Syria's government and Kurds still at odds over merging forces after latest talks, US envoy says
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who is also a special envoy to Syria, told The Associated Press after meetings in Damascus, the Syrian capital, that there are still significant differences between the sides. Barrack held talks with Mazloum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led and U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces, and Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa.
The development comes after a move by the Trump administration took effect this week, revoking a terrorism designation of the former insurgent group led by al-Sharaa, which was behind a lightning offensive last December that ousted Syria's longtime autocrat Bashar Assad.
Revoking the designation was part of a broader U.S. engagement with al-Sharaa's new, transitional government.
A deal vague in details
In early March, the former insurgents — now the new authorities in Damascus — signed a landmark deal with the SDF, a Kurdish-led force that had fought alongside U.S. troops against the militant Islamic State group and which controls much of northeastern Syria.
Under that deal, the SDF forces would merge with the new Syrian national army. The agreement, which is supposed be implemented by the end of the year, would also bring all border crossings with Iraq and Turkey, airports and oil fields in the northeast under the central government's control. They are now controlled by the SDF.
Detention centers housing thousands of Islamic State militants, now guarded by the SDF, would also come under government control.
However, the agreement left the details vague, and progress on implementation has been slow. A major sticking point has been whether the SDF would remain as a cohesive unit in the new army — which the Syrian Kurds are pushing for — or whether the force would be dissolved and its members individually absorbed into the new military.
Barrack said that is still 'a big issue' between the two sides.
'Baby steps'
'I don't think there's a breakthrough,' Barrack said after Wednesday's meetings. 'I think these things happen in baby steps, because it's built on trust, commitment and understanding."
He added that "for two parties that have been apart for a while and maybe an adversarial relationship for a while, they have to build that trust step by step.'
Also, Turkish-backed factions affiliated with the new Syrian government have over the years clashed with the SDF, which Turkey considers a terrorist group because of its association with the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which had waged a decades-long insurgency within Turkey before recently announcing it would lay down its weapons.
The United States also considers the PKK a terrorist group but is allied with the SDF.
Barrack said that though 'we're not there' yet, Damascus had 'done a great job" in presenting options for the SDF to consider.
"I hope they will and I hope they'll do it quickly,' he said.
From skepticism to trust
A key turning point for Syria came when U.S. President Donald Trump met with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May and announced that Washington would lift decades of sanctions, imposed over Assad's government.
Trump took steps to do so after their meeting and subsequently, the U.S. moved to remove the terrorist designation from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, al-Sharaa's force that spearheaded the offensive against Assad.
The U.S. played a key role in brokering the deal announced in March between al-Sharaa's government and the SDF and has urged the Syrian Kurdish authorities to integrate with Damascus.
Barrack said Washington has 'complete confidence in the Syrian government and the new Syrian government's military,' while the SDF has been a 'valuable partner' in the fight against IS and that the U.S. 'wants to make sure that they have an opportunity ... to integrate into the new government in a respectful way.'
The U.S. has begun scaling down the number of troops it has stationed in Syria — there are about 1,300 U.S. forces now — but Barrack said Washington is in 'no hurry' to pull out completely.
Prospects of Syria-Israel ties
In the interview with the AP, Barrack also downplayed reports of possible breakthroughs in talks on normalizing ties between Syria and Israel.
'My feeling of what's happening in the neighborhood is that it should happen, and it'll happen like unwrapping an onion, slowly ... as the region builds trust with each other,' he said without elaborating.
Since Assad's fall, Israel has seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in Syria bordering the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and has launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria. Israeli soldiers have also raided Syrian towns outside of the border zone and detained people who they said were militants, sometimes clashing with locals.
Israeli officials have said they are taking the measures to guard their border against another cross-border attack like the one launched by the Palestinian militant Hamas group on Oct. 7, 2023 in southern Israel that triggered the latest war in the Gaza Strip.
