The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces confirmed on Friday that its forces had entered the town of Deir ez-Zor, administered by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Albu Kamal border crossing with Iraq — utilized by Iran-backed Shiite militias funneling males and weapons to their items in Syria — additionally fell beneath its management. The US-backed umbrella group stated in a press release Friday that the Deir ez-Zor Military Council, staffed by primarily Arab forces, had moved into the town and into different areas mendacity on the western banks of the Euphrates River so as to defend its individuals from Turkish-backed Sunni militants who’ve been at warfare towards the SDF in addition to from the Islamic State.
The SDF took management over the town after Syrian authorities forces and Iran-backed fighters pulled out of the town, Reuters reported.
The strikes are additionally probably aimed toward giving the Syrian Kurds leverage over different actors within the battle. They got here as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the al-Qaeda offshoot that aligned with Turkey-backed teams within the so-called Syrian National Army, pressed its lightning offensive, now in its ninth day, towards Syrian regime forces closing in on the nation’s third largest metropolis, Homs. The militant group has already captured Aleppo and Hama. The fall of Homs would carry HTS nearer to its said objective of overthrowing Assad’s regime.
The astonishing success of the group has created a vacuum in jap Syria that the Kurds are quickly filling in a replay of the sample established at the beginning of the Syrian rebellion in 2011, when regime forces retreated from Kurdish-majority areas to struggle Sunni opposition rebels elsewhere.
The Kurds have since maintained tactical ties to the regime however failed to influence Assad to offer them any political rights. The regime remained stubborn whilst Aleppo was falling to HTS, a Syrian Kurdish official talking on situation of anonymity stated.
With Assad’s destiny more and more doubtful, the SDF commander-in-chief, Mazlum Kobane, advised a information convention on Friday that his forces had “channels of communication with HTS,” notably so as to defend tens of 1000’s of ethnic Kurds in Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyah neighborhoods. The SDF and HTS are the strongest actors in areas outdoors the regime management and regardless of the latter’s hyperlinks to Turkey haven’t come to blows thus far.
The public messaging from Syrian Kurdish officers is that the HTS and its chief, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, are extra impartial of Ankara than the array of Sunni factions making up the SNA and fewer anti-Kurdish. As such, the SDF might work constructively with them as the brand new order in Syria takes form.
“The SDF might even function a much-needed moderating affect on HTS’ habits,” Meghan Bodette, director of analysis on the Kurdish Peace Institute in Washington, wrote in a coverage temporary.
Privately, nevertheless, some SDF officers air alarm on the prospect of HTS working the nation, with one official describing Jolani as a “second Baghdadi” in background feedback to Al-Monitor. The official was referring to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS chief who based the jihadis’ so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq and was killed in 2019 in a US raid on his hideout in northwestern Syria. The SDF is determinedly secular in its outlook, espousing the ideology of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founding father of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who promotes gender equality and respect for ethnic and non secular minorities.
One of the principle causes for his or her jitters is the connection between HTS and Turkey. Fraught because it has been, there’s little doubt that Turkey approved and should have even helped plan the HTS offensive that was launched on Nov. 27. Turkey’s twin goals had been to “punish” Assad for refusing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s provide to make peace on the one hand and squeezing the Kurds on the opposite, the SDF officers stated. Turkey denies any involvement within the offensive.
Erdogan on Friday voiced concern about what he stated had been “terrorist teams” among the many opposition militants, with out naming them, and aired concern about their advance towards Assad. HTS is designated as a terrorist group by the United States, Turkey, Russia and the United Nations.
The Kurds have already misplaced floor whilst they gained territory elsewhere. The SNA seized management of the strategic city of Tell Rifaat final week pushing tens 1000’s of Kurds displaced from Afrin following a Turkish assault in 2018. At least 85,000 Kurds fled camps in Shahba and Tell Rifaat into the Kurdish-controlled areas.
Turkish authorities cost {that a} low-intensity Kurdish insurgency led by the so-called Afrin Liberation Forces, a pro-PKK outfit concentrating on Turkish-backed Sunni forces in Afrin, was run out of the realm.
Iran’s makes an attempt to offer weapons to the regime through Iraq had been thwarted by coalition airstrikes on a Shiite militia convoy on Dec. 1 close to Albu Kamal, SDF sources stated.
Kobane stated SNA militias proceed to threaten Manbij, an Arab-majority metropolis that was seized by the Kurds from ISIS in 2016 in a bid to hitch Kurdish territories east of the Euphrates with Afrin. Turkey launched its first floor invasion of Syria quickly afterward to disrupt that plan and has lengthy demanded that the SDF withdraw from Manbij.
Much of Syria’s oil and water is within the Kurdish-controlled zone and will the HTS overthrow the regime, it might present the SDF with leverage. Yet it is a double-edged sword. Turkey might but launch one other army operation towards the Syrian Kurds and is unlikely to encourage cooperation between the SDF and the HTS within the medium time period, notably if its ongoing effort to get Ocalan to order the PKK to name off its 42-year armed marketing campaign towards Ankara proves fruitless. For now, an estimated 900 US particular operations forces stationed within the Kurdish-controlled zone provide the most effective assure towards a Turkish floor invasion.
Correction: Dec. 6, 2024. A earlier model of this text mistakenly stated opposition factions had already launched an operation to take Manbij.
