Within the Syrian capital, Damascus, the nation’s new chief has hosted a nationwide unity convention and welcomed overseas dignitaries as crowds collect at cafes, talking out freely for the primary time in a long time.
However 400 miles away in northeastern Syria, a area past the management of the Damascus authorities, battles which were happening for yearsare nonetheless raging. Drones buzz overhead day and night time whereas airstrikes and artillery hearth have pressured 1000’s to flee their properties.
The combat there pits two opposing militias in opposition to one another — the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the US, 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 power of the new interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, to unify your complete nation, management its many non secular and ethnic armed teams, and hold in examine the terrorist group Islamic State, which has begun to collect energy once more in components of Syria. Neighboring nations fear that instability from any variety of factions might spill throughout their borders.
Additionally hanging within the stability is the destiny of Syria’s Kurds, an ethnic minority that makes up about 10 p.c of the inhabitants. Through the years, the Kurds have carved out a semiautonomous area in northeastern Syria.
One of many driving forces behind the combat within the northeast is the Turkish authorities’s rising benefit over the Kurds, whom Turkey views as a menace each at residence and in neighboring Syria as a result of some violent Kurdish factions have pushed for a separate state.
At residence, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey last week scored a victory when the chief of the P.Ok.Ok., the Kurdish separatist motion that has fought a decades-long insurgency in opposition to the Turkish state, referred to as on his fighters to put down their arms and disband. On Saturday, two days after the enchantment by the chief, Abdullah Ocalan, the P.Ok.Ok. declared a cease-fire in Turkey.
Turkey has additionally emerged up to now few months with larger affect in Syria due to its ties to the insurgent group that overthrew Mr. al-Assad.
The P.Ok.Ok.’s choices over the previous week have reverberated throughout northeastern Syria. Some fighters within the Syrian Democratic Forces even have roots within the P.Ok.Ok., and Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish chief of the Syrian drive, has been a detailed follower of Mr. Ocalan’s ideology. However addressing the P.Ok.Ok. chief’s name to disarm, he stated “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 navy drive, 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 stated he desires his troops to develop into a part of a brand new nationwide Syrian military, however he additionally desires the drive to have the ability to hold its weapons and proceed to function in northeast Syria.
Mr. Erdogan, nevertheless, opposes any autonomy for the group. He not too long ago referred to the Syrian Democratic Forces as “separatist murderers,” suggesting that they have been akin to the P.Ok.Ok. and stated 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 group, the priority is that if Syria’s Kurds are subsumed right into a nationwide drive, they could not have the ability to hold the Islamic State in examine.
The Syrian Democratic Forces began preventing throughout Syria’s 13-year civil warfare when the Islamic State took management of enormous components of Syria and neighboring Iraq. They gained essential American navy assist — together with weapons, funding and coaching — after proving that they have been the simplest drive on the bottom in Syria when it got here to preventing the Islamic State.
The Kurdish-led drive additionally guards the greater than 20 prisons in northeastern Syria that maintain about 9,500 hardened Islamic State fighters and close by camps that comprise about 40,000 relations of Islamic State fighters.
“Syria is a very powerful subject proper now,” stated Hoshyar Zebari, a former Iraqi overseas minister and a Kurd who stays in shut contact with many regional leaders. Mr. Zebari stated the Kurdish subject, notably on the subject of holding the Islamic State at bay, was notably necessary 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,” stated Mr. Zebari, noting that throughout the Syrian civil warfare, 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 hitch the brand new Syrian authorities and defend Kurdish autonomy inside Syria has put Mr. Abdi in a tricky place. He might settle for the brand new Syrian authorities in hopes that this could 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 positive line. He stated 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 combat in opposition to the Islamic State to a brand new and nonetheless untested Syrian military.
“The S.D.F. has quite a lot of expertise within the combat in opposition to ISIS, and we’ve got strengths to supply to the brand new Syrian military,” he stated.
It is usually unclear whether or not Mr. al-Shara will have the ability to persuade the Turkish-backed militias to cease attacking the Kurds.
One other massive 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. drive in Syria to hold out complicated operations and to coach and vet the Syrian Democratic Forces.
However now there’s 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 world 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, stated that a lot of the worst preventing was removed from their village, Deric, however that the excitement 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-after-day after we hear the sound of the drones and the planes, and generally my kids don’t go exterior for per week, as a result of we’re afraid even to ship them to high school,” she stated. “My 11-year outdated daughter gained’t even go to the lavatory alone.”
Many don’t belief that the brand new authorities in Damascus will have the ability to hold 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,” stated Sheikh Khalil Elgaida Elhilali, 75, the chief of a blended tribe of Syrian Arabs and Kurds. “We wish the warfare and preventing to cease.”
For Syria’s Arab neighbors, essentially the most urgent concern is that the 1000’s 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 intently watched.
If even a small variety of the 9,500 Islamic State prisoners — lots of whom are hardened fighters — have been to interrupt out of jail, it might signify a serious menace.
The prisons “are time bombs,” Mr. Zebari stated.
