Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces fighters in eastern Raqqa, Syria (File)
The Assad regime has vowed to take “every inch” of territory controlled by Kurdish factions in northern Syria, declaring that the US-supported, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are “separatist terrorist militias”.
The regime’s Foreign Ministry said, in a letter to the UN Secretary-General and President of the Security Council, that the SDF was carrying out “criminal and repressive acts…match up with the schemes implemented by states agents to the USA and prepared by authorities of the Israeli occupation for the region”.
The Ministry declared, without producing evidence, that the SDF was “kidnapping, torturing, killing and displacing civilians” and “illegitimately recruiting youth with the aim of imposing a new status quo that serves the US and Israeli schemes”.
The SDF was created by the US in autumn 2015 to push the Islamic State out of northeast Syria. The last ISIS-held village was captured in March, with tens of thousands of fighters and their families taken to camps.
The Assad regime has periodically denounced the Kurdish groups and the SDF. In late August, regime and Iranian military sites declared that a 200-truck US convoy was bringing in new equipment to an SDF “besieging tens of thousands of civilians in the area”.
But Sunday’s statement appeared to step up pressure by repeating the regime’s phrase that it will “restore each inch of the Syrian territories and liberate them from terrorism” — a phrase used to sanction Russian-backed offensives to overrun opposition areas.
Since late April, Russia and the regime have been trying to reoccupy the last major opposition area, Idlib and northern Hama Provinces in northwest Syria. They broke through anti-Assad lines in early August, seizing almost all of northern Hama and parts of southern Idlib, but paused the ground assault at the start of September to consider next steps.
The Foreign Ministry’s declaration against the Kurds also signaled that the regime’s talks with Kurdish groups on a political resolution are suspended, if not halted for good.
Over the past year, with Russian encouragement, Assad officials have talked to some Kurdish factions. However, the regime has refused to give any ground on the Kurdish requirement of autonomy in areas held by the SDF, led by the Kurdish militia YPG.
Russian State outlets offered no response to the regime statement. President Vladimir Putin meets Turkish and Iranian counterparts Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hassan Rouhani on Monday in the Turkish capital Ankara on Monday.
Multi-Sided Tension Over Future of Northeast
The Kurds have declared a state of “Rojava”, with Kobani and Cezire cantons in northern Syria across much of Raqqa, Hasakah, and Deir ez-Zor Provinces and extending as far west as eastern Aleppo Province.
Earlier this month Turkey and the US began implementation of a 425-km (250-mile) “safe zone” along the Turkish-Syrian border, across the cantons and including territory from the Euphrates River east to the Iraq border.
However, the size of the zone is unclear and the Turkish Government continues to demand the withdrawal of the “terrorist” YPG militia. Ankara considers the YPG to be part of the Turkish Kurdish insurgency PKK.
See Syria Daily, Sept 15: US — No More Troops for Joint Patrols with Turkey in Northeast
Turkish President Erdoğan indicated that northwest Syria, rather than the northeast, will be the focus of his talks with Putin and Rouhani today: “Idlib will be in the focus of our attention at the trilateral meeting in Ankara. Opinions will also be exchanged on [Turkish] observation points and the fight against terrorist groups.”
https://vimeo.com/358909181
Janet Biehl
September 11 at 10:14 AM
In April 2019, I traveled to North-East Syria to participate in a film about the revolution in Rojava [West Kurdistan]. I had visited twice before, in 2014 and 2015, so I was in a position to observe how the revolution progressed over a period of years. I interviewed a whole range of people, from political activists, to self-administration members, to cooperative workers, to people in the streets of Qamislo and Kobane, men and women, Kurds, Arabs, and Christians. In the process, I looked for traces of the ideas of my late dear companion and collaborator Murray Bookchin, whose writings had an influence on the Kurdish movement.
https://www.facebook.com/janet.biehl/posts/10156901580632832 9/11/2019
–
“The nation-state makes us less than human,” Bookchin wrote in his 1985 essay “Rethinking Ethics, Nature and Society.” “It towers over us, cajoles us, disempowers us, bilks us of our substance, humiliates us—and often kills us in its imperialist adventures… We are the nation-state’s victims, not its constituents—not only physically and psychologically but also ideologically.” Öcalan came to share this view; in 2005, he issued a “Declaration” that “the political root of the democratic nation solution is the democratic confederalism of civil society, which is not state.” Rather, it must be based on the “communal unit,” an ecological, social, and economic construction that does not “aim to make profit” but rather meet the collectively determined needs of the people living there. The document served as a vision that he hoped would be embraced by all of Kurdistan
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/15/how-my-fathers-ideas-helped-the-kurds-create-a-new-democracy/ 6/15/2018
–
Organised under the ideology of Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the ‘Kurdistan Worker’s Party’ (PKK), the PYD and other parties in the ‘Movement for a Democratic Society’ (TEVDEM) coalition (leadership of Rojava) adopted a ‘Democratic Confederalism’ ideology and implemented it in governance. The ‘Rojava project’ spearheaded by TEVDEM undermines the ideology of Arab nationalism and the political hegemony of Assad’s Arab Socialist Baath Party, as the ideology of Democratic confederalism focuses on empowerment of minorities through local governance and aims at decentralising power – redistributing power among local municipalities. […] The implementation of the ideology of Democratic confederalism in Rojava Autonomous Administration governance has challenged the hegemony of Bashar al-Assad
https://theregion.org/article/12639-unpacking-rojava-examining-power-dynamics-in-northern-syria 1/28/2018
–
Leaders of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, the governance structure supported by the SDF, have visited Damascus for talks multiple times over the past year. The Autonomous Administration demands a degree of autonomy from the pre-war centralized Baathist system and has said they will not surrender the people of Arab-majority territories such as Deir Ezzor to the Syrian government. The SDF on Sunday again called on the government to end “hostilities against our forces” and renewed its call for “dialogue with the forces representing the Kurds, Arabs and all components of the north and east of Syria to search for real solutions” to secure peace and stability “on the basis of constitutional recognition of self-administrations” and acceptance of the SDF.
https://thedefensepost.com/2019/09/15/syria-sdf-separatist-terrorist-un-letter/ 9/15/2019
Too much poor research in this article…
1. The SDF was not created by the US. It’s the armed force of the NES.
2. Rojava is several thousand years old.
3. “The Kurds” are not trying to create a state. They are Democratic Confederalist – ie. ANTI statehood. And it has nothing to do with ethnicity. It is not a Kurdish project.
4. Neither the YPG, nor the SDF to which it belongs, is Kurdish. Both are Syrian, and both are more than 50% Arab.
You’re welcome.
Pete,
While there were Kurdish militia before autumn 2015, the SDF was the initiative of the US military working with those militia.
Yes, Rojava is claimed by Kurds to be several thousand years old. The article does not dispute.
Some Kurdish groups, including the YPG militia and its political umbrella the PYD (Kurdistan Democratic Unionist Party), are seeking a State.
Neither the YPG nor the SDF is majority Arab.
Thanks for writing.
S.