US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fighters stand guard in Naim Square in Raqqa, Syria, in February 2022.
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ISTANBUL – In the wake of the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, Syria remains divided regionally, as the rebels who defeated Assad work to consolidate power. The country’s uncertain future has raised questions about the fate of the US-backed Kurdish alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.
This week, the new Syrian leadership took steps to dissolve the various rebel factions and unify them under the command of the new Syrian army. But the Syrian Democratic Forces did not join it. In a statement, the spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, Farhad al-Shami, said that the group does not oppose joining the Syrian army in principle, but the matter requires negotiations with Damascus.
However, the reality of the new Syria left the SDF with few options to maintain its status quo.
The Syrian Democratic Forces control a third of Syrian territory
In 2014, the extremist group ISIS began seizing large swaths of territory in northeastern Syria, as the country was embroiled in a civil war.
With US help, a coalition of Kurdish militias was formed to help fight ISIS and reclaim territory. In this way, the coalition was able to control about a third of Syria, from the Euphrates River and east along the borders with Iraq and Turkey, according to Yerevan Saeed, director of the Kurdish Global Peace Initiative at American University.
“Kurdish control of these areas actually came at a time when there was a power vacuum. ISIS had taken over all these areas, and the locals were very happy for the SDF to clear ISIS from all these areas,” Saeed says.
Following the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in the spring of 2019, the SDF continued to guard prisons and camps holding thousands of ISIS fighters and their families, which they continue to do today.
The majority of the population living under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces are Arabs
Kurds are one of the world The largest ethnic groups Without their own state. They are a minority group spread mainly in several Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.
For a long time, some Kurds and their allies had hoped that the area carved out by the SDF in northeastern Syria would eventually turn into an autonomous Kurdish region, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.
But this goal was unrealistic, according to Denise Natale, director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University and an expert on US-Kurdish relations.
“This was not in any part of the course of Syrian history,” Natalie said. “And it is unsustainable from a local power dynamics perspective, not from an economic perspective, and not from a security perspective.”
Unlike in northern Iraq, the majority of the population in northeastern Syria is not Kurdish. They are Arabs. While Kurds live in the region, not everyone supports the SDF, which follows a secular, libertarian socialist ideology not shared by local Sunni Syrian Kurds.
Kurdish towns and villages are scattered and non-contiguous, making it more difficult to form a cohesive autonomous region.
Since the fall of Assad on December 8, some Arab residents under the control of the SDF have demonstrated in cities such as Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa, demanding that they be ruled by rebels in Damascus instead.
“With Assad out of the scene, local Arab communities in eastern Syria are uncomfortable with the kind of Kurdish militia that has absolute power in their areas,” said Nicholas Heras, a senior director at the New Lines Institute. “They have an alternative, another option.”
Türkiye, its NATO ally, considers the Kurdish militias a threat
The biggest challenge facing the Kurdish alliance comes from Türkiye, Syria’s neighbor to the north. The rebels led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, who ousted Assad, were supported by Türkiye, giving the country significant influence over Syria and its new leaders.
Turkey says the main militia force in the US-backed Kurdish alliance is the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – a rebel group known as the PKK that it has been fighting in Turkey for decades. Both Türkiye and the United States classify the PKK as a terrorist organization.
The US decision to arm the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – known as the People’s Protection Units – in the war against ISIS has been a sticking point in US-Turkish relations for years, according to James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Turkey and special adviser. An envoy on the mission to defeat ISIS.
“Because of the huge role that the PKK has played since my first visit to Turkey in 1984, the Turks can never formally accept what the United States is doing with the Syrian Democratic Forces,” Jeffrey says, referring to Washington’s support for the Syrian Kurdish alliance.
Turkish officials made clear shortly after Assad’s fall that one of their strategic priorities in Syria was to see the YPG dismantled, either through new Syrian leaders in Damascus taking control and unifying all of Syria, or through a large Turkish army. An attack targeting areas controlled by the People’s Protection Units in northeastern Syria.
In a speech before the Turkish Parliament this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Kurdish militias “will either lay down their weapons or be buried with their weapons in the territory of Syria.”
US Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, have Threat of sanctions Against Türkiye in the event of a military attack against Kurdish fighters in Syria.
Syrian Kurds fleeing areas north of Aleppo, Syria, arrive in Tabqa, on the western outskirts of Raqqa, on December 3.
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The new Syrian administration seeks to unify the country
Last Sunday, during a press conference in Damascus with the Turkish Foreign Minister, the de facto leader in Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said that he would not allow any weapon present in Syria to escape from the control of the state, “whether from the revolutionary factions or from the existing factions.” In the Syrian Democratic Forces area.”
This is what the US-led anti-ISIS coalition is set to do It was resolved in IraqTurkish officials are also encouraging the new Syrian leadership to eventually take control of ISIS prisons and camps in Syria from the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in the press conference with Al-Sharaa, “The Syrian administration informed us that it is ready to take the necessary initiative to hand over these prisoners.”
Analysts expect that a diplomatic agreement will eventually be reached between Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces, without launching a Turkish military attack on the areas of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
“I think the most realistic possibility is some form of decentralized administration in which Kurdish cities have local self-administration,” Nathalie said.
US officials are concerned about the return of ISIS, but Syria is not a strategic priority
Natalie, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Conflict and Stabilization Operations during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, says the years-long US arrangements in Syria with the Kurdish coalition are no longer strategically viable, due to changes in and in Syria. Washington.
“We are in a different situation,” she says. He added: “We have a new administration that has clearly defined its priorities, and Syria is not a priority.”
Instead, she says, Trump’s priorities are ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
“These kinds of priorities will need strategic partners, like Türkiye,” says Natalie.
In his first term, Trump pushed to return 900 US troops on the ground in Syria, but failed. During his campaign this year, he made ending wars and not getting involved in further conflicts a big part of his message, and it is expected that he would want to withdraw troops from Syria again.
But given the scale of destruction to Syria’s physical infrastructure during Assad’s violent reign and the erosion of social dynamics, many experts remain skeptical that Syria will not end up a fractured country.
US officials are concerned that ISIS will exploit the vacuum and re-emerge, making a full US withdrawal from Syria more difficult.
In an interview Sunday with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, said that although the United States does not need boots on the ground in Syria, it will not be able to turn away from what is happening there. .
“Tens of thousands of fighters and families are living in concentration camps under the guard of our Kurdish friends, and with our support, and we cannot allow this to happen again,” Waltz said.
