I traveled approximately 310 miles from Damascus to Deir ez-Zor in a civilian van filled with passengers and — as I would only realize much later — illegal weapons concealed beneath the seats. For most of the journey, I remained unaware of the cargo we were transporting. What disturbed me most was that soldiers at more than 15 military checkpoints along the way failed to notice anything unusual, waving us through with routine glances.
By the time we reached our destination, I found myself contemplating the deeper fractures that Syria is grappling with. The smuggling of weapons is more than just a criminal issue — it’s a reflection of the gaps in authority and security throughout the country following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime four months ago. Today, Syria is marked by porous front lines and a fragile reintegration process. Much of the south and east remains beyond government control, while the coastal region in the west has recently experienced a flare-up of sectarian violence and a limited insurgency attempt. Lawlessness festers in these vacuums, where local militias, remnants of former regime forces and foreign-backed factions all vie for influence.
My most recent trip to my hometown in eastern Syria came at an opportune moment, coinciding with the signing on March 10 of a historic agreement in Damascus between the interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, and the leader of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Mazloum Abdi. Syrians I spoke with in Damascus and eastern Syria hoped this agreement would be a step toward stitching the country back together, by integrating the Kurdish-dominated eastern region with the rest of Syria. For many, it’s a fragile but necessary start. That the Kurdish region is outside the control of the government in Damascus poses a clear challenge to a unified Syria in the wake of Assad’s fall on Dec. 8.
As I witnessed during my journey and in conversations with locals across the region, the integration agreement between Damascus and the SDF embodies both hope and hazard. On paper, it aims to unify the country by bridging the deep divides between Arabs and Kurds in Syria’s fractured east. However, beneath the optimism, old Arab-Kurdish tensions persist. On the one hand, Arabs widely embrace the deal as a step toward reunification. On the other hand, many Kurdish factions — especially the more hard-line militant group known as the Qandil faction, made up of veterans of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) operating in Iraq — remain skeptical, even resistant. This gap highlights the fault lines that post-Assad Syria will likely continue to grapple with for the foreseeable future.
At 9:20 a.m., outside the five-star luxury Cham Palace Hotel in downtown Damascus, a battered 10-passenger van picked me up, headed for my hometown in eastern Syria. The van was dusty and topped with white bushel bags strapped down by a cord. The driver, a middle-aged man, and his younger assistant greeted me and added my luggage to the pile. “Take the two seats up front, brother Faris,” the driver said. “Your brother reserved them for you.”
Inside, I exchanged greetings with the passengers — three women, a middle-aged man, a young father with a little boy on his lap and a couple of toddlers. One woman wore a full face cover, while the others donned regular hijabs. As we waited for the driver to finish securing the load, I overheard the women whispering in the distinct rural dialect of my region. They were gossiping about a man on the sidewalk smoking during Ramadan. “Look, that guy isn’t fasting,” one of them said, and the middle-aged man grumbled in disapproval. A younger passenger offered a counterpoint, suggesting maybe the man was sick or not Muslim.
I quickly moved my small water bottle to the side of my backpack, not wanting to draw attention. Although I was technically exempt from fasting as a traveler, it seemed wiser to avoid a challenge that might affect my mood.
The driver returned, apologizing for the delay. “I was late picking up passengers from two villages outside Damascus,” he said. “No worries,” I replied with a smile. “An hour and 20 minutes, I’ve seen worse.” The passengers laughed lightly.
We pulled out of Damascus around 9:30 a.m. Almost immediately, the van began scraping the ground on every speed bump and pothole, forcing the driver to stop repeatedly. “Just overloaded,” he said. Yet, looking at the passengers and luggage, something felt off. I asked if his tires were underinflated, but he brushed it off.
I didn’t realize that this would turn out to be no ordinary journey.
This trip from Damascus to my ancestral region occurred two days before al-Sharaa and Abdi signed their agreement to unite the two largest areas of the country under one leadership — at least, on paper. The last time I traveled this route east was in 2008 for one of my cousin’s weddings. When I left Syria for the United States in 2009, almost all my family lived just outside Damascus, so I did not often visit the region, known as the Jazira.
