Mazloum Abdi’s assessment captures the hard reality of Kurdish geopolitics: alliances built against shared enemies can unravel when strategic interests change.

Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj

The most revealing aspect of Mazloum Abdi’s latest assessment of the Syrian Kurdish-led forces is not what he says about the United States, France, or Europe. It is what he refuses to say. Despite the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) receiving little meaningful Western support at a moment when their strategic environment is becoming increasingly difficult, Abdi does not frame the situation as betrayal. Instead, his assessment reflects a much colder understanding of international politics: states ultimately follow interests, and alliances built around a common enemy become vulnerable when that enemy loses strategic priority.

That is a remarkably realist reading of the Syrian Kurdish predicament.

For years, the SDF occupied an unusually important position in the Western security architecture in northeastern Syria. The partnership was built around a clearly defined strategic objective: defeating the Islamic State. The SDF provided the manpower, territorial presence and local intelligence required for the campaign, while the United States and its European partners supplied airpower, training, weapons, intelligence and diplomatic backing. It was one of the most consequential examples of Kurdish-Western military cooperation in the contemporary Middle East.

But it was never, fundamentally, a permanent political alliance.

The distinction matters.

The West did not enter Syria primarily to establish an enduring Kurdish political project. Its core objective was to defeat ISIS and prevent the re-emergence of a jihadist territorial state. The SDF was therefore indispensable because it served that objective. Once the strategic environment changed, the political value of the partnership inevitably changed with it.

This is precisely the reality Abdi appears to recognize.

Calling the current situation a “betrayal” would be emotionally understandable, particularly after years of battlefield cooperation and enormous sacrifices by Kurdish forces. But it would also obscure the central lesson of international politics. Governments rarely maintain strategic commitments simply because they once fought alongside an ally. They reassess threats, costs and interests as circumstances change.

The disappearance of a common enemy does not necessarily preserve an alliance. It can expose how conditional the alliance was from the beginning.

For the Syrian Kurds, this creates an extraordinarily difficult strategic environment.

The SDF is no longer operating within the relatively straightforward framework of the anti-ISIS campaign. Instead, it must navigate the competing interests of Damascus, Ankara, Washington, Moscow, Tehran and regional actors while simultaneously attempting to preserve the political and security gains it accumulated during the war against ISIS.

That is a dramatically more complicated mission.

During the anti-ISIS campaign, Kurdish-led forces could offer Washington something that few other actors could provide: an effective local partner capable of holding territory and fighting jihadists on the ground. Today, the strategic equation is different. The United States has fewer reasons to accept the political and military costs associated with maintaining an open-ended partnership with the SDF, while Turkey continues to regard the Kurdish-led security structure in northeastern Syria as a major national-security concern.

For Washington, this creates a balancing problem.

The United States may still value the SDF as a counterterrorism partner, but that does not automatically translate into unlimited political protection for the group's broader ambitions. American policymakers must simultaneously consider relations with Turkey, the future of Syria, the containment of Iranian influence, the threat posed by ISIS remnants and the broader question of how much strategic investment Washington is willing to maintain in a fragmented Middle Eastern state.

The SDF therefore faces the classic dilemma of a smaller actor dependent on a larger power.

It can become strategically valuable to a great power without becoming strategically indispensable.

That distinction is often overlooked.

Kurdish forces may have fought alongside American troops, but battlefield partnership does not necessarily create a permanent American obligation to defend Kurdish political interests. The relationship was built around overlapping interests, not identical strategic objectives.

This does not diminish the Kurdish contribution to the anti-ISIS campaign. Quite the opposite. The SDF paid a substantial price in personnel and territory to defeat ISIS, and its battlefield effectiveness was central to the campaign. But military contribution and political guarantees are two different currencies in international relations.

The Kurds supplied one. They were never guaranteed the other.

That is why Abdi's refusal to use the language of betrayal is strategically significant. It suggests that the SDF leadership understands that its survival cannot depend entirely on Western goodwill. The question is no longer simply how to preserve the old partnership with Washington. It is how to build enough strategic flexibility to survive if Washington's priorities continue to evolve.

That may require a difficult recalibration of Kurdish strategy.

The SDF will need to negotiate with Damascus without surrendering all of its autonomy, manage its confrontation with Turkey without provoking a conflict it cannot sustain, preserve counterterrorism cooperation with the United States where possible, and maintain channels with European governments whose willingness to provide political support may fluctuate according to the broader Syrian and regional context.

This is not an easy balancing act.

But it may be the only realistic one.

The deeper lesson extends beyond Syria. Kurdish movements across the region have repeatedly discovered that their relationships with external powers are strongest when Kurdish objectives overlap with those of a major international actor. When those interests diverge, external support can rapidly become conditional.

The pattern has appeared repeatedly in modern Middle Eastern history.

Great powers rarely abandon partners because of personal hostility. They abandon, downgrade or redefine partnerships because the strategic equation changes.

That is why Abdi's assessment should be read less as resignation than as strategic realism.

The SDF cannot change the interests of Washington, Paris or European capitals. It can, however, change how dependent it is on them.

The emerging Syrian order will therefore test whether Kurdish political leadership can transform battlefield influence into sustainable political leverage. That will require diplomacy as much as military capability, and institutional resilience as much as external alliances.

The greatest danger would be to mistake past Western support for a permanent strategic guarantee.

The greatest opportunity would be to understand exactly why that support existed in the first place—and to build new relationships around the interests that are emerging now.

The post-ISIS Middle East is governed by a harsh principle: alliances are often strongest when the enemy is shared and weakest when interests begin to diverge.

Abdi appears to understand that reality.

For the Syrian Kurds, the challenge is no longer simply winning wars alongside powerful partners. It is surviving the peace—and the geopolitical bargaining that follows it—when those partners no longer need them in quite the same way.

For a deeper look at the mounting pressure on the SDF, see “Mazlum Abdi’s Kurdistan Visit Signals Rising Pressure on Syrian Kurds”. It examines Damascus’ pressure, U.S. uncertainty, Turkey’s concerns, and the SDF’s search for regional backing.

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Short Bio

Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj is a geopolitical analyst and founder of Kurdish Policy Analysis, focusing on Kurdish affairs, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, regional security and the changing strategic architecture of the Middle East.