SDF-Damascus agreement in Aleppo a litmus test, and a possible path forward

ALEPPO — A second round of prisoner releases was expected in Aleppo city on Monday, three days after members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) withdrew from two Kurdish-majority neighborhoods under the terms of an agreement with the central government in Damascus.

Over the weekend, those manning the checkpoint leading into Sheikh Maqsoud—one of the two neighborhoods—were members of the Asayish, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) police force, for now the only security force there and in neighboring Ashrafieh.

Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh were controlled by the SDF since 2015, when the Free Syrian Army withdrew, remaining so as the Assad regime drove opposition forces out of Syria’s second city in 2016, and again when those same forces swept back into Aleppo late last year before toppling the regime.  

Alongside the withdrawal of the SDF, the April 1 agreement calls for the deployment of Damascus’ General Security Service alongside the Asayish and coordination between local institutions—currently administered by the AANES—and the Aleppo provincial council. It also stipulates the exchange of prisoners from both sides. 

More than 200 people were freed on April 3, in the first round of releases. As night fell on Monday, the second expected release had not materialized, while the cause for the delay was not immediately clear. 

The Aleppo agreement is seen as a test case for how the broader agreement between the SDF and Damascus reached on March 10 could be implemented. That deal stipulates the integration of civilian and military institutions tied to the SDF into the central government led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa. 

As the Aleppo agreement got underway over the weekend in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh, residents greeted it with a mixture of optimism and apprehension, hoping it could mark the start of a path forward in their city and beyond. 

‘Confidence-building’

“The [Aleppo] agreement represents confidence-building between the Autonomous Administration and the government in Damascus, and recognition of the security, military and political reality in northeast Syria,” Ahmad Araj, the Secretary-General of the Syrian National Democratic Alliance party, told Syria Direct. Founded in 2014, the secular, multiethnic party is one of the main members of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political wing of the SDF. 

The headquarters of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces, in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood of Aleppo city, 4/5/2025 (Natacha Danon/Syria Direct)

For Araj, who lives in Ashrafieh, the agreement in Aleppo marks the first real step towards implementing the larger agreement reached between Damascus and the SDF last month. “A similar agreement will be reached for Afrin in less than a month,” he hoped. 

Thousands of those living in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh are displaced from the Kurdish-majority Afrin region, roughly 40 kilometers northwest of Aleppo city. In 2018, Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) factions took control of Afrin from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), sparking a mass exodus of civilians. 

While Damascus’ general security forces entered Afrin in February, members of SNA factions responsible for widespread abuses in recent years remain, keeping many Kurds from returning—especially those with ties to the AANES or SDF.

Read more: Afrin’s displaced determined to return home, even after death

For Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh, the 14-point agreement preserves existing administrative structures through the formation of joint committees to coordinate service provision.

“In the future, it [the local administration] may be directly affiliated with the government, but currently it is affiliated with the Autonomous Administration in coordination with the Aleppo provincial council. It will become a decentralized model and in the future it will cover all Autonomous Administration areas if it succeeds,” Araj added. 

“The Sheikh Maqsoud agreement is a positive first step in the complicated and vaguely defined integration process laid out in the document signed by Sharaa and Abdi” in March, said Alexander McKeever, a researcher at the rights organization Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) who focuses on northern Syria. 

“Provided that this local agreement plays out in the way it’s intended to, it could represent a partial model for other areas of Syria under SDF control, though it leaves the thorny issue of military integration aside as local SDF units are simply withdrawing to [the] east of the Euphrates,” he explained.

The integration of Asayish and general security forces in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh “will be the first example in Syria of institutional integration from the two parties,” McKeever added. 

Cautious optimism

“The Sheikh Maqsoud agreement is a positive agreement and people were really relieved,” Faisal Khalil, 64, a Kurd from Ashrafieh, told Syria Direct on Saturday. Residents especially welcomed the first prisoner exchange, on April 4.  “There were women and children detainees—250 people were released, so 250 families were happy,” Khalil said. 

“The agreement is good if it is implemented to the letter. I see the initiative from the SDF as good, especially the release of prisoners,” echoed Mais al-Reem Hanash, 44, a feminist activist and lawyer who is Arab and grew up in Ashrafieh.

Hanash hoped security in the two neighborhoods would remain stable, as she said it was under the SDF. “The police and security forces are doing their duty and protecting citizens…from the beginning of the liberation [from Assad] until now, we have not noticed any kidnapping, murder or theft, while in other areas it was a daily occurrence,” she said.

As for governance, she believes it must be representative of its Kurdish inhabitants, not exclusively Arab. “The municipality and government institutions must be joint, meaning there should be a Kurd and someone from the other side,” she said. 

For lawyer Ziad Muhammad, 44, the agreement could allow him to return home to Sheikh Maqsoud. He is waiting for the General Security Service to deploy its forces to the neighborhood to do so. 

Immediately before the SDF controlled Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh in 2015, both Kurdish forces and Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions had a presence in the neighborhood, with services administered through a joint council that Muhammad was a member of. 

In 2015, disputes led the FSA to withdraw from the neighborhoods. The same year, Muhammad was briefly detained by Kurdish forces and fled Sheikh Maqsoud after his release. A decade later, he is anxious to return, but is critical about parts of the agreement. 

“The biggest problem is that the SDF wants to keep the same municipality. Most of those working in the [government] institutions are not residents of the neighborhood,” he contended. “They come from Afrin, the suburbs or from outside of Aleppo.”

During a decade of SDF control, “a large segment of the neighborhood was displaced, threatened, and we left under the threat of arrest,” he added.

“God willing, everything in the future will be better,” Ashrafieh resident Khalil said. The ongoing presence of the Asayish is reassuring to him, to protect the Kurdish-majority neighborhood from “armed gangs,” he added. “We were afraid that what happened on the coast would happen to us.”

In early March, over the course of four days, more than 1,000 people were killed in clashes and executions between government forces and regime loyalists in Syria’s coastal provinces. Many of the victims were civilians, and many were Alawites, members of the minority sect to which the Assad family belongs. 

Events on the coast also weighed heavily on Gula Ghazal, 59, a Yazidi Kurd displaced from Afrin who has lived in Sheikh Maqsoud since 2018 and serves as co-president of the National Union of Yazidis. “The forces that protect the neighborhood left, so there was a bit of fear,” she said. “We hope this fear does not happen, we hope for sincere cooperation and protection.”

Yazidis were heavily persecuted by the Islamic State for their religious beliefs in Iraq and Syria over the past decade. Many were also displaced from the Afrin area during the Turkish-backed Operation Olive Branch in 2018. 

“As a Yazidi, what happened in Şingal [Sinjar, in northern Iraq] makes me afraid, and what happened on the coast [in Syria] makes me afraid,” Ghazal said.  “The extremist view sees us as infidels,” she added. “The Damascus government is good, as a public security government, but it contains factions it cannot control.”

A group of yazidis, including Gula Ghazal, gather at Aleppo’s Yazidi House in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, 7/4/2025 (Natacha Danon/Syria Direct)

For Khalil, his fears lay less with extremist factions as with Turkish-backed factions or other possible spoilers. “There is no fear from the general security, the fear is from those that implement the Turkish agenda,” he said. “The fear is of lone wolves trying to sabotage the agreement. There are people for whom security is not in their interest.”

Despite her fears, Ghazal hopes a similar agreement will be reached in her hometown of Afrin, allowing her to consider a long-term return. “With the presence of the general security we feel safe—twice I went to Afrin and they made me feel safe,” she said.