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 years are nonetheless raging. Drones buzz overhead day and night time whereas airstrikes and artillery fireplace have pressured 1000’s to flee their properties.
The combat 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 power of the new interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, to unify your entire nation, management its many non secular and ethnic armed teams, and preserve in test the terrorist group Islamic State, which has begun to collect power once more in components of Syria. Neighboring nations fear that instability from any variety of factions may 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 combat within the northeast is the Turkish authorities’s rising benefit over the Kurds, whom Turkey views as a risk each at dwelling and in neighboring Syria as a result of some violent Kurdish factions have pushed for a separate state.
At dwelling, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey final week scored a victory when the chief of the P.Ok.Ok., 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.Ok.Ok. 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.Ok.Ok.’s selections 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 pressure, has been an in depth follower of Mr. Ocalan’s ideology. However addressing the P.Ok.Ok. 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 may threaten the autonomy of the Kurds in northeastern Syria.
Mr. Abdi has mentioned he needs his troops to grow to be a part of a brand new nationwide Syrian military, however he additionally needs 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 just lately referred to the Syrian Democratic Forces as “separatist murderers,” suggesting that they had been akin to the P.Ok.Ok. 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 group, the priority is that if Syria’s Kurds are subsumed right into a nationwide pressure, they might not be capable to preserve the Islamic State in test.
The Syrian Democratic Forces began preventing throughout Syria’s 13-year civil conflict when the Islamic State took management of huge components of Syria and neighboring Iraq. They received essential American army help — together with weapons, funding and coaching — after proving that they had been the best pressure on the bottom in Syria when it got here to preventing 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 a very powerful subject proper now,” mentioned Hoshyar Zebari, a former Iraqi overseas minister and a Kurd who stays in shut contact with many regional leaders. Mr. Zebari mentioned the Kurdish subject, significantly on the subject of protecting the Islamic State at bay, was significantly essential 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 throughout the Syrian civil conflict, the battle tipped into Iraq, with the Islamic State taking up a lot of northern Iraq. Tens of millions of Syrian refugees 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 tricky place. He may 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 high quality line. He mentioned the Kurds welcomed the brand new authorities in Damascus but in addition made clear that he was reluctant to dissolve his forces and, particularly, to cede the combat towards 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 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 to persuade the Turkish-backed militias to cease attacking the Kurds.
One other huge 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, lowering help 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 advanced operations and to coach and vet the Syrian Democratic Forces.
However now there’s worry amongst residents of the northeast that help 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 along with her household, mentioned 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 title out of issues for her safety.
“We really feel afraid on daily basis once we hear the sound of the drones and the planes, and typically my youngsters don’t go exterior for every week, as a result of we’re afraid even to ship them to high school,” she mentioned. “My 11-year-old daughter received’t even go to the toilet alone.”
Many don’t belief that the brand new authorities in Damascus will be capable to 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 wish the conflict 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 beneath 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 will symbolize a serious risk.
The prisons “are time bombs,” Mr. Zebari mentioned.