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Associated Press
6 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Syria's Druze find bodies in the streets while searching for loved ones after days of clashes
JARAMANA, Syria (AP) — A Syrian Druze woman living in the United Arab Emirates frantically tried to keep in touch with her family in her hometown in southern Syria as clashes raged there over the past days. Her mother, father and sister sent videos of their neighbors fleeing as fighters moved in. The explosions from shelling were non-stop, hitting near their house. Her family took shelter in the basement. When she reached them later in a video call, they said her father was missing. He had gone out during a lull to check the situation and never returned. 'Now I only pray. That's all I can do,' she told The Associated Press at the time. Hours later, they learned he had been shot and killed by a sniper. The woman spoke on condition of anonymity fearing that using her name would put her surviving family and friends at risk. A ceasefire went into effect late Wednesday, easing days of brutal clashes in Sweida. Now, members of its Druze community who fled or went into hiding are returning to search for loved ones and count their losses. They are finding homes looted and bloodied bodies of civilians in the streets. 'Systemic killings' The fighting began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze militias in the majority-Druze Sweida province. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians. At least 600 people — combatants and civilians on both sides — were killed in four days of clashes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. It said the dead included more than 80 civilians, mostly Druze, who were rounded up by fighters and collectively shot to death in what the monitor called 'field executions.' 'These are not individual acts but systemic,' the Observatory's director Rami Abdul-Rahman told the AP. 'All the violations are there. You can see from the bodies that are all over the streets in Sweida clearly show they're shot in the head.' In response, Druze militias have targeted Bedouin families in revenge attacks since the ceasefire was reached. Footage shared on Syrian state media shows Bedouin families putting their belongings in trucks and fleeing with reports of renewed skirmishes in those areas. There was no word on casualties in those attacks. Most of the Syrian Druze who spoke to the AP requested anonymity, fearing they and their families could be targeted. The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. They largely celebrated the downfall in December of Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad but were divided over interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa's Sunni Islamist rule. The latest violence has left the community more skeptical of Syria's new leadership and doubtful of peaceful coexistence. Gunned down in the street One Syrian-American Druze told the AP of his fear as he watched the clashes from the United States and tried to account for his family and friends whom he had seen in a recent trip to his native city Sweida. Despite internet and communications breakdowns, he tracked down his family. His mother and brother fled because their home was shelled and raided, he said. Their belongings were stole, windows shattered. Their neighbors' house was burned down. Two other neighbors were killed, one by shelling, another by stray bullets, he said. He also pored over online videos of the fighting, finding a harrowing footage. It showed gunmen in military uniform forcing a number of men in civilian clothes to kneel in the street in a well-known roundabout in Sweida. The gunmen then spray the men with automatic fire, their bodies dropping to the ground. The footage was seen by the AP. To his horror, he recognized the men. One was a close family friend — another Syrian-American on a visit to Sweida from the U.S. The others were the friend's brother, father, three uncles and a cousin. Friends he reached told him that government forces had raided the house where they were all staying and took them outside and shot them. While Damascus vowed to hold perpetrators of civilian killings to account, some rights groups accused Syria's interim government of systematic sectarian violence, similar to that inflicted on the Alawite religious minority in the coastal province of Latakia in the aftermath of Assad's fall as the new government tried to quell a counterinsurgency there. Footage widely circulated on social media showed some of the carnage. One video shows a living room with several bodies on the floor and bullet holes in the walls and sofa. In another, there are at least nine bloodied bodies in one room of the home of a family that took in people fleeing the fighting. Portraits of Druze notables are visible, smashed on the floor. Searching for her husband Evelyn Azzam, a Druze woman, is searching the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, trying to find out what happened to her husband, Robert Kiwan. Last week, the 23-year-old Kiwan left home in Jaramana early as he does every day to commute to his job in Sweida. He got caught up in the chaos when the clashes erupted. Azzam was on the phone with him as government forces questioned him and his coworkers. She heard a gunshot when one of the coworkers raised his voice. She heard her husband trying to appeal to the soldiers. 'He was telling them that they are from the Druze of Sweida, but have nothing to do with the armed groups,' the 20-year-old Azzam said. Then she heard another gunshot; her husband was shot in the hip. An ambulance took him to a hospital, where she later learned he underwent an operation. But she hasn't heard anything since and doesn't know if he survived. Back in the U.S., the Syrian-American said he was relieved that his family is safe but the video of his friend's family being gunned down in the street filled him with 'disbelief, betrayal, rage.' He said his family and friends protested against Assad, celebrated his downfall and wanted to give al-Sharaa's rule a chance. He said he hadn't wanted to believe that the new Syrian army — which emerged from al-Sharaa's insurgent forces — was made up of Islamic militants. But after the violence in Latakia and now in Sweida, he sees the new army as a 'bunch of militias … with a huge majority being radicals.' 'I can't imagine a world where I would be able to go back and integrate with these monsters,' he said. ___ Chehayeb reported from Beirut.
