In the northern city of Raqqa, a sea of Syrian flags flooded Al Naeem square and music blared from speakers.
It was a place once dubbed the "Roundabout of Hell' when Islamic State fighters controlled the city and made it the capital of its proposed caliphate, using the square as a space for public executions.
But this week it was the scene for celebration as locals marked the withdrawal of Kurdish forces from the city, with the military under Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa sweeping through the area.
"We were waiting for this moment for a long time," 38-year-old Lamia Hayek told the ABC.
"We've been waiting for a year for the liberation of Raqqa."
As tanks and trucks rolled through the streets, the scars of the fighting over the last week were clear to see.
An armoured vehicle lay abandoned on the road outside Raqqa, its windscreen riddled with bullets.
Other vehicles were run off the road, tyres shredded and engines burnt out. The bodies of civilians caught in the crossfire lay crumpled alongside.
The remains of one man lay in the back of a truck, covered in a blanket with obvious gunshot wounds to his head.
The SDF had been blamed for blowing up bridges in Raqqa, in a bid to slow the rapid advance of government forces. Locals discovered tunnels they said were built by the Kurds during their control of the city.
"There was a lot of gunfire and we were afraid," Ms Hayek said.
"But as soon as general security entered the city, when the Syrian army entered, we felt safe.
"We are no longer afraid — today we went out with our children to see them, to rejoice with them, to be happy, because we've waited a lifetime for this moment.
"Fourteen years deprived of joy — God willing, this is the end of wars in all of Syria."
The rapid advance of Al-Sharaa
In late 2024 Al-Sharaa, then known by his nom du guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani, led the rebel forces of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to the Syrian capital Damascus, ending the more than half a century reign of the Assad family and prompting dictator Bashar al-Assad to flee to Russia.
Despite the significance of that moment, Syria was not united under one banner. The legacy of the country's civil war, and the terror of Islamic State, had left it divided.
An autonomous region in north-eastern Syria had been in place since 2012, supported coalition of Kurdish militia known collectively as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
They controlled a large swathe of Syria — up to a quarter of its territory stretching from the north-east through to central regions.
Al-Sharaa had made no secret of his desire to see that territory brought back into the fold — particularly given the wealth held there in oil fields and agricultural land.
After months of negotiations over the future of the Kurdish establishment, the situation deteriorated and deadly clashes between the Syrian military and the SDF erupted.
Fighting in Aleppo moved to towns and cities long held by the Kurds, each falling into the hands of the Al-Sharaa forces as the SDF pulled back.
They included Raqqa — a predominantly Arab city, well beyond traditionally Kurdish territory.
"During this period, [the SDF] followed the same approach as the fallen regime in Raqqa: deteriorating services, theft, looting, and the spread of drugs in the city," Mohamad el Daghir, a civilian activist from Raqqa, told the ABC.
"The battle has ended, the militias have left the city, and security has begun to stabilise after the Syrian Arab Army took control."
The US death knell for the Kurdish forces
Raqqa had been under the SDF's control since late 2017 when IS was driven from the city by its fighters, backed by the United States.
Successive US administrations had viewed the SDF as an integral part of efforts to counter IS, and its forces had maintained security over prisons housing the jihadist fighters and camps for their families and associates.
Australian women and children have been among those in living in places like Al-Hol and Al-Roj camp.
The SDF accused the Syrian military forces of attacking some of those prisons, allowing some inmates to escape. The Syrian government took aim at the SDF for pulling out of those areas without coordinating their movements, accusing the Kurds of jeopardising security in the sensitive spaces.
The death knell for the Kurdish forces appeared to be delivered on Tuesday, in the form of a post on X by the US special envoy for Syria.
"The original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired," Tom Barrack posted.
"Damascus is now both willing and positioned to take over security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention facilities and camps.
"The greatest opportunity for the Kurds in Syria right now lies in the post-Assad transition under the new government led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa."
Samy Akil, a Syrian-Australian non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, said the SDF had "overestimated" the willingness of the US to back it in.
"Without an explicit American green light for the Syrian government forces, this offensive would not have been taking place," he told the ABC.
"And that's why the Kurds or the SDF feels like it was betrayed, which I can understand to some extent."
Everyone wants a prize in post-Assad Syria
The declaration, that the US was backing in the Al-Sharaa government after years of support for the SDF, came after more than a year of talks about how to fold the Kurdish militia and bureaucracy into the Syrian state.
A deal was struck between the two sides in March 2025, but stalled almost immediately.
The Kurds wanted to keep their autonomy and, in particular, security control over the north-east of Syria.
"The SDF felt that, in one way or the other, yes it was HTS who toppled the regime at the end of the day, but they were second," Mr Akil said.
