Syria authorities say armed groups have agreed to disband

Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa attends a meeting with former rebel faction chiefs, as he reached an agreement with them to dissolve all groups and consolidate them under the Defence Ministry, according to a statement from the new administration, in Damascus, Syria on December 24, 2024. Credits: Sana, via Reuters

Syria’s new authorities announced on Tuesday (December 24, 2024) that they had reached an agreement with the country’s rebel groups on their dissolution and integration into the regular defence forces.

Photos published by the state-run SANA news agency showed the country’s new leader, Muhammad al-Jolani [Ahmed al-Sharaa], surrounded by the heads of several armed factions — but not representatives of the Kurdish-led forces in Syria’s northeast.

The meeting “ended in an agreement on the dissolution of all the groups and their integration under the supervision of the ministry of defence”, said a statement carried by SANA and the authorities’ Telegram account.

On Sunday (December 22, 2024), Jolani said the new authorities would “absolutely not allow there to be weapons in the country outside state control”.

“That also applied to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces,” he said.

Last week, the military chief of Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the Islamist group that spearheaded the offensive that toppled President Bashar al-Assad — said that Kurdish-held areas would be integrated under the new leadership, and that “Syria will not be divided”.

Thirteen years of civil war in Syria has left more than half a million people dead and fragmented the country into zones of influence controlled by different armed groups backed by regional and international powers.