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Washington Post
The rest of the world struggles to restrain Israel
On Thursday, Pope Leo XIV urged 'an immediate ceasefire' in the Gaza Strip. Not long before, an Israeli strike had hit Gaza's sole Catholic Church, killing three people who had been sheltering there and injuring 10 more. Israeli authorities attributed the incident to 'stray ammunition.' The pontiff expressed his sadness for the losses endured by the small Christian community in the embattled territory and urged 'dialogue and reconciliation,' as negotiations between Israel, militant group Hamas and their interlocutors over a truce continue. His entreaties, for now, amount to more hope and prayers. The conflict and misery in Gaza shows little sign of abating, while Israel keeps pounding targets across a wide swath of the region. That includes a bombing campaign this week in Syria, which Israel says is aimed at defending minority Druze from sectarian attacks but analysts also believe is part of a deeper strategy to maintain influence over the country's fragile post-dictatorship transition. Away from the warzones of the Middle East, Israel finds itself fighting other battles. Judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague rejected Israel's request to withdraw arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, who are both wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out under their watch in the aftermath of Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, strike on southern Israel. In a bid to pressure the international court, the United States has placed sanctions on some ICC judges and prosecutors. Earlier this week, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar went to Brussels for meetings with European counterparts. He emerged, in his words, victorious, having achieved 'an important diplomatic feat' of persuading the European Union to avoid adopting punitive measures against Israel. Kaja Kallas, the E.U.'s top diplomat, said the bloc was keeping 'options on the table' but would not pursue mooted sanctions that it was considering after an earlier E.U. assessment found Israel possibly in breach of human rights commitments. Saar cast the developments as a vindication of Israel's efforts to defeat terrorists and defend its citizens. 'The mere attempt to impose sanctions on a democratic state that is defending itself against attempts to destroy it is outrageous,' he wrote on X. 'I thank our friends in the European Union and their foreign ministers, who supported us and prevented an attack on Israel that would also have been an attack on the European Union itself.' But rights advocates were frustrated, given the scale of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and Israel's documented stifling of aid into the flattened territory. The E.U.'s acquiescence, suggested Amnesty International's Agnès Callamard, would be 'remembered as one of the most disgraceful moments in the EU's history' and was 'a cruel and unlawful betrayal of the European project and vision.' The governments of Ireland, Spain and Slovenia are the three European nations that have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel and spearheaded the attempted reckoning in Brussels. They are pressing ahead with their own measures to show their disapproval of Israel's conduct of the war, which has severely depleted Hamas but also destroyed Gaza and killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including many children. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez accused Israel of carrying out a 'genocide' earlier this month. Irish lawmakers are advancing legislation banning trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, much to the anger of some U.S. officials. And Slovenia declared two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers as personae non gratae, banning them from the country. 'This kind of measure is the first of its kind in the European Union,' Slovenian foreign minister Tanja Fajon said. 'We are breaking new ground.' There's reason to be cynical about the efficacy of such attempts by small countries. In Europe, the governments of Britain, France and Germany remain far more reluctant to confront Israel in similar fashion, while French President Emmanuel Macron's efforts to revive international momentum toward the creation of a Palestinian state seem to be fizzling out. Israel's boosters in the U.S. can shrug and smirk. 'An unstated reason for Europe's particular animus toward Israel over the decades is that the continent's leaders secretly resent Israel's willingness and ability to regularly defend itself through tough military action,' mused veteran Washington wonk Robert D. Kaplan, 'something Europe's elites never had even to countenance, and arguably couldn't manage.' Kaplan and his ilk were unlikely to be impressed by a summit that took place earlier this week in Bogotá, where delegations from thirty countries convened to pressure Israel to end its war in Gaza, as well as its occupation of the West Bank. The session of The Hague Group was co-hosted by South Africa, which is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and the left-wing government of Colombia. It concluded Wednesday with 12 countries agreeing to implement a set of measures to 'restrain' Israel. These include a denial of arms to Israel, banning of ships transporting such arms and reviews of public contracts with companies linked to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. A scan of the list of the countries that immediately signed on may suggest Israel's leadership isn't quite shaking in its boots: Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and South Africa. But the conference's backers argued that it's a first step in a global shift. 