of Kurdish female fighters who died fighting ISIS being torn down by the new rulers. This is not just symbolic. It is a message: your sacrifice belongs to our narrative now, and we will erase it when convenient.

The Final Bitter Lesson: Unity Was the Only Option

And this is where I arrive at the conclusion that is painful for many to hear, but must be said plainly.

The SDF and the SAA should have cooperated against Jolani’s al-Qaeda hordes when there was still time.

Not because the Kurds should have surrendered their identity. Not because they should have “trusted” everything Damascus said. But because they had a mutual enemy. They were fighting on the same land against the same foreign-backed jihadist machine.

A unified Syrian state—whatever its flaws—was the only structure capable of guaranteeing Kurdish cultural rights while maintaining national sovereignty.

Instead, the Kurdish leadership allowed itself to be used as an economic choke point against the rest of Syria. They blocked Damascus from oil and wheat under U.S. occupation logic, hoping for a political reward later.

And now, the state they weakened is gone, and the American protector they trusted is walking away.

This is not just a Kurdish tragedy. It is a Syrian tragedy. Because what was needed in the face of al-Qaeda was national unity, not fragmented ethnopolitics. As I said, everybody thought narrowly: sect, tribe, neighborhood, ethnicity. And the country paid the price.

Today, the SAA is dismantled. The SDF is being pushed back. Jolani is advancing. Turkey is shaping the north. Israel is carving the south. And the Kurdish leadership that bet everything on Washington has nothing left to bargain with.

This is what wishful thinking looks like when it collides with geopolitics.

History will not blame the Kurdish people for wanting protection. History will blame the leadership for mistaking American sponsorship for a strategy, and for rejecting the only realistic deal on the table when it still mattered.

Because in the end, the cruel truth of Syria is this: When your enemy is an al-Qaeda army, you don’t survive by waiting for Washington to save you.

You survive by building a national front before it is too late.

—Kevork Almassian is a Syrian geopolitical analyst and the founder of Syriana Analysis.