India, Jan. 31 -- The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces announced a new agreement on Friday with the country's central Government intended to stabilise a ceasefire that ended weeks of fighting and to lay out the steps toward integration between the two sides. Under the agreement, the SDF said, security forces affiliated with the Syrian Ministry of Interior would go into the cities of al-Hassakeh and Qamishli in the Kurdish heartland, which they had previously been barred from entering, and the process of integrating SDF and Government forces would begin.

This would include the formation of a new military brigade comprising three brigades from the SDF, in addition to the formation of a brigade of SDF fighters within a Government brigad...