If you are like me, you will appreciate the limitless open space of the Syrian “badiya” (“plains”) on both sides of the road once you leave Damascus heading east, especially at this time of year, when it becomes greener. The further east you go, the more generous the landscape feels. After the historic city of Palmyra, it becomes even more serene, dotted by herds of sheep grazing in the distance. If you are lucky, you might catch a glimpse of camels wandering across the badiya once or twice.
On the road, it became clear that the nine other passengers were one extended family and that the driver knew them well. What stood out was how they spoke in riddles as we approached each checkpoint manned by the newly formed Syrian forces. The driver would tell them it was merely a police checkpoint, not a troubling situation. He would suggest mentioning that they were returning to the village after the recent victory following a long absence, keeping it simple and without elaboration. He instructed them not to provide further details unless prompted. There were about nine or 10 checkpoints between Damascus and Deir ez-Zor. At most of them, the driver barely slowed down, exchanging a few lighthearted jokes with armed men from the General Security Forces, a new police force established by the interim government to replace that of the former regime.
The mood was more serious at a few other checkpoints run by the newly formed military, mostly manned by former members of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel faction, who sometimes displayed their flag alongside the Syrian flag. I wondered why the men in the van were so tense. The soldiers would politely ask for passengers’ IDs, peek through the van windows and inquire about our route. None of them climbed aboard to search the van or inspect the luggage. Yet I watched them thoroughly search other vehicles, such as larger buses and trucks pulled to the roadside.
We made a quick stop past Palmyra for a restroom break and dhuhr (afternoon) prayer. As soon as I stepped out of the van, the middle-aged man from the van approached me and asked, “Brother, where are you from exactly?” When I answered, his face relaxed, and he smiled, clearly recognizing my tribal roots. I didn’t ask where he was from — I was focused on finding the restroom. When I reflected on this later, it all made sense. The guy was worried that I was the only passenger they didn’t know. Once he discovered that I came from the same rural region, I seemed less of a threat in his mind. At least, that’s how I interpreted why he asked me.
While waiting for the others, the driver, perhaps feeling a little more open, told me that the SDF was looking for the two young men traveling with us because they had not completed their compulsory military service. He worried they might be detained once we crossed the river into SDF-controlled areas. The conversation left me puzzled. Why were they so concerned at checkpoints not run by the SDF? It didn’t fully add up.
A short while later, just before entering Deir ez-Zor, the driver received a phone call that visibly upset him. While still driving, he spoke with the passengers in the back about SDF vehicles patrolling the highway beyond the river. As he waited for their response, I overheard one of them suggest, “Should we sanitize our language,” which struck me as an attempt to keep me out of whatever they were planning. The driver glanced at me quickly before refocusing on the others.
As we drove into Deir ez-Zor, the atmosphere inside the van grew tense. I was distracted by the devastation around us and how unrecognizable the city had become. Almost every building was reduced to rubble. I commented on it, trying to draw the driver into a conversation, but he ignored me, preoccupied with heated discussions with the passengers in the back.
The driver tried to convince them that it might be safer to drop the men and their luggage in the city, rather than continue beyond the Euphrates River, where the SDF is in control. “I don’t want to be responsible for three women going to SDF jails,” he argued. “They won’t differentiate between men and women.”
It was at this point that it hit me — they were smuggling something illegal. Yet part of me remained frozen, torn between absorbing the destruction outside and the uneasy realization of what I was caught up in.
As we neared the Euphrates, preparing to cross into SDF-held territory, I noticed drivers loading their vehicles onto boats. Every bridge connecting the two sides of the river in the province of Deir ez-Zor had been destroyed during the fight against the Islamic State group, and later to prevent hostile movement between the two areas. The driver and passengers agreed on a story: Once across, they would tell the SDF soldiers that they had picked up all passengers except me from the SDF side of the river.
And so they did. At the first two SDF checkpoints, the driver calmly repeated the story. The soldiers appeared disinterested and didn’t bother to search the van.
