DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on Tuesday announced the official dissolution of the group, which once controlled a de facto autonomous zone in Syria's northeast.
Speaking during a news conference at the presidential palace in Damascus, Mazloum Abdi said the SDF has completed a merger with the Syrian army and would cease to operate as an independent force. The Kurdish-led force lost most of its territory in northeast Syria to a government offensive in January and then signed the deal to merge with the army.
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FILE - Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces speaks during an interview in the northeastern city of Hassakeh, Syria, Oct. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Hogir Al Abdo, File)
The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces Mazloum Abdi speaks during a news conference at the presidential palace in Damascus, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, right, meets with the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, center left, at the presidential palace in Damascus, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces Mazloum Abdi speaks during a news conference at the presidential palace in Damascus, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
The SDF was once the main partner of the United States in Syria as it battled the Islamic State group. But after the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December 2024, Washington formed close ties with the new government in Damascus led by interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of an Islamist insurgent group.
The SDF “carried a heavy responsibility during one of the most difficult periods in Syria’s history,” Abdi said.
“Today, circumstances have changed, and the country has entered a new phase, one of peace and participation in building a new Syria,” he said, announcing the “end of the SDF’s mission” and “its dissolution as an independent military force.”
Under the 50-year rule of the Assad dynasty in Syria, Kurds were marginalized, with many denied citizenship. Public celebrations of the Nowruz holiday — an ancient Persian springtime new year festival that is also celebrated by Kurds in Syria, Turkey and Iraq as well as Iran — were banned.
Shortly after the uprising against the Assad government began in 2011, the Kurds filled the vacuum created by the withdrawal of government forces from wide areas of Syria’s northeast. The SDF at one point controlled about 25% of Syria.
The Kurds were initially circumspect about the new post-Assad government and unwilling to give up their de facto autonomy. Some of the insurgent groups that took part in the offensive that ousted Assad were Turkish-backed forces that had clashed with the SDF in the past.
Turkey considered the SDF to be a terrorist organization because of its ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a separatist group that staged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey. A peace process is now underway.
Kurds questioned whether the new Sunni Arab-led authorities would give them true representation in the new government, while al-Sharaa tried to woo them.
During ceasefire negotiations with the SDF in January, he issued a decree strengthening Kurdish rights. It made Kurdish an official language along with Arabic, and adopted Nowruz as a national holiday. It also restored the citizenship of tens of thousands of Kurds in northeastern Hassakeh province after they were stripped of it during the 1962 census.
Abdi said that al-Sharaa had promised that Kurds would have the right to education in their own language, an important issue for the country’s Kurdish population.
Questions remain, including the fate of the SDF's all-female fighting units — a sensitive point in the integration talks as many of the Damascus leaders come from a conservative background and are opposed to women in combat.
But the success of the integration agreement with the SDF is a major boost to al-Sharaa's government, which has struggled to unify the country as it begins to recover from a nearly 14-year civil war. Most of the country is now under the control of the central government in Damascus.
The exception is southern Syria's Sweida province, which is now controlled by Druze factions that are hostile to Damascus after clashes last year in which government-affiliated fighters launched sectarian revenge attacks on Druze civilians. The Druze factions have received support from Israel, which is also occupying a strip of land in southern Syria near the border with the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
Sewell reported from Beirut.
FILE - Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces speaks during an interview in the northeastern city of Hassakeh, Syria, Oct. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Hogir Al Abdo, File)
The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces Mazloum Abdi speaks during a news conference at the presidential palace in Damascus, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, right, meets with the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, center left, at the presidential palace in Damascus, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces Mazloum Abdi speaks during a news conference at the presidential palace in Damascus, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Dolly Parton, the country music icon whose soaring vibrato vocals, poignant songwriting and sparkling costumes defined her rise from a log cabin in the Tennessee mountains to the height of stardom and acclaim, has died. She was 80 years old.
Parton died peacefully Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee, her publicist said in a statement. A cause of death was not disclosed.
Known for her curvy physique, massive blonde wigs and skin-tight outfits that served her self-deprecating wit, she was among the most beloved personalities in music and beyond — the rare celebrity whose appeal transcended generations, geography and politics.
She wrote hundreds of songs, including classics like “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “I Will Always Love You,” that totaled more than 100 million worldwide sales and more than 1 billion online streams. Parton, who plucked bejeweled banjos, guitar and dulcimers with her long fingernails during performances, was a generous philanthropist and successful businesswoman whose projects included a theme park in the Smoky Mountain foothills near her birthplace.
