While Calm Reigns in Damascus, Battles in Syria's Northeast Rage On

New York Times

05-03-2025

In the Syrian capital, Damascus, the country's new leader has hosted a national unity conference and welcomed foreign dignitaries as crowds gather at cafes, speaking out freely for the first time in decades.
But 400 miles away in northeastern Syria, a region beyond the control of the Damascus government, battles that have been going on for yearsare still raging. Drones buzz overhead day and night while airstrikes and artillery fire have forced thousands to flee their homes.
The fight there pits two opposing militias against each other — the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the United States, and a predominantly Syrian Arab militia supported by Turkey. And the battle has only intensified since Islamist rebels ousted Syria's longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in early December.
Much is at stake in this conflict, including the ability of the new interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, to unify the entire country, control its many religious and ethnic armed groups, and keep in check the terrorist group Islamic State, which has begun to gather strength again in parts of Syria. Neighboring countries worry that instability from any number of factions could spill across their borders.
Also hanging in the balance is the fate of Syria's Kurds, an ethnic minority that makes up about 10 percent of the population. Over the years, the Kurds have carved out a semiautonomous region in northeastern Syria.
One of the driving forces behind the fight in the northeast is the Turkish government's growing advantage over the Kurds, whom Turkey views as a threat both at home and in neighboring Syria because some violent Kurdish factions have pushed for a separate state.
At home, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey last week scored a victory when the leader of the P.K.K., the Kurdish separatist movement that has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, called on his fighters to lay down their arms and disband. On Saturday, two days after the appeal by the leader, Abdullah Ocalan, the P.K.K. declared a cease-fire in Turkey.
Turkey has also emerged in the past few months with greater influence in Syria because of its ties to the rebel group that overthrew Mr. al-Assad.
The P.K.K.'s decisions over the past week have reverberated across northeastern Syria. Some fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces also have roots in the P.K.K., and Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish leader of the Syrian force, has been a close follower of Mr. Ocalan's ideology. But addressing the P.K.K. leader's call to disarm, he said 'it has nothing to do with the S.D.F.'
The new government in Damascus is pressuring the Syrian Democratic Forces to disarm and merge into a national military force, as it has demanded of every other armed group in the country. But so far, the Syrian Democratic Forces have been reluctant, fearing that doing so could threaten the autonomy of the Kurds in northeastern Syria.
Mr. Abdi has said he wants his troops to become part of a new national Syrian army, but he also wants the force to be able to keep its weapons and continue to operate in northeast Syria.
Mr. Erdogan, however, opposes any autonomy for the group. He recently referred to the Syrian Democratic Forces as 'separatist murderers,' suggesting that they were akin to the P.K.K. and said they should 'bid farewell to their weapons or they will be buried' with them.
For Syria's neighbors and many others in the international community, the concern is that if Syria's Kurds are subsumed into a national force, they may no longer be able to keep the Islamic State in check.
The Syrian Democratic Forces started fighting during Syria's 13-year civil war when the Islamic State took control of large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq. They won crucial American military support — including weapons, funding and training — after proving that they were the most effective force on the ground in Syria when it came to fighting the Islamic State.
The Kurdish-led force also guards the more than 20 prisons in northeastern Syria that hold about 9,500 hardened Islamic State fighters and nearby camps that contain about 40,000 family members of Islamic State fighters.
'Syria is the most important issue right now,' said Hoshyar Zebari, a former Iraqi foreign minister and a Kurd who remains in close touch with many regional leaders. Mr. Zebari said the Kurdish issue, particularly with regards to keeping the Islamic State at bay, was particularly important because instability tends to spill into neighboring countries.
'We know that whatever happens in Syria will not stop at the Syrian-Iraqi border,' said Mr. Zebari, noting that during the Syrian civil war, the conflict tipped into Iraq, with the Islamic State taking over much of northern Iraq. Millions of Syrian refugees and fled to neighboring countries and to Europe.
The pressure both to join the new Syrian government and defend Kurdish autonomy within Syria has put Mr. Abdi in a tough position. He could accept the new Syrian government in hopes that this would guarantee some measure of long-term security for Syrian Kurds. But he also faces calls from some Kurdish factions to hold out for a semi-independent region.
In a briefing with reporters last week, Mr. Abdi walked a fine line. He said the Kurds welcomed the new government in Damascus but also made clear that he was reluctant to dissolve his forces and, especially, to cede the fight against the Islamic State to a new and still untested Syrian army.
'The S.D.F. has a lot of experience in the fight against ISIS, and we have strengths to offer to the new Syrian army,' he said.
It is also unclear whether Mr. al-Shara will be able to persuade the Turkish-backed militias to stop attacking the Kurds.
Another big unknown is what the Trump administration will decide about U.S. involvement in Syria. During President Trump's first term, he tried to remove U.S. forces from Syria, reducing support for the Syrian Democratic Forces and risking an opening for Islamic State fighters to regain ground.
The Pentagon pushed to retain a small U.S. force in Syria to carry out complex operations and to train and vet the Syrian Democratic Forces.
But now there is fear among residents of the northeast that support is ebbing from many sides for the Kurdish-led forces in Syria. Both Kurdish and Arab residents of the area say they are weary of a conflict, but prospects for a peaceful resolution look remote.
Khokh, a 40-year-old crossing the border from Syria into Iraq with her family, said that much of the worst fighting was far from their village, Deric, but that the buzz of Turkish surveillance drones was constant in the past few months. She asked to be identified by only her first name out of concerns for her security.
'We feel afraid every day when we hear the sound of the drones and the planes, and sometimes my children don't go outside for a week, because we are afraid even to send them to school,' she said. 'My 11-year old daughter won't even go to the bathroom alone.'
Many do not trust that the new government in Damascus will be able to keep them safe from the Islamic State or will respect their ethnic background. In the past, Kurds have had fewer rights than Arabs, and some have not been granted citizenship.
'We do not know what the new government will do with us,' said Sheikh Khalil Elgaida Elhilali, 75, the leader of a mixed tribe of Syrian Arabs and Kurds. 'We want the war and fighting to stop.'
For Syria's Arab neighbors, the most pressing concern is that the thousands of Islamic State fighters held in Kurdish-run prisons in northeastern Syria remain under tight guard and that the sprawling camps for their families are closely watched.
If even a small number of the 9,500 Islamic State prisoners — many of whom are hardened fighters — were to break out of jail, it would represent a major threat.
The prisons 'are time bombs,' Mr. Zebari said.