When I look back at my university years—sharing a dorm room with a Kurdish colleague—I am reminded of a country that once understood unity not as a slogan but as a lived experience. Iraq, despite its flaws, carried an instinctive sense of cohesion before its maps began to fracture. That memory returned to me this week as I watched Mazloum Abdi announce the dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and their full integration into the institutions of the Syrian state. It was a reminder that belonging can be larger than geography, and that identity, when protected rather than weaponized, becomes a bridge rather than a trench.

I have never harbored negative feelings toward the Kurds. Not because memory is selective, but because we grew up reading the poetry of Abdullah Goran, learning to write our names in Kurdish in high school, and shaping our artistic sensibilities through the songs of Karim Kaban and the compositions of Ahmad Al‑Khaleel. These were not cultural curiosities; they were part of a shared national fabric that existed before grievances multiplied and borders cracked.

What Syrian Kurds have done today goes far beyond nostalgia, geography, or daily politics. It is a complete national lesson—a demonstration of what a state becomes when it is reclaimed, and what identity means when it is integrated rather than deployed as a tool of conflict. Their decision does not concern Syria alone. It speaks to the entire region: Iraq, Lebanon, and even the Polisario movement in the Western........

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