In the Syrian capital, Damascus, the new head of the country organized a national conference on unity and welcomed foreign dignitaries while crowds meet in cafes, speaking freely for the first time in decades.
But 400 miles away in northeast Syria, an out of control of the Damascus government, the battles that have been taking place for years are still raging. The drones buzz over the head and night while the air strikes and artillery fires have forced thousands of people to flee their homes.
The struggle there are two opposing militias against each other – the Syrian democratic forces led by the Kurds, supported by the United States, and an Arab militia with Syrian predominance supported by Turkey. And the battle has only intensified since the Islamist rebels ousted the longtime dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, in early December.
Many are at stake in this conflict, including the capacity of the new acting president, Ahmed Al-Shara, to unify the whole country, to control its many religious and ethnic armed groups and to control the Islamic State terrorist group, which has started to bring together again in certain parts of Syria. Neighboring countries fear that the instability of any number of factions can spread through their borders.
The fate of the Kurds of Syria, an ethnic minority which represents around 10% of the population. Over the years, the Kurds have pruned a semi-auto region in northeast Syria.
One of the engines of the northeast struggle is the growing advantage of the Turkish government on the Kurds, which Turkey considers a threat to the house and in neighboring Syria because certain violent Kurdish factions have prompted a separate state.
At home, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey won a victory last week when the head of the PKK, the Kurdish separatist movement who fought an insurrection of several decades against the Turkish state, called on his fighters to lay down his arms and dissolve. On Saturday, two days after the chief’s call, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK declared a cease-fire in Türkiye.
Turkey has also emerged in recent months with greater influence in Syria because of its links with the rebel group which overthrew Mr. Al-Assad.
PKK decisions during last week have repercussions in northeast Syria. Some fighters from the Syrian democratic forces also have roots in the PKK, and Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish chief of the Syrian force, was a close follower of the ideology of Mr. Ocalan. But addressing the Call of the PKK chief to disarm, he said: “It has nothing to do with the homeless”
The new government of Damascus is pressure on the Syrian democratic forces to disarm and merge into a national military force, as it demanded from all the other armed groups in the country. But so far, the Syrian democratic forces have been reluctant, fearing that this would threaten the autonomy of the Kurds in northeast Syria.
Abdi said that he wanted his troops to be part of a new national Syrian army, but he also wants strength to keep his arms and continue to operate in northeast Syria.
Mr. Erdogan, however, opposes all autonomy for the group. It recently summary To the Syrian democratic forces as “separatist murderers”, suggesting that they are akin to the PKK and said that they should “say goodbye to their weapons where they will be buried” with them.
For the neighbors of Syria and many other members of the international community, the concern is that if the Kurds of Syria are subsumed in a national force, they could no longer keep the Islamic State in failure.
Syrian democratic forces began to fight during the 13 -year civil war in Syria when the Islamic State took control of large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq. They won crucial American military support – including arms, financing and training – after proving that they were the most effective force on the ground in Syria when it was a question of fighting the Islamic State.
The force led by Kurdish also keeps the more than 20 prisons in northeast Syria which contain approximately 9,500 hardened Islamic state fighters and neighboring camps which contain approximately 40,000 family members of the Islamic State fighters.
“Syria is the most important question at the moment,” said Hoshyar Zebari, former Iraqi Foreign Affairs and Kurdish minister who remains in close contact with many regional leaders. Mr. Zebari said that the Kurdish question, in particular with regard to the maintenance of the Islamic State at a distance, was particularly important because instability tends to spread in neighboring countries.
“We know that everything that happens in Syria will not stop at the Syrian-Iraqi border,” said Mr. Zebari, noting that during the Syrian civil war, the conflict made a tour of Iraq, the Islamic State taking control of a large part of northern Iraq. Millions of Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring countries and in Europe.
The pressure both to join the new Syrian government and defend Kurdish autonomy within Syria has put Mr. Abdi in a difficult position. He could accept the new Syrian government in the hope that this would guarantee a certain long -term security for Syrian Kurds. But it also faces calls from certain Kurdish factions to hold for a semi-independent region.
In a briefing with journalists last week, Mr. Abdi has traveled a fine line. He said the Kurds had welcomed the new government in Damascus, but also said that he was reluctant to dissolve his strengths and, in particular, to yield the fight against the Islamic State in a new unrecovered Syrian army.
“The homeless has a lot of experience in the fight against the Islamic State, and we have forces to offer to the new Syrian army,” he said.
It is also not known whether Mr. Al-Shara will be able to persuade the militias supported by the Turks to stop attacking the Kurds.
Another great unknown is what the Trump administration will decide on American involvement in Syria. During President Trump’s first term, he tried to withdraw the American forces of Syria, reducing support for Syrian democratic forces and risking an opening to Islamic State fighters to resume the ground.
The Pentagon pushed to maintain a small American force in Syria to carry out complex operations and to form and examine the Syrian democratic forces.
But now there is afraid of northeast residents that the support refused many sides for the forces led by the Kurds in Syria. Kurdish and Arab residents of the region say they are tired of a conflict, but the perspectives of peaceful resolution are distant.
Khokh, a 40 -year -old crossing the border of Syria in Iraq with his family, said that a large part of the worst battles were far from their village, Derric, but that the buzz of Turkish surveillance drones was constant in recent months. She asked to be identified only by her first name by concern for her security.
“We are afraid every day when we hear the sound of drones and planes, and sometimes my children do not come out for a week, because we are even afraid to send them to school,” she said. “My 11 -year -old daughter will not even go to the toilet alone.”
Many do not believe that the new government in Damascus will be able to protect them from the Islamic State or will respect their ethnic history. In the past, the Kurds have had less rights than the Arabs, and some have not obtained citizenship.
“We do not know what the new government will do with us,” said Sheikh Khalil Elgaida Elhilali, 75, the chief of a mixed tribe of Arabs and Syrian Kurds. “We want war and fights to stop.”
For the Arab neighbors of Syria, the most urgent concern is that the thousands of fighters in the Islamic State held in Kurdish prisons in northeast Syria remain in a tight guard and that the sprawling camps for their families are closely monitored.
If even a small number of the 9,500 prisoners of the Islamic State – many of which are hardened fighters – had to get out of prison, this would represent a major threat.
Prisons “are time bombs,” said Zebari.
