Fighting broke out Oct. 6 between Syria’s new government and Kurdish forces, which for years have controlled an autonomous region carved out in the struggle for their national rights in the oil-rich northeast of the country. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces say government forces have repeatedly sought to infiltrate territories under the SDF’s control.
Kurds, an oppressed nationality, make up some 10% of Syria’s population. Thirty million Kurds, in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, comprise the world’s largest nation without their own country.
One civilian and one government soldier were killed in the Kurdish-controlled neighborhoods of Aleppo, the main city in northern Syria.
Millions of working people across Syria, hoping for a better future, celebrated after Ahmad al-Sharaa’s forces overthrew the 50-year-long Assad regime last December, after a popular uprising and civil war begun in 2011 cost the lives of more than 300,000 people and displaced millions. Many pushed aside concerns about Sharaa’s Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. He is a former member of al-Qaeda.
In recent weeks Syrian armed forces have beefed up their presence in the area, establishing new checkpoints and roadblocks. This comes amid the arrival of Turkish military reinforcements at the Kuweires Airbase in eastern Aleppo. It’s controlled by the Syrian National Army, a Turkish-backed coalition of armed Syrian opposition groups, with an estimated strength of up to 70,000 fighters.
In March an agreement was signed between the Syrian Democratic Forces and the new Syrian regime, intended as a step toward integrating the SDF into the Syrian state. This effort is backed by Washington and by Ankara, which sees the SDF as an offshoot of Kurdish rebels in Turkey that the government there has attacked and repressed for years.
But little progress has been made. The SDF wants to join the Syrian army as a block, with its command structure in place and all of its 50,000 troops, including the 20% who are women. The Syrian government says that SDF fighters must join the army as individuals.
Thousands of Kurds joined demonstrations Sept. 17 to protest the government’s demands and to defend their region’s hard-won autonomy.
Washington has withdrawn some of its troops from the Kurdish region in Syria, backing away from the tactical alliance it forged with SDF in 2017 to defeat Islamic State. In September, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command held talks with Syrian President Sharaa to discuss military cooperation. Washington seeks to deepen its relations with the new Syrian government in a country where until recently Moscow and Tehran held sway, propping up the former Bashar al-Assad dictatorship.
The Turkish government has threatened to intervene if the SDF doesn’t dissolve itself into Syria’s army. Ankara has begun providing formal air defense instruction to Syrian army personnel as part of a broader military cooperation agreement signed earlier this year.
In March, under Sharaa’s command, government forces carried out bloody attacks against Alawites, a religious minority in two coastal provinces, killing 1,400 people.
In July, Sharaa sent troops into southern Syria, where they massacred hundreds of Druze, another religious minority. Videos surfaced online showing armed men killing Druze civilians kneeling in squares and shaving the mustaches off elderly men in an act of humiliation.
A resident in Sweida, whose fiancé and members of his family were killed, spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. “When the regime fell, we were the first people to celebrate,” she said, but now “I think Ahmad al-Sharaa is a murderous extremist.”