QAMISHLI, Syria — The integration of the Kurdish administration within Syria’s state institutions is now complete, Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said on Thursday, marking the end of the Kurds’ long-held dream of autonomy.

The announcement follows months of negotiations between the two sides after a January agreement that called for the full integration of Kurdish civil and military institutions into the state — a move Washington deemed “historic.”

“I want to say that the phase of integrating military, security and administrative institutions into national state institutions is complete and finished,” Abdi, who heads the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said at an event in Qamishli in northeastern Syria.

“From now on, we begin a new phase,” he added.

“Our struggle will continue to cement our people’s rights in the constitution.”

The January agreement, signed by Abdi and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, followed clashes between Syrian Kurdish fighters and the new authorities’ forces that saw the Kurds lose swathes of territory they held in the oil-rich north and northeast.

Amid the violence, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed on January 16 a decree enshrining the Kurds’ national rights and recognising Kurdish as a national language, an unprecedented step since Syria’s independence in 1946.

In February, Noureddine Ahmed Eissa, a Kurd from the city of Qamishli, was appointed governor of Hasakeh. In March, senior Kurdish military........

© The Times of Israel