“I think SDF has been slow in accepting and negotiating and moving towards that, and my advice to them is to speed that,” Barrack said. “There is only one road and that road is to Damascus.”
His remarks came after meeting Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi in Damascus to discuss the implementation of the March 10 agreement between Damascus and the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria (Rojava).
Abdi and Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed a landmark agreement on March 10 to integrate the SDF into the Syrian state apparatus. The agreement recognizes the Kurds as an integral part of Syria, includes a countrywide ceasefire, and stipulates the return of displaced Syrians to their hometowns.
While hailing Kurds as an “incredible, beautiful community” within Syria and neighboring Iraq, Barrack asserted that federalism in these countries is futile.
“The difficulty is, in all of these countries, what we’ve learned is federalism doesn’t work. You can’t have independent non-nation states within a nation, and so this just takes time for everybody to tour, especially after all of the years of horrendous activity Syria went through, it just takes time to adapt,” he said, but stressed that “we are running out of time.”
The envoy further hailed the Damascus administration for being “incredibly enthusiastic in trying to onboard the SDF.”
“We don’t just have to give up to something and come to the conclusion - one nation, one people, one military, one Syria,” he stressed. “The Syrian government has been very good and definitive about the generosity in figuring a way to align those interests.”
Kurds in Rojava, like other minorities in Syria, are concerned about the centralization of power and reliance on Islamic jurisprudence in the transitional constitution that has been adopted by the interim government in Damascus.
The Kurdish-led and US-backed SDF fought the lion’s share of the battle against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and ultimately territorially defeated the jihadists in 2019. It is the de facto army of Rojava.
Following a swift offensive, a coalition of rebel groups led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) - headed by Sharaa - on December 8 toppled the Bashar al-Assad regime. Sharaa was in late January appointed as Syria’s interim president.
But the HTS is rooted in al-Qaeda’s Syria branch - the al-Nusra front - and its jihadist past has been a source of concern for the international community.
On Tuesday, Washington revoked the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation for HTS but kept the group as “an alias of Al-Nusrah Front,” which is still on the terror list.
Sharaa has vowed to form an “inclusive transitional government that would reflect Syria’s diversity,” but has faced domestic and international criticism that he has marginalized minority communities.