ISTANBUL – In the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad's ouster, Syria remains territorially fractured as the rebels who defeated Assad work to consolidate power. The country's uncertain future has raised questions about the fate of the U.S.-backed Kurdish coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
This week, Syria's new leadership took steps to dissolve the different rebel factions and unite them under the new Syrian army. But the SDF did not join in. In a statement, SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami said the group wasn't opposed to joining the Syrian military in principle, but that the matter required negotiations with Damascus.
The realities of the new Syria, however, have left the SDF with few options to maintain its status quo.
The SDF controls a third of Syria's territory
In 2014, the Islamic State extremist group began taking large pieces of territory in northeast Syria as the country was embroiled in a civil war.
With the help of the United States, a coalition was formed of Kurdish militia groups to help fight ISIS and take back the territory. That's how the coalition came to control about a third of Syria, from the Euphrates River and eastward along the borders with Iraq and Turkey, according to Yerevan Saeed, director of the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace at American University.
"The Kurdish control of these areas really came in a time when there was a vacuum of power. All of these areas were taken over by ISIS, and the local population was very happy to have the SDF clear ISIS elements from all of these areas," Saeed says.
After the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in the spring of 2019, the SDF continued to guard the prisons and camps holding thousands of ISIS fighters and their families, something it still does now.
A majority of the population living under SDF control are Arabs
The Kurds are one of the world's largest ethnic groups without their own state. They are a minority spread mainly across several Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.
For a long time, some Kurds and their allies had hoped that the area the SDF carved out in northeastern Syria would eventually turn into an autonomous Kurdish zone, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.
But that goal was unrealistic, according to Denise Natali, the director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University and expert on U.S.–Kurdish relations.
"This was not in any part of the trajectory of Syrian history," Natali said. "And not sustainable from a perspective of local power dynamics, not from an economic perspective, not from a security perspective."
Unlike in northern Iraq, a majority of the population in northeast Syria isn't Kurdish. They are Arabs. And while Kurds are living in the area, not all support the SDF, which follows a secular, libertarian socialist ideology that local Sunni Syrian Kurds do not share.
The Kurdish towns and villages are also scattered and not contiguous, making it even more challenging to form a cohesive, autonomous region.
Since the fall of Assad on Dec. 8, some Arab residents under SDF control in cities like Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa have been demonstrating and demanding to be governed by the rebels in Damascus instead.
"With Assad out of the scene, local Arab communities in eastern Syria are uncomfortable with a sort of Kurdish militia group having ultimate authority in their areas," said Nicholas Heras, a senior director with New Lines Institute. "They have an alternative, another choice."
NATO ally Turkey sees the Kurdish militia groups as a threat
An even bigger challenge to the Kurdish coalition comes from Turkey – Syria's neighbor to the north. The rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) who toppled Assad were supported by Turkey, giving the country significant influence over Syria and its new leaders.
Turkey says the main militia force in the U.S.-backed Kurdish coalition is the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party – an insurgent group better known as the PKK which it has been fighting in Turkey for decades. Both Turkey and the U.S. designate the PKK as a terrorist organization.
The U.S. decision to arm the Syrian branch of the PKK – which is known as the YPG – in the fight against ISIS has been a sticking point in U.S.–Turkish relations for years, according to James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for the mission to defeat ISIS.
"Because of the huge role the PKK has played since I was first in Turkey in 1984, the Turks can never formally accept what the U.S. is doing with the SDF," Jeffrey says, referring to Washington's support of the Syrian Kurdish coalition.
Turkish officials made it clear soon after the fall of Assad that one of their strategic priorities in Syria is to see the YPG dismantled, either by the new Syrian leaders in Damascus taking control of all of Syria and uniting it, or by a major Turkish military offensive targeted on areas controlled by the YPG in Syria's northeast.
In a speech to the Turkish parliament this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that the Kurdish militia groups "will either lay down their arms or will be buried with their arms in the lands of Syria."
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, have threatened sanctions against Turkey in case of a military offensive against the Kurdish fighters in Syria.
Syria's new administration seeks to unite the country
Last Sunday, during a press conference in Damascus with the Turkish foreign minister, Syria's de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said he would not allow any existing weapons in Syria to be outside state control, "whether from the revolutionary factions or from the factions present in the SDF region."
As the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition is already due to be disbanded in Iraq, Turkish officials have been encouraging Syria's new leadership also to eventually take control of ISIS prisons and camps in Syria from the SDF.
"The Syrian administration told us it is ready to take the necessary initiative to take over these prisoners," Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan said in the press conference with Sharaa.
Analysts expect a diplomatic agreement will eventually be reached between Damascus and the SDF, without a Turkish military offensive into SDF areas.
"I think a more realistic prospect is some form of decentralized administration in which the Kurdish cities have local self-administration," Natali said.
U.S. officials are concerned about ISIS resurgence, but Syria is not a strategic priority
Natali, who served as assistant secretary of state for conflict and stabilization operations during President-elect Donald Trump's first term, says the United States' yearslong arrangement in Syria with the Kurdish coalition is no longer strategically viable, due to changes both in Syria and in Washington.
"We are in a different situation," she says. "We have a new administration that has clearly identified what their priorities are, and Syria is not a priority."
Instead, she says Trump's priorities are ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
"And these types of priorities are going to need strategic partners, such as Turkey," Natali says.
In his first term, Trump pushed but failed to bring back home the 900 U.S. troops on the ground in Syria. During his campaign this year, he made ending wars and not getting involved in other conflicts a big part of his message, and he is expected to want to withdraw troops from Syria again.
But given the scale of destruction during Assad's violent reign on Syria's physical infrastructure and the fraying of social dynamics, many experts remain skeptical that Syria won't end up a fractured state.
And U.S. officials are concerned about ISIS taking advantage of a vacuum and reemerging, making it all the more challenging for a full U.S. withdrawal from Syria.
In an interview on Sunday with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Trump's pick for National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said that while the U.S. did not need to have troops on the ground in Syria, it won't be able to turn away from what's going on there.
"Tens of thousands of fighters and families that are sitting in prison camps guarded by our friends the Kurds, supported by us, and we can't have that unleash again," Waltz said.
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