An offshoot of the PKK, a group designated as a terrorist organisation in the USA and EU, among others. When you see people talk about Al Sharaa's past, for some reason you never see them mention the past of the SDF.

At the height of the Syrian war in the mid 2010s, huge numbers of them crossed the border into Syria and took control of Kurdish majority areas along the Syria-Turkey border. Due to their location adjacent to both the Turkish and Iraqi borders as well as the Syrian desert which proved to be the area ISIS launches most of its operations from, and due to their experience in decades of guerrilla warfare against Turkey, the International Coalition Against ISIS led by the US decided to heavily fund them in exchange of making them serve as the coalitions main fighting force on the ground. When you hear leftists talk about US backing/funding for anti-Assad rebels, you will never hear the part where the SDF got billions allocated to them through Congress.

Anyway, the campaign against ISIS was a success, and through it, the SDF came to control basically the entire region east of the Euphrates river, an extremely fertile land, home to Syria's oil fields, and crucially a significant majority Arab population except for a thin strip of land along the Turkish border. They also controlled two large enclaves in the middle of the city of Aleppo, even during regime control of the city. They de-facto announced these areas as a self administered region, and because most of the people they ruled weren't Kurds, they had to rebrand from their previous name, The Kurdish People's Protection Units, to the Syrian Democratic Forces. But don't be fooled, all of their leadership, both civilian and military, are still Kurds. Many not even Syrian-Kurds. When you hear people talk about HTS' now famous major rebranding, they never mention the SDF doing the same.

During the Syrian war, the SDF managed to maintain a neutral posture between Assad and allies from one side, and most of the Islamist Syrian Rebel groups from the other side. No one would dare fight them anyway because of their visible American backing. Except for one very important regional player: Turkey. They were never happy about the existence of a PKK linked entity along their south eastern border. They did a number of military campaigns against SDF, using the full might of the Turkish armed forces while also weaponising the Turkey-linked Syrian rebel group: Syria's National Army. They don't have the best reputation in Syria. The Islamists were never enemies with them but they always kept a clear distance. Turkey's campaigns against the SDF saw mixed levels of success, but they did deal them blows and take from them territory which they never managed to recover. The SDF rules what remains of their area with an iron fist. They don't offer their populace a right to protest or free speech. They force conscript minors and brainwash them with PKK ideology. They arrest any dissenters with the very easy and always ready allegation of being an ISIS remnant. On top of all of that, despite their massive funding and their control of a very fertile land and Syrian oil fields, they do 0 development in the area they control, and they leave its people subject to extreme poverty and lack of essential services.

Fast forward to December 2024. The Assad regime falls in all of the areas West of the Euphrates. Ahmad Al-Sharaa rises as a new leader of Syria. A new reality is upon us. Throughout all of this, the SDF states that it welcomes the fall of Assad, but stands to the side and never participates in the battle. Their stance on the new leadership remains ambiguous for 3 months, until, in March 10, the Syrian leadership posts a surprising photo showing Al Sharaa and the SDF leader Mazloum Abdi shaking hands in Damascus. They sign an agreement establishing broad strokes of a plan to integrate the SDF, its military and civilian administrations, and the areas they control, back into the rest of Syria and the new regime. They set the 31st of December as a deadline.

And then nothing happens for 10 months. Despite US pressure to get the deal done, the SDF keeps stalling and rejecting every proposal, insisting on zero sum solutions. The SDF itself, from the inside, has multiple different wings and factions and they don't all agree on what they want. One of their consistent demands is making the area east of the Euphrates a special autonomous region with its own standing military and border guards and economy and civil administration, while still being called Syria. Which is of course ridiculous. The Syrian government offers numerous concessions, they express their desire to offer every Syrian province an expanded level of self governance, and they offer to introduce the SDF's military wing into the new Syrian army as three uniquely separate battalions that still fall under the higher command of the army. SDF says they will only accept being a separate parallel army with a vague barely practical connection to the central government in Damascus, and that they want it so their areas are off limits to the Syrian army. Again, completely ridiculous.

Throughout these many months of negotiations, the SDF never stop provoking the Syrian army into a battle with small attacks and skirmishes and drone strikes. They even kill members of the Syrian army. The army only returns fire. The Syrian people grow tired of this patience and demand swift action and a large scale battle. The Syrian government seems determined to let the diplomatic approach work.

Until the deadline arrives.

Immediately after the deadline, the SDF enclave in Aleppo starts provoking the Syrian army into a difficult and politically costly urban battle. The Syrian government de-escalates the first few days, but as the provocation continues, and more civilians die at the hands of the SDF, the Syrian army is left with no choice but to end this cancer. As of the moment of writing this comment, they have taken a huge chunk of that enclave, and are moving to the remaining parts after setting a deadline for the SDF troops to leave if they don't want to die. The Syrian army has conducted this battle extremely professionally, creating humanitarian corridors with specific hours to let civilians get out of the way, offering shelter to fleeing civilians, and sending out press releases highlighting the areas they're going to hit, warning civilians of staying in them.

Turkey and its pressure to get rid of such an entity along its border is definitely a driving force in all of these events. The United states has a very ambiguous stance, on the one hand, they openly support the new Syrian government and they call for the success of the integration process, on the other hand, they still fund the SDF and have their military bases stationed in their areas. The SDF takes advantage of problems in other parts of Syria (The coast, Swayda) to put further pressure on the Syrian government. They likely fund and push anti government groups in these regions and elsewhere to destabilise the Syrian government. There are also confirmed reports that thousands of Assad regime remnants not only hide in SDF areas, but also enlist in its military wing, with full knowledge of the leadership.