The President of Syria, Ahmed Al Sharaa, and Thomas Barrack, envoy of the U.S. President, Donald Trump, showcased on Sunday the significant shift of Washington in the Arab country by confirming U.S. tacit support for the general offensive of the Syrian army against the enclave controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by Kurdish militias, in the east of the nation.
Barrack, who had met with Kurdish representatives in Erbil, northern Iraq, and, according to the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Qutaiba Idlabi, showed that "the position of the United States is in harmony with that of Syria".
At the end of the meeting in Damascus, President Al Sharaa himself emphasized that the current military operation aims to regain "Syria's unity and sovereignty throughout the country's territory," and announced the entry of the local army into the last three provinces controlled by the Kurds: Raqqa, Hasakah, and Deir Ezzor.
Al Sharaa and Barrack reached an agreement that includes a ceasefire and the integration of SDF followers into the Syrian army. The same text indicates that Damascus will take control of all institutions in the three provinces, the eastern borders of the country, and the main oil and gas fields that the Kurdish militants dominated.
Unaware of the negotiations, the loyal military to the central government maintained their rapid progression, crossing the Euphrates River - despite the Kurds blowing up the bridges - entering the cities of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor.
Hours earlier, they had taken control of the strategic city of Tabqa, including its airport, one of the main strongholds of the SDF in the area, and the Euphrates Dam, the country's main dam.
The Kurds declared a "general mobilization" throughout the region they call Rojava, stating that they were facing "a war of survival," while imposing a curfew across that geographical area.
"We are at a crucial stage: either we resist and live with dignity, or we are subjected to all kinds of injustices and humiliations", the statement read.
The surprising offensive by the Syrian Armed Forces leaves the fate of thousands of IS fighters detained in the prisons guarded by the SDF in limbo.
The agreement signed in Damascus by the United States and Al Sharaa ensures that these prisons will be monitored by Syrian security forces, who commit to "continue fighting against IS in coordination" with Washington.
An Iraqi agency, Shafaq News, reported that U.S. troops would take effective control of supervising these centers.
Since the defeat of IS in 2019, SDF followers had around 10,000 IS prisoners held in various facilities in the east and also monitored tens of thousands of group members' relatives.
Kurdish officials have been warning for months that they could only exercise precarious supervision of these prisons due to lack of resources, which worsened after the Trump administration cut off much of the aid funding.
Only the Al Hol and Roj camps accommodate over 27,000 relatives of IS members, and, as their own administrators acknowledge, the children born inside - 60% of the captives are under 18 years old - are being educated in the extremist ideology of the movement.
In this regard, authorities linked to the SDF warned on Saturday about "the imminent danger to the prison housing IS terrorists" in Raqqa "due to the persistence of attacks."
"The prison's security situation could become unstable," the statement added, emphasizing the hypothetical impact that a significant contingent of radicals escaping could have to "reactivate the terrorist organization." "It could have catastrophic consequences for the entire world."
The warning from the SDF came hours before clashes intensified in this last town, with the fate of the IS prisoners remaining incarcerated in the enclave unknown.
Aware that the escape of their prisoners was a determining factor for the reconstitution of the radical group from 2010, IS supporters launched a surprising attack in 2022 against the Al Ghwaryan prison in the Al Hasakah area.
That operation triggered a massive battle - the largest since the decline of IS in 2019 - that lasted for about a week and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of fundamentalist activists and Kurdish uniformed personnel.
At the peak of its expansion, IS controlled a territory the size of the United Kingdom and had a force of about 100,000 men. The areas they controlled in Syria and Iraq became a base from which they carried out multiple attacks in Western cities.
Despite IS's collapse in 2019, the extremist network has maintained a certain presence in various regions of Syria and Iraq, as evidenced by the December attack on U.S. military personnel in the city of Palmyra, which left two American soldiers and a translator dead.
The U.S. aviation reported on Saturday a supposed attack in western Syria against a known IS activist linked to the December attack, claiming to have ended his life.
The U.S. position in the current confrontation has been decisive, as it was aware of Al Sharaa's plans and the mobilization of thousands of fighters and various vehicles - including tanks and heavy artillery - towards the east, as revealed this weekend by The Wall Street Journal.
Washington and the SDF were close allies in the war against the Islamic State, but after Trump's presidency, the new U.S. administration seems to have approached Al Sharaa - despite his former affiliation with that fundamentalist organization - who met with the president in November of last year at the White House.
Political analyst Gamal Mansour opined that the U.S. change in stance impacts the diminishing "weight" of the Kurdish militias for Washington's interests.
An assessment shared by Kurdish expert Kamaran Palani, who, however, warned that, although "weakened," Kurdish fighters still "have the capacity to destabilize the region."