Roughly 30 miles north of Deir ez-Zor, the driver asked one of the men in the back to call ahead and check if SDF vehicles were still patrolling the highway. The answer was affirmative. The driver then told him to call his father and bring a truck to meet us further along the road.
I began feeling increasingly uneasy. I asked the driver if everything was alright and if he could call my brother to make sure he would be there to pick me up in the next town. The driver, now realizing I had put two and two together, said, “I am going to ask your brother to drive toward us so he can pick you up as soon as possible.”
A few minutes later, we spotted a truck parked on the right side of the highway, on top of a small hill. The driver sighed in frustration. “Really, on top of a hill? Couldn’t you find a less obvious spot?” he muttered. He pulled the van over behind the truck, where an old man stood alongside a teenage boy, no older than 16, who was praying just beside the vehicle, and a younger boy standing nearby.
The driver and the middle-aged man from the van approached the old man, briefing him on the plan: The three men and the “luggage” would transfer to the truck while the women and children would remain with the van. The old man was not pleased. He pointed to the truck’s open bed and said it wasn’t a good idea. It was too exposed for what they were carrying, he said.
Still, they got to work. They began pulling black boxes from beneath the van seats and transferring them to the truck. Though the boxes were compact enough to fit under the seats, it took effort for the men to carry just one at a time. Watching them struggle, I thought, these must be weapons — the weight, the driver’s anxiety, the riddles at the checkpoints — it all suddenly made sense. No wonder the van scraped the road at every pothole.
They had barely moved two or three boxes when the driver froze, eyes locked on the road. “I can see the SDF car driving this way,” he warned. “Put the boxes back. Now!” In the scramble, they stashed the boxes under the seats again, and the teenage boy fetched a thick red nylon cord from the truck. The old man, the driver and the boy pretended to fasten the cord between the van and the truck to make it look like the van had broken down and was about to be towed.
The white Mitsubishi SDF patrol truck slowed as it passed us, eyes scanning the scene, but it didn’t stop. “Thank God, they bought it,” the driver said. “They might circle back,” he added. The men stayed put for several tense minutes, watching the horizon.
All the while, I sat in the van, debating whether to grab my bag and quietly walk away or stay put and hope my brother arrived soon. I decided to stay. If things went south, I’d explain what happened. For now, I was just a passenger watching a drama unfold.
The driver wasn’t satisfied with the first attempt at tying the cord. The knot slipped as soon as the truck inched forward. Frustrated, he hopped out, secured it properly and got the old man to start towing. The truck crawled forward, the van barely moving behind it. Despite the tension, I couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous it all looked. It was more like a poorly staged scene from a comedy than a smuggling operation.
As they put on the performance, my brother called the driver. I could hear him through the driver’s phone. “I’m being towed,” the driver told him. “Just keep driving; you’ll spot me.”
When my brother’s car finally pulled up, I felt immediate relief. I grabbed my backpack and stepped out as soon as we stopped. My 7-year-old nephew ran to me, hugging my leg before I kissed him. Meanwhile, my brother spoke briefly with the driver while holding my suitcase. “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered to him.
As we drove off, I realized we were less than 2 miles from the next SDF checkpoint. I quickly explained to my brother what I had pieced together. As we approached the checkpoint, he slowed down, glancing in his rearview mirror to check if the van was behind us. It was not too far away. After passing the checkpoint, we looked again in the rearview mirror to see if the van had been stopped and thoroughly checked. However, the SDF waved the van through without a search.
Minutes later, we saw the van speeding down the highway behind us, soon followed by the truck. My brother exited the highway onto local roads leading to our parents’ farm, about 30 minutes away. As a fellow van driver, he was certain that a network of smugglers was operating between Damascus and the Jazira, trafficking weapons through these unsecured routes.
Two days later, the skies over our village and the surrounding towns lit up with gunfire celebrating the agreement signed by al-Sharaa and Abdi. Yet even with the agreement in place, new challenges were emerging. During my tour of the region the following day, I began noticing the first signs of friction — chiefly among the Kurdish leadership.