'For too long, governments have been too afraid of the consequences of angering the United States to risk taking action to uphold international law,' Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who attended the proceedings in the Colombian capital, told me. 'This is about more than Israel and Palestine, this is about a new multilateralism taking shape to replace the old system.' You're reading an excerpt from the WorldView newsletter. Sign up to get the rest, including news from around the globe and interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
Israel says it ‘deeply regrets' strike on Gaza's only Catholic church, calls for investigation
Israel said Thursday that it 'deeply regrets' a deadly strike on Gaza's only Catholic church, which killed three people. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which has jurisdiction for Latin-rite Catholics in Gaza, said the Holy Family Church was struck by Israel on Thursday morning. The church has become a shelter for the enclave's tiny Christian community amid the 20-month war. The office of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that 'Israel deeply regrets that a stray ammunition hit Gaza's Holy Family Church. Every innocent life lost is a tragedy.' 'Israel is investigating the incident and remains committed to protecting civilians and holy sites,' the office added in a statement. In a Vatican telegram on Thursday, a church official said Pope Leo XIV is 'deeply saddened' by the strike. Calling the hit a 'military attack,' the Vatican's Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said: 'In commending the souls of the deceased to the loving mercy of Almighty God, the Holy Father prays for the consolation of those who grieve and for the recovery of the injured.' Netanyahu's office said he was 'grateful to Pope Leo for his words of comfort.' The prime minister also told US President Donald Trump in a phone call that the church incident was a 'mistake,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a briefing Thursday. Asked about Trump's view on the strike, Leavitt described it as 'not a positive reaction.' The Israel Defense Forces acknowledged it hit the church 'mistakenly.' 'An initial inquiry into reports regarding injured individuals in the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, suggests that fragments from a shell fired during operational activity in the area hit the church mistakenly,' the IDF said in a statement on Thursday. 'The cause of the incident is under review.' Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, told Vatican News that the church was hit 'directly' by a tank Thursday morning. The parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, was injured in the attack, the patriarchate said, alongside a number of others. Romanelli is an Argentine who has ministered in Gaza for close to 30 years. It named the three killed as Saad Issa Kostandi Salameh, Foumia Issa Latif Ayyad and Najwa Abu Dawood. Several others were also injured. Images verified by CNN showed the church was damaged in the attack, but the crucifix on top of the church's roof appeared intact. The church has come under attack once before amid Israel's war in Gaza. In December 2023, an Israeli military sniper shot and killed two women who were sheltering inside, according to the patriarchate. The church is known internationally for its close connection with the late Pope Francis, who would call the parish almost daily as the war raged on. Only around 1,000 Christians are thought to have lived in Gaza before the October 7 attacks, which is overwhelmingly a Muslim territory. Meanwhile ceasefire talks to end the war in Gaza, which Palestinian officials say has killed over 58,000 people, are continuing. Israel may show flexibility on a key sticking point in the talks, sources have told CNN, as negotiators attempt to close the gaps preventing the first pause in months of fighting. Specifically, there could be some flexibility from Israel on the potential withdrawal of its troops from the Morag Corridor – a key Israeli security zone in the southern Gaza strip – a source familiar with the matter told CNN on Thursday. The corridor was established by Israeli forces in April with the stated intention of dividing up Gaza and exerting greater pressure on Hamas. Its name refers to the Jewish settlement of Morag that once lay between the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah in the south of the territory. The US had talked up the prospects of a quick agreement in the talks, which had gained momentum after a deal ended the brief Israel-Iran conflict last month. But days of talks yielded no breakthrough. This story has been updated with additional developments.
