Syria’s U.S.-backed Kurdish coalition faces an unsure future after Assad’s ouster

ISTANBUL – Within the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad’s ouster, Syria stays territorially fractured because the rebels who defeated Assad work to consolidate energy. The nation’s unsure future has raised questions concerning the destiny of the U.S.-backed Kurdish coalition referred to as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

This week, Syria’s new management took steps to dissolve the completely different insurgent factions and unite them below the brand new Syrian military. However the SDF didn’t take part. In a press release, SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami mentioned the group wasn’t against becoming a member of the Syrian army in precept, however that the matter required negotiations with Damascus.

The realities of the brand new Syria, nevertheless, have left the SDF with few choices to take care of its established order.

The SDF controls a 3rd of Syria’s territory

In 2014, the Islamic State extremist group started taking giant items of territory in northeast Syria because the nation was embroiled in a civil struggle.

With the assistance of the USA, a coalition was fashioned of Kurdish militia teams to assist combat ISIS and take again the territory. That is how the coalition got here to regulate a couple of third of Syria, from the Euphrates River and eastward alongside the borders with Iraq and Turkey, in line with Yerevan Saeed, director of the International Kurdish Initiative for Peace at American College.

“The Kurdish control of these areas really came in a time when there was a vacuum of power. All of these areas were taken over by ISIS, and the local population was very happy to have the SDF clear ISIS elements from all of these areas,” Saeed says.

After the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria within the spring of 2019, the SDF continued to protect the prisons and camps holding 1000’s of ISIS fighters and their households, one thing it nonetheless does now.

A majority of the inhabitants residing below SDF management are Arabs

The Kurds are one of many world’s largest ethnic teams with out their very own state. They’re a minority unfold primarily throughout a number of Center Jap nations, together with Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.

For a very long time, some Kurds and their allies had hoped that the realm the SDF carved out in northeastern Syria would finally flip into an autonomous Kurdish zone, much like the Kurdistan Regional Authorities in northern Iraq.

However that aim was unrealistic, in line with Denise Natali, the director of the Institute for Nationwide Strategic Research on the Nationwide Protection College and knowledgeable on U.S.–Kurdish relations.

“This was not in any part of the trajectory of Syrian history,” Natali mentioned. “And not sustainable from a perspective of local power dynamics, not from an economic perspective, not from a security perspective.”

Not like in northern Iraq, a majority of the inhabitants in northeast Syria is not Kurdish. They’re Arabs. And whereas Kurds reside within the space, not all help the SDF, which follows a secular, libertarian socialist ideology that native Sunni Syrian Kurds don’t share.

The Kurdish cities and villages are additionally scattered and never contiguous, making it much more difficult to kind a cohesive, autonomous area.

For the reason that fall of Assad on Dec. 8, some Arab residents below SDF management in cities like Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa have been demonstrating and demanding to be ruled by the rebels in Damascus as a substitute.

“With Assad out of the scene, local Arab communities in eastern Syria are uncomfortable with a sort of Kurdish militia group having ultimate authority in their areas,” mentioned Nicholas Heras, a senior director with New Traces Institute. “They have an alternative, another choice.”

NATO ally Turkey sees the Kurdish militia teams as a menace

A good larger problem to the Kurdish coalition comes from Turkey – Syria’s neighbor to the north. The rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) who toppled Assad had been supported by Turkey, giving the nation important affect over Syria and its new leaders.

Turkey says the primary militia power within the U.S.-backed Kurdish coalition is the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Staff Celebration – an rebel group higher referred to as the PKK which it has been preventing in Turkey for many years. Each Turkey and the U.S. designate the PKK as a terrorist group.

The U.S. determination to arm the Syrian department of the PKK – which is called the YPG – within the combat in opposition to ISIS has been a sticking level in U.S.–Turkish relations for years, in line with James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and particular envoy for the mission to defeat ISIS.

“Because of the huge role the PKK has played since I was first in Turkey in 1984, the Turks can never formally accept what the U.S. is doing with the SDF,” Jeffrey says, referring to Washington’s help of the Syrian Kurdish coalition.

Turkish officers made it clear quickly after the autumn of Assad that one in all their strategic priorities in Syria is to see the YPG dismantled, both by the brand new Syrian leaders in Damascus taking management of all of Syria and uniting it, or by a significant Turkish army offensive focused on areas managed by the YPG in Syria’s northeast.

In a speech to the Turkish parliament this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that the Kurdish militia teams “will either lay down their arms or will be buried with their arms in the lands of Syria.”

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, have threatened sanctions in opposition to Turkey in case of a army offensive in opposition to the Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Syria’s new administration seeks to unite the nation

Final Sunday, throughout a press convention in Damascus with the Turkish overseas minister, Syria’s de facto chief Ahmed al-Sharaa mentioned he wouldn’t permit any present weapons in Syria to be outdoors state management, “whether from the revolutionary factions or from the factions present in the SDF region.”

Because the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition is already as a consequence of be disbanded in Iraq, Turkish officers have been encouraging Syria’s new management additionally to finally take management of ISIS prisons and camps in Syria from the SDF.

“The Syrian administration told us it is ready to take the necessary initiative to take over these prisoners,” Turkish overseas minister Hakan Fidan mentioned within the press convention with Sharaa.

Analysts count on a diplomatic settlement will finally be reached between Damascus and the SDF, with out a Turkish army offensive into SDF areas.

“I think a more realistic prospect is some form of decentralized administration in which the Kurdish cities have local self-administration,” Natali mentioned.

U.S. officers are involved about ISIS resurgence, however Syria is just not a strategic precedence

Natali, who served as assistant secretary of state for battle and stabilization operations throughout President-elect Donald Trump’s first time period, says the USA’ yearslong association in Syria with the Kurdish coalition is now not strategically viable, as a consequence of modifications each in Syria and in Washington.

“We are in a different situation,” she says. “We have a new administration that has clearly identified what their priorities are, and Syria is not a priority.”

As a substitute, she says Trump’s priorities are ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

“And these types of priorities are going to need strategic partners, such as Turkey,” Natali says.

In his first time period, Trump pushed however didn’t convey again dwelling the 900 U.S. troops on the bottom in Syria. Throughout his marketing campaign this 12 months, he made ending wars and never getting concerned in different conflicts an enormous a part of his message, and he’s anticipated to need to withdraw troops from Syria once more.

However given the dimensions of destruction throughout Assad’s violent reign on Syria’s bodily infrastructure and the fraying of social dynamics, many consultants stay skeptical that Syria will not find yourself a fractured state.

And U.S. officers are involved about ISIS making the most of a vacuum and reemerging, making it all of the more difficult for a full U.S. withdrawal from Syria.

In an interview on Sunday with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Trump’s choose for Nationwide Safety Advisor Mike Waltz mentioned that whereas the U.S. didn’t must have troops on the bottom in Syria, it will not be capable to flip away from what is going on on there.

“Tens of thousands of fighters and families that are sitting in prison camps guarded by our friends the Kurds, supported by us, and we can’t have that unleash again,” Waltz mentioned.