Her career was forever influenced by her upbringing as one of 12 children born into what she called a “dirt poor” Tennessee family. She started her education nonprofit, Imagination Library, to send free books to children in Tennessee because her father, who quit school to work on the farm, struggled to learn to read.
Parton's first musical performances were in church, where her grandfather was a preacher. By age 10, she was learning guitar and singing on local television shows. At 13, she appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where Johnny Cash introduced her as “a little girl here from up in East Tennessee.”
With a suitcase of songs, she followed her uncle, Bill Owens, also a songwriter, to Nashville after graduating high school in 1964. Fred Foster, who produced Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson and more, saw her potential and got her songs cut by other artists, as well as recording and releasing Parton singing her own material. By the mid-1970s, Parton was a Nashville queen.
Parton's partnership with Porter Wagoner, a pencil-thin pompadoured star with flashy rhinestone outfits, was key to her career. She honed her acting skills on his syndicated TV show and he advocated for her to get a record deal at RCA. Their first duet, “The Last Thing On My Mind,” was released in 1967, the same year she started her own publishing company.
While their duets were often big radio hits, Parton's solo singles didn’t chart as high at first. With Wagoner as a co-producer, she began to adjust her country warble to a more polished, pop-leaning style.
She got her first No. 1 solo single with “Joshua,” and reached the Top 5 with the ballad “Coat of Many Colors,” about how her mother sewed together scraps of clothes to make a coat Parton wore “so proudly” even as her peers mocked her for being poor. The song, with its Biblical references and ode to maternal love, was later made into a children’s book and a TV movie.
In 1973, she had the hit that made her career — “Jolene,” a country music standard with its steady, churning rhythm and Parton's repeated delivery of the title as she pleads for the woman not to steal her man.
The song topped the country charts, crossing over to pop and later being released internationally, opening up new audiences for Parton. “Jolene” is one of her most covered compositions, including by Miley Cyrus (Parton’s goddaughter), Olivia Newton-John and The White Stripes.
She left Wagoner’s show in 1974, amid reports of squabbling between the two, although they continued to record together and Wagoner stayed her producer for years after that. But the relationship turned litigious when Wagoner sued her in 1979 for millions in management fees and royalties.
She followed “Jolene” with a huge hit in 1974, “I Will Always Love You,” an ode and farewell to Wagoner that helped her win the Country Music Association’s female vocalist of the year back-to-back in 1975 and 1976. She famously turned down Elvis Presley, who wanted to record it, because she would not share publishing rights.
Decades later, Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” became a smash for the soundtrack of her 1992 film “The Bodyguard,” and broke sales records. Houston won a Grammy for her performance in 1994, presented to her by Parton.
“Here You Come Again,” a pop crossover hit and one of the few she didn’t write, further established Parton as a multi-genre entertainer and brought her first Grammy Award in 1979.
“A lot of people thought I had totally lost my mind,” she told The Associated Press in 1979 of changing her singing style. “But I had no fear of change. I expected success, but I was braced for failure. I didn’t care if people thought I was wrong. In my own heart, I knew I was doing the right thing.”
Parton's other crossover hits included the title song from “9 to 5,” the 1980 comedy starring Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin; and her duet with longtime friend Kenny Rogers, “Islands in the Stream,” written by brothers Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees. In 1987, she collaborated with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris on the million-selling “Trio” album.
For millions of fans, she was simply “Dolly,” a mixture of Southern charm, humor and glamour. But she was also considered a feminist role model for holding the reins of her own career, writing her own songs, owning her content and looking after her finances in an entertainment world dominated by men.
Parton was open to making fun of herself; when she hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 1989 she told the writers that her only restrictions were she wouldn’t curse and she wouldn’t make fun of Jesus. She regularly joked about her breasts or her dumb blonde appearance, but with a wink that she was the one controlling the laughs. In the memoir “My Life So Far,” Fonda remembered Parton's way with a wisecrack, “usually high raunch,” and a laugh that was “somewhere between a girl's giggle, an explosive shriek, and a cascade of little bells."
After her gown split down the front when she won CMA's entertainer of the year in 1978, Parton quipped: “My Daddy said that's what I got for putting 50 pounds of mud in a five-pound bag.”
Throughout her career, she embraced her glamorous style, often wearing custom curve-hugging rhinestone dresses and bodysuits even if they drew tsk-tsks from others in the industry. Her look was always a part of her larger musical business plan.