The agreement marked a step forward on paper but, on the ground, it created new fault lines. In one voice recording shared within a WhatsApp group for the local Kurdish leadership, and later shared with me, a Kurdish official issued blunt instructions regarding the celebrations.
“Any individual caught with the Syrian three-star flag, whether waving it or not, will be held accountable,” the official said, singling out the village of Tell Brak but applying the rule to the wider area. “These behaviors create chaos and sedition,” he warned. He urged local leaders to communicate this message to residents and to mosque imams, instructing them to avoid political topics in their Friday sermons during Ramadan. “They will be held responsible as well,” he added.
Tell Brak, an ancient site in northeastern Syria’s Upper Khabur River plain, is about 25 miles northeast of Hasaka, in an area that mainly consists of Arab villages with tribal inhabitants. From 2013 to 2014, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia and other Kurdish forces perpetrated violence against Tell Brak’s residents, rendering it a sensitive location.
The same recording instructed officials to discourage large gatherings and threatened “strict measures” for anyone who fired celebratory gunshots. “Anyone who fires will be arrested immediately,” the official concluded. “Make sure this reaches everyone.”
Based on my tour and conversations with locals, Arabs are already mostly loyal to al-Sharaa. Eastern Syria, which is predominantly Arab, has largely been controlled by the Kurds after they led the fight against the Islamic State with the help of the U.S.-led global coalition. The night the agreement was made public, there were widespread celebrations across Arab-majority areas. Despite the risk of stray bullets and injuries, people gathered, fired into the air and rejoiced openly. Many saw this agreement as a long-overdue step toward restoring unity and normalcy to their region, as well as liberation from Kurdish control of Arab areas.
The risks are not limited to Arab-Kurdish tensions alone. The broader fragmentation of the SDF itself, split between local Syrian Kurds and the more militant Qandil faction, raises fears of internal conflict based on competing loyalties.
The situation on the ground reveals competing agendas and rising tensions. Kurdish military and administrative leaders are already divided over the al-Sharaa-Abdi agreement. While some view it as a necessary compromise, others within Kurdish hard-liner circles see it as a threat to their influence.
As one Kurdish activist shared with me, in the town of Shaddadi and the surrounding region, non-Syrian Kurds from the Qandil Mountains still hold key leadership positions and appear deeply skeptical of the integration. Some of these officials, I was told, have worked to suppress public displays of support for the agreement.
BZ, another local activist in Shaddadi who asked not to use his full name, confirmed that, saying, “No one was allowed to wave the Syrian flag or organize public celebrations here the next day.” He believes this resistance stems from within the Kurdish leadership itself. “At least 10% of the leadership in this area are Qandil Kurds,” BZ said, adding that these factions are reluctant to cede power to al-Sharaa’s incoming administration.
The fear among the activists is that internal division within the Kurdish leadership could escalate into infighting. If certain factions refuse to comply with the terms of the agreement or resist merging with the new Syrian military, violent confrontations could erupt. BZ told me that many of the rank-and-file Arab soldiers within the SDF are already eager to join the Syrian military under al-Sharaa. “They can’t wait,” he said. “If they are ordered to fight against the Syrian military, they will refuse.”
Despite these tensions, there is still hope among the people of the Jazira for a peaceful and unified outcome. “First and foremost, we hope Syria will be unified as one country across its geography so that Syrians can move freely throughout their homeland,” BZ said when I asked him what people in his community hoped for most.
This sentiment resonates widely, far beyond the rural areas east of the Euphrates. Despite external efforts by regional actors like Iran and Israel, as well as Assad loyalists, to sow discord and fuel sectarian fears, the desire for unity appears strong.
Still, many in the region acknowledge that unity rests on fragile foundations. Even those who remain optimistic worry about how easily bloodshed could unravel this progress. Among the frustrations voiced by Syrians, one recurring theme is the popular skepticism toward Western narratives that focus almost exclusively on minority rights while often neglecting the plight of the Sunni Arab majority.
Abu Ahmad, a restaurant owner in the city of Hasaka, expressed this sentiment clearly. “Everyone talks about minorities,” he told me, “but what about the Sunni Arabs who have been oppressed for 50 years? We are hoping for a government that finally represents us.”
