DAMASCUS, Jan 17: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree on Friday declaring Kurdish a "national language", in an apparent gesture of good will towards the minority following clashes in recent days.
The decree is the first formal recognition of Kurdish national rights since Syria's independence in 1946.
It stated Kurds were "an essential and integral part" of Syria, where they have suffered decades of marginalisation and oppression under former rulers.
The decree makes Kurdish a "national language" that can be taught in public schools in areas where the minority community is heavily present.
Sharaa also made the Kurdish new year, Nowruz, which falls on March 21, an official holiday and granted nationality to Kurds, as 20 percent of them had been stripped of it under a controversial 1962 census.
In a televised address announcing the decree, Sharaa urged Kurds to "actively participate in building this nation", vowing to "guarantee" their rights.
The announcement came as progress to implement a March deal to integrate the Kurds' de facto autonomous administration in the north into the state has stalled.
Senior Kurdish political figure Salih Muslim told AFP he viewed the decree as "an attempt to evade the rights of the Kurdish people and to divide them".
Reuters adds, Syrian troops swept through dozens of towns and villages in the country's north on Saturday after Kurdish fighters withdrew under an agreement that aimed to avoid a bloody showdown between the rival forces.
For days, Syrian troops had amassed around a cluster of villages that lie just west of the winding Euphrates River and had called on the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces stationed there to redeploy their forces on the opposite bank of the river.
Overnight, SDF head Mazloum Abdi said his forces would withdraw early on Saturday morning to territory east of the Euphrates as a gesture of goodwill, leaving the river as a frontline between Syrian government troops to its west and Kurdish forces to its east.
By mid-day on Saturday, Syrian troops were in control of the main town of Deir Hafer and surrounding villages whose residents are predominantly Arab, according to statements from the military.
Some residents had left in recent days through a humanitarian corridor set up by Syria's army but those who stayed celebrated the army's arrival.
"It happened with the least amount of losses. There's been enough blood in this country, Syria. We have sacrificed and lost enough - people are tired of it," Hussein al-Khalaf, a resident, told Reuters.
SDF forces had withdrawn east, some on foot, towards the flashpoint town of Tabqa -- downstream but still on the western side of the river, according to a Reuters reporter in the area.
Syria's army announced it was aiming to capture Tabqa next. Some SDF forces regrouped in Tabqa and headed back west to defend some of their positions, the Reuters reporter said. �"AFP, REUTERS