“I knew my songs were good even if I had been ugly as sin,” she told the AP in 2014. “So I thought, ‘Well, I would have probably chose to look this way even if I had been a waitress.’ I mean, this is my look. I mean, I like a lot of makeup. I like a lot of hair. I like flashy clothes. I like to show it off. But that’s just who I am.”
She married Carl Dean, an asphalt paving contractor, in the mid-1960s; they were together until his death in 2025 at the age of 82. Though rarely seen in public, he was an influence on her career. She told NPR that she wrote “Jolene” about a flirty bank teller who seemed to take an interest in Dean.
In her first major film role, Parton played alongside Fonda and Tomlin as office workers who rebel against their tyrannical boss in “9 to 5.” Critic Roger Ebert called her a “natural-born movie star” and the title song earned her two Grammy Awards and a ranking of 78 on the American Film Institute's list of top 100 movie songs. Starring roles in “The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas” and “Steel Magnolias” followed.
"I never thought of myself as a movie star," she told AP’s Bob Thomas in 1979. "I knew I'd be a star, but as a singer or as a writer of songs or books or poetry. I wanted to be a famous performer and wear flashy clothes, but singing in movies was not one of my ambitions. My family lived in the mountains and we didn't see movies.”
Her love affair with TV and film continued for decades, with appearances alongside Cyrus on “Hannah Montana” and adaptations of her music for Christmas specials, films and streaming series. She also became an author, her books ranging from the memoir “Dolly” to a bestselling novel co-authored by James Patterson, “Run, Rose, Run."
The stage adaptation “9 to 5: The Musical” debuted in 2009, and “DOLLY: A True Original Musical” is set to open Jan. 19, 2027, on what would have been her 81st birthday.
Beyond her music, Parton’s most lasting legacy might be her generosity and broad appeal.
When a deadly wildfire swept through the Smokies in 2016, she held an all-star telethon and set up a foundation that sent monthly checks to residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed.
She opened up her Dollywood theme park in East Tennessee, a major economic driver in Appalachia that draws tourists from around the country, and established the Dollywood Foundation. She wrote books and memoirs, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and was given a lifetime achievement award by the Recording Academy. She was selected for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2025.
With 55 Grammy nominations and 10 wins, Parton is the third-most nominated woman in Grammy history, only behind Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.
Parton spanned social and political divides, through multiple generations of fans, urban and rural and in between. In tumultuous election years, it wasn't uncommon to see “Dolly for President” shirts. But she was strict in not voicing her own political beliefs, often turning aside questions about presidents, candidates, policies and other controversies.
“I don’t do politics," Parton told host Jad Abumrad on his hit podcast “Dolly Parton's America."
"I have too many fans on both sides of the fence. Of course, I have my opinion about everything, but I learned years ago to keep your mouth shut about things.”
When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation sent out a ballot in 2022 with her name on it, though she said she felt she hadn't earned it, the voters answered with a “Hello, Dolly." Parton showed up to the induction ceremony, performed and then put out a rock album.
Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed.
FILE - Dolly Parton, left, Lily Tomlin, center, and Jane Fonda arrive for the premiere of their film "9 To 5" in New York on Dec. 14, 1980. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) Corrects spelling from Jan to Jane.
FILE - Singer and Actress Dolly Parton shown at a party following the premiere of her movie 'Nine to Five' in Los Angeles, Dec. 12, 1980. (AP Photo/Harms, File)
FILE - Dolly Parton, left, Lily Tomlin, center, and Jan Fonda arrive for the premiere of their film "9 To 5" in New York on Dec. 14, 1980. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
FILE - Dolly Parton performs in concert in Tokyo, July 30, 1979. (AP Photo/Tsugufumi Matsumoto, File)
FILE - Dolly Parton, left, and Kenny Rogers rehearse a song for their appearance on the TV show "Live... And in Person" in Los Angeles on Sept. 27, 1983. (AP Photo/Doug Pizac, File)
FILE - Dolly Parton arrives at the premiere of "Joyful Noise" in Los Angeles, Monday, Jan. 9, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
FILE - Dolly Parton, center, stands on stage with Lily Tomlin, left, and Jane Fonda at the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, Sept. 17, 2017. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
FILE - Dolly Parton poses for a photo at her office in Nashville, Tenn., Aug. 11, 2005. (AP Photo/John Russell, File)
FILE - Dolly Parton poses at the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy Ceremony in New York, on Oct. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
