The already complicated Syrian
civil war got a lot more muddled this week with divisions widening
between manly Sunni rebel fighters and political exiles and with Syrian Kurds declaring self-rule—all of which is casting doubt on the relevance of the ...
With the Kurds declaring self-rule, Assad bearing down on Aleppo and
jihadist fighters threatening to boycott peace talks, the quagmire in
Syria is dissolving into chaos.
The
already complicated Syrian civil war got a lot more muddled this week
with divisions widening between manly Sunni rebel fighters and political
exiles and with Syrian Kurds declaring self-rule—all of which is
casting doubt on the relevance of the Obama administration’s efforts to
get the warring parties to enter peace talks to end the 32-month long
conflict.
A Free Syrian Army fighter fires an AK-47 during a battle against
the Syrian army loyal to Bashar Assad, in Aleppo, Syria, Friday, Nov. 8,
2013. (AP)
A
declaration by Syrian Kurds of a provisional regional government for
Syria’s northeastern Kurdish areas has infuriated the mainly Sunni
rebels battling to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. They accuse the
Syrian Kurds of being in league with Assad, an allegation being leveled
also by Turkey’s leaders, who see an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria
as perilous for them, too.
The
announcement of self-rule from the Kurds came after Kurdish militias
seized another group of villages this week in northeastern Syria from
jihadists, adding to an impressive few weeks of territorial gains.
Kurdish activists say the victories in Hassaka province against al
Qaeda-affiliated groups by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a sister
group of Turkey’s long-running separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, and
the consolidating of their hold on Kurdish-majority towns is allowing
them now to declare provisional self-rule. About 10 percent of the
Syrian population is Kurdish.
Syria’s
main Western-backed opposition alliance, the Syrian National Council,
now describes the Kurds as hostile, accusing them of being in cahoots
with Assad. Until now, the Sunni-dominated rebel opposition has been
careful to avoid antagonizing the Kurds and the SNC named a secular Kurd
as its leader this year.
“The
PYD is a group hostile to the Syrian revolution,” the SNC said in a
statement yesterday, paving the way for Free Syrian Army units to join
jihadists in fighting the Kurds.
The
SNC added: “Its declaration of self-rule amounts to a separatist act
shattering any relationship with the Syrian people who are battling to
achieve a free, united and independent state.”
The
Kurds say they support the rebellion against Assad but they have not
been engaged in battles with the Syrian President’s forces since the
army withdrew from Kurdish areas in the early months of the civil war.
They have long held the goal of carving out an autonomous region in
northeastern Syria along the lines of what the Kurds enjoy in northern Iraq.
In
an interview with The Daily Beast, Saleh Muslim, head of the PYD
dismissed the accusation of a tie-up between Assad and his party as
“untrue.” ‘They are saying this because they want to use us for their
aims and we won’t do that. They have been supporting jihadists and
Islamists fighting us. We don’t have any contact with Assad.”
Syria’s main Western-backed opposition alliance, the Syrian National
Council, now describes the Kurds as hostile, accusing them of being in
cahoots with Assad.
In
reference to his own series of imprisonments by Assad from 2003 until
he fled in 2010 to neighboring Iraq, the 62-year-old PYD leader said:
“We were fighting Assad long before them.”
As
accusations were hurled back and forth over the Kurdish declaration,
resentment simmered among Islamist rebels about the willingness now of
the SNC, a grouping of mainly political exiles, to attend Geneva peace talks
if they get off the ground. The SNC not only announced it would be
prepared to participate in talks provided certain stipulations are met
but outlined a partial cabinet of its own to administer rebel-held
territory, mainly in the north of the war-battered country.
The
pulling together of an interim government by the SNC has taken months
because of disputes between the exiles, but the effort could largely be
wasted with hostility mounting from Islamist fighters. One SNC member,
Kamal Lebvani, acknowledged this, saying, “The fighters are the ones who
decide things, not us.” And the fighters are apparently having none of
it. They say the Geneva talks are irrelevant because they don’t address
their demands for the immediate overthrow of Assad and punishment of
regime loyalists and they warn they will never tolerate the SNC
governing towns and villages they captured from Assad.
In
September more than a dozen mainly Islamist brigades quit the coalition
and its Free Syrian Army to form Jaysh Al-Islam (Army of Islam). The
umbrella group now numbers 64 militias. Islamist rebels deride the SNC
as a puppet of Western and Gulf powers and say it is not representative
of rebel fighters.
The
Army of Islam’s spokesman, Mohammed Alloush, the brother of one of the
umbrella group’s top leaders, says, “Any political solution should be
imposed from the field, not from foreign parties.” The leaders of the
affiliated brigades of the Army of Islam warned earlier this month they
would consider any participation in Geneva talks an act of treason.
Fehim Tastekin, a Turkish columnist for the newspaper Radikal,
says the SNC has been placed in a no-win situation, having to choose
between either refusing to go to Geneva and face losing the support of
the international community, “or agree to attend and lose Syria—that is,
the armed opposition.”
SNC
leaders say they still believe rebel fighters can be persuaded that
political talks are the best way forward and intend to use community
activists to assist them to persuade them that talks are necessary. One
of their main arguments is that Assad’s forces, with the assistance of
Shia fighters from Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah movement and from Iraq,
are shifting the course of the war in favor of the regime.
This
month Assad’s forces have made inroads into rebel-held suburbs south of
Damascus and yesterday government troops added Hujeira as the latest in
a string of suburbs arcing the Syrian capital to fall to the regime.
Last week, Assad’s forces seized a strategic town to the southeast of
Aleppo, once the commercial hub of the country, and are bent on
recapturing districts from opposition brigades weakened by infighting.
Rebel
fighters see the offensive on Aleppo so grave that they have called on
all Islamists brigades, including jihadist formations, to reinforce the
defense of the half of the city they nominally control. Hezbollah and
Iranian fighters as well as Iraqi Shia militiamen are backing government
forces in the offensive, according to the rebels. Mohammad Nour, of an
opposition media network, Sham News, says regime forces have launched a
pincer movement from the north and the east and are closing in on major
neighborhoods. He says infighting between the Army of Islam and brigades
affiliated with the SNC has made Aleppo more vulnerable to Assad.
With
rebel divisions growing, new rifts between insurgents and Kurds, and
Assad on the offensive, the prospects for Geneva talks even happening
look increasingly forlorn.
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Jamie Dettmer is an independent American-British foreign correspondent. He has worked for The Times of London, Sunday Telegraph,
and several U.S., Irish and Scottish newspapers and has reported from
the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and Africa. Currently, as well as
contributing to the Daily Beast, he also reports for Voice of America.
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