Tobias Lindner, Minister of State at Germany's Federal Foreign Office speaks to Rudaw's Nwenar Fatih on January 26, 2025. Photo: Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - All Syrian armed groups including the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) must be integrated into the national Syrian security apparatus, a German minister told Rudaw on Saturday.
“We encourage all sides, it means the rulers in Damascus as well as the SDF … to engage with each other in that political process, and we are convinced that in the next step, all militias in Syria, not only the Kurdish militias, all militias should integrate themselves into the Syrian armed forces,” Tobias Lindner, Minister of State at Germany's Federal Foreign Office, told Rudaw’s Nwenar Fatih.
The SDF and the new administration in Damascus are discussing the future of the force and its potential integration into the country’s new security apparatus, as well as the fate of the northeast of the country, which has been under Kurdish administration for more than a decade.
“We are convinced there is a political way forward to achieve this, not a military one,” Lindner stressed.
He also called on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to lay down arms.
“They have no future. They should lay down their arms,” Lindner said about the PKK.
After meeting with Abdi earlier this month, Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said the new Syrian army would include the SDF. Abdi has expressed readiness for integration of his force into a national military if both sides agree on a formula.
The SDF controls about a third of the country and includes Kurdish, Arab, Christian, and all-female divisions in its ranks.
Both the United Nations and European Union imposed strict sanctions on the Syrian regime for its violent crackdown on what began as peaceful anti-government protests in 2011, which evolved into a full-blown civil war.
“We are willing to alleviate some of the sanctions in the first step. We are willing to engage in early recovery and reconstruction. But some preconditions on the ground need to be met for that. We are not willing to invest into a country that would turn into an Islamist country or something,” Lindner explained.
SDF is the main ally of the US-led global coalition against ISIS. Germany is an active member of the coalition.
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