Syrian rebels who helped topple Bashar al-Assad’s regime less than a week ago have pressed ahead with a separate, less-publicised offensive.
The Syrian National Army, a rebel group supported by Turkey, has in recent days battled the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed militant movement that Ankara deems a severe threat.
Syrian Kurds, who at 2mn people make up about 10 per cent of the country’s population, carved out their own territory during the civil war and fear they may wind up worse off under a rebel-led government supported by their enemy Turkey.
Ankara sees the SDF as an extension of Turkey’s Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, an armed group that has been fighting the Turkish state for four decades.
While the US armed the SDF to fight Isis, the return of president-elect Donald Trump has called into question how long Washington’s support will continue. The US has for decades used Kurdish groups as footsoldiers in Iraq and Syria only to halt support once their utility ends, an outcome that some fear could put them in danger and give Isis space to regroup.
“The Kurds in Syria are in a very precarious situation right now,” said Renad Mansour, a Middle East expert at Chatham House. “They are connected to the PKK, which brings the Kurds in Syria into conflict with Turkey. They don’t really have allies anywhere they look.”
“They depend on their relationship with the US, but the US sees them as assets when it is convenient,” said Mansour. “Their concern is they may be seen as expendable.”
Ethnic Kurds number approximately 40mn across the Middle East, split between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Hopes for independence have translated into a number of militant movements, such as the PKK in Turkey. Iraqi Kurdish parties still nurse a desire for a Kurdish state, though their semi-autonomous government is closely tied to Baghdad.
Through much of the Syrian civil war, which started in 2011, Kurdish militias prioritised controlling their own territory over fighting Assad. The US identified them as natural allies in the fight against Isis, which took swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014.
Washington armed and trained the so-called People’s Defense Units, or YPG, which joined with other factions to form the SDF and served as ground troops in the US air campaign against Isis.
After capitalising on the chaos of Syria’s civil war and battle against Isis, the SDF now numbers close to 100,000 fighters and is estimated to control some 25 per cent to 30 per cent of Syria, much of the region north-east of the Euphrates river.
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But Trump’s return to office on January 20 has put continued US support into doubt. During his first term Trump ordered US forces out of northern Syria, leaving the SDF exposed to an incursion by Turkey, which keeps thousands of troops in northern Syria and has launched several offensives against Kurdish militants over the past decade. Senior US officials, including then-defence secretary Jim Mattis, resigned in protest.
While the US still keeps about 900 special forces troops in the area and provides air cover and intelligence to the SDF, Trump has again indicated his aversion to Washington’s continued presence in Syria. “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT…. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he wrote on Sunday in an all-caps blast on X.
Ferhad Shami, the SDF spokesperson in Syria, said some Kurds saw a likely replay of an old pattern. “Frankly, we are afraid the same thing will happen again, we are afraid [the US] will leave,” he said.
In the mid-1970s and during the Gulf war in 1991, Washington encouraged Kurdish uprisings in Iraq only to halt support once its objectives had been reached, leaving Kurds as targets for retribution.
The US is now considering engaging with the victorious rebel groups led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which partnered with the SNA in the offensive against Assad and is forming an interim government. Meanwhile, Trump has made his preference clear.
“In 40 days we will have a new US president who is keen to get out of Syria and has in the past been willing to give lots of leeway to [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan. Will anything be different this time?” said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The US has tried to dissuade Ankara from attacking the SDF, but Turkey sees the presence of the group as a threat.
Last week the SNA moved to capture of the SDF-held town of Manbij, sparking vicious fighting. The SNA was supported by Turkish attack drones, SDF spokesman Shami said the SDF had shot down a Turkish drone on Wednesday. Turkey said a drone had crashed in a field near the border with Syria.
On Wednesday, fighting at Manbij came to an end as the SDF withdrew following a US-brokered ceasefire with the SNA. Shami said fierce fighting continued near the Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates river, and its forces in the town of Kobani were under bombardment by artillery and attack drones.
In the east, the SDF vacated the crucial town of Deir Ezzor, near the Iraqi border, which it had occupied in recent days, after HTS forces arrived. “There might have been some agreement behind the scenes,” said one SDF official, who added that no fighting between the groups had taken place in Deir Ezzor. The rebels have previously offered safe passage out of the city of Aleppo to Kurdish fighters.
At stake is the future shape of Syria, which was ruled by the Alawite minority under Assad but has given way to Sunni Arab Islamists. While Syrian Kurdish representatives say they hope for autonomy in a federal type of arrangement, the roots of the victorious HTS, as a Sunni Islamist former affiliate of al-Qaeda, have sparked deep worries among Syria’s minorities about how they plan to govern.
Discussions about the new shape of Syria may exacerbate lingering resentments inside the country as well as disagreements between the US and its ally Turkey. “You can agree to disagree when Syria is splintered, but when you start the process of integration you need to have a bit more explanation about how autonomy actually works,” Alterman said. “That will be when things come to a head.”
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Turkey fears self-rule for Kurds in Syria could stoke separatist aspirations among its own, far larger Kurdish population. The SDF’s close ties with the PKK, which has waged an armed campaign for autonomy inside Turkey, made it “the antithesis of the Turkish state’s world view”, said Mesut Yeğen of the Istanbul-based Reform Institute think-tank.
“Turkey cannot tolerate an offshoot of a group that it has been fighting for 40 years becoming the dominant authority” across its border, he said. “The SDF does not pose a military threat to Turkey, but its success will mean a defeat for Turkey.”
Turkey, which after the fall of Assad is likely to be the most influential foreign actor in Syria, has long insisted that the SDF remain to the east of the Euphrates river, where US special forces maintain a presence.
US politicians worry that what happens to the SDF could be critical to what happens in efforts to contain Isis: the SDF still runs detention centres with Isis prisoners and the al-Hol camp for families of Isis members. “We should keep a clear-eyed focus on our national security interests, and at the top of that list is preventing a resurgence of Isis,” Chris Van Hollen, a senator with the Democratic party, told the Financial Times on Wednesday.
“It’s going to be especially important that we continue to support our partners, the Syrian Kurds, and make it clear that we will not abandon them at this.”
Additional reporting by James Politi
Cartography by Steven Bernard and Aditi Bhandari