Abu Ahmad’s story is one shared by many. Originally from Deir ez-Zor, his family has been displaced multiple times by the conflict. Like so many others, he longs for a government that reflects his identity and his people’s experience.
As I continued my conversations across villages and towns, I noticed a pattern. Many people were less concerned with political rhetoric and more focused on immediate, tangible changes, including security, freedom of movement, equality under the law and the end of what they see as entrenched corruption.
People complain about rampant government corruption within the Kurdish-led SDF and its political wing, the Syrian Democratic Council. Everyone I spoke to, without exception, raised this issue. Corruption, they told me, is pervasive and mirrors the worst aspects of the Assad regime’s practices. I experienced it myself. On my way back to Damascus, at the last SDF checkpoint on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, an SDF soldier openly demanded 25,000 Syrian pounds (equivalent to roughly $2) to let us pass. My brother, who was driving, and I were unsure whether this was an official fee or a bribe. When we asked for clarification, the soldier simply said, “25,000 Syrian pounds, or turn around.”
Abu Ahmad, the Hasaka business owner, was blunt about it. “Arabs and Kurds don’t have equal access to services,” he said. “Kurdish business owners get priority when it comes to high-quality fuel for their operations.” When I asked if local businesses paid taxes, he laughed. “They don’t call it taxes. The SDF collects money as a ‘donation’ for the people’s revolution. But if you don’t pay, you’re in trouble.”
What Abu Ahmad found even more ironic was that SDF officials show up toward the end of Ramadan every year, asking business owners about “zakat al-fitr,” the Islamic alms given before the Eid festival at the end of the holy month of fasting. “And the funny part,” he said, shaking his head, “is that most of them don’t even believe in God.”
BZ, the activist from Shaddadi, echoed these frustrations. He added that government jobs under the SDF are handed out based on personal connections and loyalty rather than merit. “The people running things,” he said, “aren’t qualified.”
Another common demand I heard from locals was to reform the current K-12 school curriculum. Many parents, especially in rural areas, are upset about what they view as forced cultural indoctrination. “I don’t want my children to learn about Zoroaster,” said MA, a legal and political activist from the rural areas north of Deir ez-Zor, who asked that his full name be withheld. “That has nothing to do with our culture or religion.” Abu Ahmad voiced similar frustrations. “Why are they forcing this on us?” he asked.
Zoroaster, aka Zarathushtra, founded Zoroastrianism, the dominant faith among the Kurds before the rise of Islam. When Syrian Kurds gained political power in the region, they added Zoroastrian teachings into public school curricula alongside Islam and Christianity. The stated goal was to promote a pluralistic approach to religious education, but many Arabs I spoke to see it as alien to their identity.
In my own life, having grown up with many Kurdish friends and neighbors, I’ve heard this debate countless times. For some secular-leaning Syrian Kurds, Islam is viewed as an Arab imposition. This sentiment intensified under the Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria, which pushed aggressive Arabization policies. Still, the majority of Kurds, including most Syrian Kurds, are Sunni Muslims and are deeply connected to their faith.
The final, and perhaps most pressing, hope I heard from everyone was the demand for greater freedom of speech. “Right now, I’m talking to you, and I’m worried someone might report me,” Abu Ahmad confessed. “There’s no freedom here.”
He shared a chilling example. When Assad’s regime collapsed, young men in some areas grew bold and replaced SDF flags with the three-starred flag of the Syrian Revolution. The response? Some were killed by the SDF for doing so.
Across the region, there is a deep fear of surveillance and repression. The desire for change is palpable, but so is the caution, born from years of war and authoritarian rule.
For now, many are counting on the unity of Syria to focus on rebuilding the country together. People’s hopes happen to serve a security purpose. A divided Syria only invites more instability and leaves space for chaos to flourish. Just as Lebanon’s fractured state allowed Hezbollah to grow, and Iraq’s fragmentation paved the way for the Islamic State, a weak Syria will breed new threats.
A unified Syria, imperfect as it may be, could offer something from which all sides stand to benefit: the possibility of a lasting, if fragile, peace.
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