"If you want to think about it as a race, they felt that they deserved a silver medal.
"However, at the same time, the Syrian government was like 'we are the ones who toppled the regime that started this whole mess, and we are the central government now, and security arrangements have to go through us.'"
Jonathan Spyer from the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) described the agreement in March 2025 as the Kurds "trying to buy time".
"I was last in that area in April of last year, and I met with some of their leadership at that time — behind the scenes, they were deeply concerned about the nature of the Al-Sharaa regime," he told the ABC.
Dr Spyer pointed to fighting between the SDF and the Al-Nusra Front, the precursor to Al-Sharaa's HTS, around a decade ago.
"There was no love lost, so to speak, between these progressive, secular, left-leaning Kurdish nationalist fighters and organisations and Sunni, jihadi Islamist groups such as Al-Sharaa's group," he said.
"The fact that Al-Sharaa became the government in Damascus didn't make them think any more positively, let's say, towards that organisation.
"They saw, and I think still see, this government as a deeply repressive one, which is trying to build an Arab and Islamic, Sunni Islamic Syria, a place which will not be good for minorities to live in, and so what they were trying to do was to hang onto their guns for as long as possible.”
Kurds without a state
The Kurds are often referred to as the largest ethnic group without their own country. Their footprint covers parts of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkiye.
Kurdish forces are labelled terrorists by the Turkish government, and the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insisted the Kurds in Syria lay down their weapons after this latest round of fighting.
The deal between the Kurds and Al-Sharaa in March 2025 included reference to matters such as the acknowledgement of political rights for the Kurdish population, the return of citizenship to Kurds who had previously had that stripped away from them, and the integration of Kurdish fighters into the Syrian military.
Since then, and with the deal having stalled, forces loyal to Al-Sharaa have been widely condemned for targeting minority groups in Syria.
In the west of the country, Alawites were killed during fighting between rebels loyal to the former Assad regime and fighters aligned with the new government.
Months later, the Druze minority in southern Syria were also attacked. That led Israel to launch strikes across the region, including on the capital Damascus, as it claimed to be defending the community.
There are Druze across the border in the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967.
President Al-Sharaa has made a number of overtures to the Kurdish community, including that he would recognise Kurdish as a national language, declare the Kurdish new year festival of Nowruz a public holiday, and ban ethnic discrimination.
Despite that, the previous violence against minorities has fuelled concerns about safety for Kurds inside Syria.
"I think this is a question that only the Kurds are asking — it is a question that the Druze are asking, it's a question that the Christians are asking, it's the question that a lot of minorities within the Syrian state are asking," Samy Akil said.
"Fears within the Kurdish community again are legitimate, and it is up to the Syrian state to hold itself and its troops accountable to prevent any further bloodshed and be a serious actor for paving Syria's future."
People on the street in Raqqa were more optimistic.
"We do not say 'the Kurds', the Kurds are a main component in this country," Hazem Khalaf Al-Harami told the ABC.
"There are now truly very beautiful initiatives by young people calling for brotherhood, citizenship, and civil and community peace among the components of the Syrian people and the components of Raqqa, and for embracing what remains of these bonds after they were destroyed by the SDF.
"My personal wish is to live in a homeland, a state of law, where everyone is equal under the law, where all components and all people live in goodness and peace, where security and safety prevail, and where the Syrian citizens' dignity and identity are restored, in this city and in all Syrian cities."
'The game is up'
President Al-Sharaa has issued a deadline of the weekend for the SDF and the Kurdish bureaucracy in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) to hand over control of their last provinces.
The deal currently on the table, on matters such as integrating the militia into the military, is not as favourable as the 2025 offer.
For example, rather than bringing entire units under the Syrian government forces' control, fighters would enter as individuals.
But given the events of the past fortnight, Jonathan Spyer believes the Kurds are "very serious" about the new pact.
"I think they understand that the game is up — that's to say, the Americans have abandoned them," Dr Spyer said.
"The choice they have now is to try to fight on alone with absolutely no chance of victory, losing the lives of probably thousands of young people in the process for no real reason — because in the end, the Turks backing up the government of Syria will roll over them.
"They can either do that, which they do not wish to do, or they can accept the terms which lead to dissolution of their political authority and of their armed forces."
The challenge for the Al-Sharaa government, according to Samy Akil, will be to ensure the disparate groups loyal to him hold the line on any deal.
"There was just a lot of bad blood between both sides as well, coupled with the SDF overestimating its leverage and [overestimating] the willingness of the Americans to stand up and support them against an onslaught from Damascus, which eventually proved to be decisive in SDF dissolving or virtually dissolving now, de facto dissolving," he said.
