On July 11, 2025., Tom Barrack, U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, condemned federalism in Iraq and Syria. “The difficulty is, in all of these countries, what we’ve learned is federalism doesn’t work. You can’t have independent non-nation states within a nation,” he said. That same day, he echoed the Syrian interim president’s embrace of centralization within the state. By doing so, he reveals ignorance of history and condemns Syria to failure. Every effort to run roughshod over the region’s ethnic and sectarian minorities has led to dictatorship and state failure.
Barrack’s statement dismissing federalism as a solution for Syria and Iraq plays into the hands of authoritarians and Islamist factions alike.
Barrack’s statement dismissing federalism as a solution for Syria and Iraq plays into the hands of authoritarians and Islamist factions alike. It also emboldens Arab nationalists who already mock Kurdish demands for decentralization. Various ethnic and religious communities in the north and east of Syria have run the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria for more than a decade. The global counter-Islamic State coalition has financially and militarily supported the Kurdish-led, but often Arab-staffed, Syrian Democratic Forces. It is Barrack’s cartoonish and inaccurate idea of ethnic federalism when military organization represents all the communities.
Barrack also does not consider why Kurds should abandon what they have in order to surrender into a “one country, one nation, one military” system that has always ended in ethnic cleansing. Following the new Syrian regime’s massacre of Alawis, trust is unlikely. Kurds have not asked for an ethnic-based federal system in Syria, nor have they sought a Kurdish-only region. What they consistently have advocated for is a decentralized system—one that would give all communities in Syria, from Kurds to Druze to Christians, a voice in governance and protection from the tyranny of centralization that defined the Assad regimes for decades.
When centralization has failed, what alternative is left? A decentralized Syria would both accommodate the country’s diversity and guard against the resurgence of groups like the Islamic State by giving local communities ownership of their security and governance. That was the model the Syrian Democratic Forces envisioned and for which it fought.
The Kurds have refused to integrate into Ahmed al-Sharaa’s interim government because it includes no viable, inclusive system.
Barrack is right that Kurds should aim to integrate into the governments in Baghdad, Ankara, Damascus, and even Tehran, but into what does he expect the Kurds to integrate? A Syrian state dominated by unreformed Ba’athist elements and newly empowered jihadists who represent the old guard of authoritarianism and the new guard of extremist Islamism? The Kurds have refused to integrate into Ahmed al-Sharaa’s interim government because it includes no viable, inclusive system. They refuse to hand over their autonomy to the same mentalities that oppressed them for decades.
Even more troubling is the silence surrounding the Druze in Suwayda, who continue to face repression. If Washington is committed to a pluralistic, stable Syria, then how can it ignore these abuses while lecturing Kurds about “integration”?
The Kurds have learned repeatedly that U.S. loyalty is transactional. From Secretary of State Henry Kissinger abandoning the Iraqi Kurds in 1975, to President Donald Trump greenlighting Turkish invasions in 2019, to this current shift toward appeasing Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-aligned forces in Syria, the message is clear: Kurdish sacrifices are disposable.
The price of Barrack’s mistake and his faith in autocratic Islamists, however, will not be paid only in Kurdish lives.
