Within the Syrian capital, Damascus, the nation’s new chief has hosted a nationwide unity convention and welcomed international dignitaries as crowds collect at cafes, talking out freely for the primary time in many years.
However 400 miles away in northeastern Syria, a area past the management of the Damascus authorities, battles which have been happening for yearsare nonetheless raging. Drones buzz overhead day and night time whereas airstrikes and artillery hearth have pressured hundreds to flee their houses.
The struggle there pits two opposing militias towards one another — the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the USA, and a predominantly Syrian Arab militia supported by Turkey. And the battle has solely intensified since Islamist rebels ousted Syria’s longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in early December.
A lot is at stake on this battle, together with the flexibility of the new interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, to unify your entire nation, management its many spiritual and ethnic armed teams, and preserve in test the terrorist group Islamic State, which has begun to assemble power once more in elements of Syria. Neighboring nations fear that instability from any variety of factions might spill throughout their borders.
Additionally hanging within the steadiness is the destiny of Syria’s Kurds, an ethnic minority that makes up about 10 % of the inhabitants. Over time, the Kurds have carved out a semiautonomous area in northeastern Syria.
One of many driving forces behind the struggle within the northeast is the Turkish authorities’s rising benefit over the Kurds, whom Turkey views as a menace each at house and in neighboring Syria as a result of some violent Kurdish factions have pushed for a separate state.
At house, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey last week scored a victory when the chief of the P.Okay.Okay., the Kurdish separatist motion that has fought a decades-long insurgency towards the Turkish state, known as on his fighters to put down their arms and disband. On Saturday, two days after the attraction by the chief, Abdullah Ocalan, the P.Okay.Okay. declared a cease-fire in Turkey.
Turkey has additionally emerged up to now few months with higher affect in Syria due to its ties to the insurgent group that overthrew Mr. al-Assad.
The P.Okay.Okay.’s selections over the previous week have reverberated throughout northeastern Syria. Some fighters within the Syrian Democratic Forces even have roots within the P.Okay.Okay., and Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish chief of the Syrian pressure, has been a detailed follower of Mr. Ocalan’s ideology. However addressing the P.Okay.Okay. chief’s name to disarm, he mentioned “it has nothing to do with the S.D.F.”
The brand new authorities in Damascus is pressuring the Syrian Democratic Forces to disarm and merge right into a nationwide army pressure, because it has demanded of each different armed group within the nation. However thus far, the Syrian Democratic Forces have been reluctant, fearing that doing so might threaten the autonomy of the Kurds in northeastern Syria.
Mr. Abdi has mentioned he desires his troops to grow to be a part of a brand new nationwide Syrian military, however he additionally desires the pressure to have the ability to preserve its weapons and proceed to function in northeast Syria.
Mr. Erdogan, nonetheless, opposes any autonomy for the group. He not too long ago referred to the Syrian Democratic Forces as “separatist murderers,” suggesting that they had been akin to the P.Okay.Okay. and mentioned they need to “bid farewell to their weapons or they are going to be buried” with them.
For Syria’s neighbors and lots of others within the worldwide neighborhood, the priority is that if Syria’s Kurds are subsumed right into a nationwide pressure, they might now not be capable of preserve the Islamic State in test.
The Syrian Democratic Forces began combating throughout Syria’s 13-year civil struggle when the Islamic State took management of enormous elements of Syria and neighboring Iraq. They gained essential American army assist — together with weapons, funding and coaching — after proving that they had been the simplest pressure on the bottom in Syria when it got here to combating the Islamic State.
The Kurdish-led pressure additionally guards the greater than 20 prisons in northeastern Syria that maintain about 9,500 hardened Islamic State fighters and close by camps that include about 40,000 members of the family of Islamic State fighters.
“Syria is an important problem proper now,” mentioned Hoshyar Zebari, a former Iraqi international minister and a Kurd who stays in shut contact with many regional leaders. Mr. Zebari mentioned the Kurdish problem, notably close to conserving the Islamic State at bay, was notably vital as a result of instability tends to spill into neighboring nations.
“We all know that no matter occurs in Syria is not going to cease on the Syrian-Iraqi border,” mentioned Mr. Zebari, noting that through the Syrian civil struggle, the battle tipped into Iraq, with the Islamic State taking up a lot of northern Iraq. Thousands and thousands of Syrian refugees and fled to neighboring nations and to Europe.
The stress each to affix the brand new Syrian authorities and defend Kurdish autonomy inside Syria has put Mr. Abdi in a troublesome place. He might settle for the brand new Syrian authorities in hopes that this might assure some measure of long-term safety for Syrian Kurds. However he additionally faces calls from some Kurdish factions to carry out for a semi-independent area.
In a briefing with reporters final week, Mr. Abdi walked a high quality line. He mentioned the Kurds welcomed the brand new authorities in Damascus but additionally made clear that he was reluctant to dissolve his forces and, particularly, to cede the struggle towards the Islamic State to a brand new and nonetheless untested Syrian military.
“The S.D.F. has lots of expertise within the struggle towards ISIS, and we’ve got strengths to supply to the brand new Syrian military,” he mentioned.
It is usually unclear whether or not Mr. al-Shara will be capable of persuade the Turkish-backed militias to cease attacking the Kurds.
One other large unknown is what the Trump administration will resolve about U.S. involvement in Syria. Throughout President Trump’s first time period, he tried to take away U.S. forces from Syria, decreasing assist for the Syrian Democratic Forces and risking a gap for Islamic State fighters to regain floor.
The Pentagon pushed to retain a small U.S. pressure in Syria to hold out complicated operations and to coach and vet the Syrian Democratic Forces.
However now there may be worry amongst residents of the northeast that assist is ebbing from many sides for the Kurdish-led forces in Syria. Each Kurdish and Arab residents of the realm say they’re weary of a battle, however prospects for a peaceable decision look distant.
Khokh, a 40-year-old crossing the border from Syria into Iraq together with her household, mentioned that a lot of the worst combating was removed from their village, Deric, however that the thrill of Turkish surveillance drones was fixed up to now few months. She requested to be recognized by solely her first identify out of considerations for her safety.
“We really feel afraid day by day once we hear the sound of the drones and the planes, and generally my kids don’t go outdoors for every week, as a result of we’re afraid even to ship them to high school,” she mentioned. “My 11-year outdated daughter gained’t even go to the toilet alone.”
Many don’t belief that the brand new authorities in Damascus will be capable of preserve them secure from the Islamic State or will respect their ethnic background. Up to now, Kurds have had fewer rights than Arabs, and a few haven’t been granted citizenship.
“We have no idea what the brand new authorities will do with us,” mentioned Sheikh Khalil Elgaida Elhilali, 75, the chief of a blended tribe of Syrian Arabs and Kurds. “We would like the struggle and combating to cease.”
For Syria’s Arab neighbors, probably the most urgent concern is that the hundreds of Islamic State fighters held in Kurdish-run prisons in northeastern Syria stay below tight guard and that the sprawling camps for his or her households are carefully watched.
If even a small variety of the 9,500 Islamic State prisoners — a lot of whom are hardened fighters — had been to interrupt out of jail, it might characterize a serious menace.
The prisons “are time bombs,” Mr. Zebari mentioned.
Source link