Loading summary
Transcript49 lines
- [00:01]
A
Weight Watchers now offers access to affordable GLP1s. It works for members like I'm Haley and I've lost 100 pounds. Weight Watchers has everything I need from weight loss medications to nutrition support and help with my side effects. It's all in one place. Weight Watchers handles the insurance for you and offers affordable cash pay options. With our program, our members are losing more weight with expert nutrition and side effects support.
- [00:25]
B
I'm Mike and I've lost 135 pounds with Weight Watchers prescribing GLP1 medications.
- [00:30]
C
It's been life changing. I'm Sharia and I lost 80 pounds on Weight Watchers. I realized that it would take more
- [00:36]
B
than a prescription to lose weight and
- [00:38]
C
feel good on a GLP1.
- [00:40]
A
Better results expert Support Lose more weight,
- [00:43]
B
make it last I can't imagine doing a GLP1 without Weight Watchers.
- [00:48]
A
Get started for as low as $25@weightwatchers.com GLP1 for over 60 years, we've helped millions of members find what works for them. Now it's your turn. Weight Watchers. Watch it.
- [01:06]
C
Vladimir Lenin once said, there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen. Mr. Lenin's adage suits one Middle Eastern country which only this past week experienced a decade's worth of political change. I'm speaking, of course, of Syria. The government in Damascus, under the presidency of Ahmad Ahmed Ashara, made huge territorial gains as its rival in the northeast, the Syrian Democratic Forces, melted away in the face of the government's rapid advance. Aaron Zelen is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has traced the ups and downs that Syria has suffered in the years since the Arab Spring unleashed civil war upon the country. His voice has been an invaluable resource for everyone seeking dispassionate analysis grounded in fact. Aaron tells me all about the remarkable events of the past few weeks and speculates, has Syria finally turned the page on its 15 years of torment? Or is a new wave of terror and instability about to begin? I'm Thomas Small. This is my Conflicted conversation with Aaron Zellin. Hello Aaron. How's it going, man? Thanks for coming back on Conflicted. What a maelstrom of events inside Syria over the past fortnight.
- [02:50]
B
Yeah, it's great to be here again. Obviously a bit crazy, everything that's gone on since the beginning of the year.
- [02:55]
C
I say thanks for coming back on Conflicted. And the truth is, you and I actually recorded an episode last Thursday. So just under a week ago, fully intending to release it the following Thursday. That is tomorrow as of this recording. And dear listeners, that means for you today. But the point is, by Sunday, just three days ago, everything had changed to the extent that everything we talked about last week is no longer relevant or at least severely outdated. Now I'm going to append some of that material to the end of this episode for Conflicted Community members only. Another reason to subscribe to the Conflicted Community, everyone. You'll learn more about what's been going on in Syria beyond this recent military clash between the government in Damascus and the Kurdish led SDF in the northeast. But now, Aaron, you've come back to rerecord the episode and bring us as up to date as possible.
- [03:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, a lot's happened just since we recorded less than a week ago now. It's quite astounding.
- [03:55]
C
So we want to narrate this story properly. So we will be starting back in March last year, just under a year ago. That way everyone will know how we got to where we are now. But before we do that, Aaron, just tell us in summary really what happened since we recorded last week. Basically, there was a sudden and seismic shift in the balance of power between the government headed by Ahmed Ashara and the sdf, the Syrian Democratic Forces headed by Masloom Abdi, a Syrian Kurdish military commander.
- [04:27]
B
Yeah, since we recorded last week, there was sort of a ceasefire agreement between the government and the sdf. And Masloom Abdi announced that his forces would withdraw from sort of the Deirhofer to Maskanah Front, which was in eastern Aleppo. But since then, as a consequence of fighting that continued and the fact that the Syrian government felt that if it didn't continue, none of this would end, we've seen that they've been able to take over all of the Arab majority areas in Raqqa, Indir, Ez Zor and now Hasakah as well. And the map in many ways is a return to 2014 when the US asked the YPG, alongside a bunch of Arab tribes to create the Syrian Democratic Forces to fight against isis. But now, unlike then when Assad or the opposition to Assad were controlling these areas, now it's the Syrian government.
- [05:20]
C
Yeah. So the SDF, since the downfall of the regime in December 2024, had maintained control of most of northeast Syria. But over the past five days or so, that has completely changed. And SDF controlled areas seem now limited to Kurdish Major in the far northeast in Hasaka Province and around the city of Kobani, the areas around that city in the central north part of the country and not much else, Is that right?
- [05:49]
B
Yeah, it's a very, very small area now, just Kobani and its countryside and then pretty much anything north of Hasaka city to the border with Turkey. It's not a lot of area anymore. And so it's a sea change in many ways with what's going on.
- [06:04]
C
This story really begins back in March of last year. So on the 10th of, President Sharra and Masloom Abdi, the head of the SSDF, signed an eight point framework agreement. Its core commitments included integrating SDF controlled civil and military institutions into the Syrian state, transferring key assets like oil and gas fields, border crossings, even an airport to central government control. But it didn't settle the hardest and most intractable question, which was how the SDF's forces would be absorbed into the Syrian Ministry of Defense. This was left for later talks to determine, but an overall implementation deadline was agreed. Everything was to be sorted out by the end of 2025. Now, Aaron, what progress was made between the 10th of March and, say, early December last year on the question of agreeing outstanding terms and implementing the agreement? I know it's weird to think now because we all know how this story ended. But just to tell the story from the beginning, what were the developments between March and December?
- [07:09]
B
Yeah, so there was a series of meetings between the government and the SDF, as well as civilian autonomous administration, on how to try and integrate the military forces as well as the civilian administration in northeast Syria. And a number of committees were created based off of different areas. One of the earliest agreements was that the SDF would actually withdraw from the two neighborhoods in Aleppo. That kind of kicked off this fighting after January 5th this year. And the only remaining security forces from the northeast would be the Asayas, which is the mainly the internal security forces, not the sdf, which is considered more military. And then outside of that, you also had people from the Ministry of Education, from the Syrian government going up to Hasakah to look into folding the educational system of the autonomous administration into the Ministry of Education of the new government, and sort of accrediting the educational system so that people that have been going to school obviously since the uprising started, as well as, you know, the creation of the autonomous administration the last 12 years or so, all these students and the records would be legitimized by the Syrian government so that their diplomas, whether from primary school, secondary school, you know, university, would be seen as legitimate in the light of the state. And therefore people would, you know, be able to get jobs and everything along those lines once things were folded in. But outside of that, things really didn't go much farther than that. It began to stall. We saw it really prominently, especially in the aftermath of the massacre against the Druze in Sweda. The tone of the SDF changed a bit, and therefore we didn't really see any problems. Progress. From the summer through the end of
- [08:45]
C
the year, there's clearly been outside pressure brought to bear, especially on the sdf. The United States, long their allies, were putting pressure on the SDF to make an agreement as early as, you know, last March. I think Turkey has been putting pressure on all sides, telling everybody, look, we need this Kurdish problem to be sorted out. But I'd like to talk about the SDF's bargaining position before the events of recent weeks. I mean, a lot of people are talking about this, that they had cards to play. The SDF controlled those oil and gas fields. They controlled important border crossings, as I said, hydroelectric dams and also a number of prisons holding ISIS fighters and detention camps holding ISIS family members, women, and children. Really, these have been described as bargaining chips. What do you think? What was the SDF's negotiating position before Ahmad Ashara lost patience?
- [09:41]
B
Well, I think in many ways, they took a very maximalist approach. Part of this comes down to the fact that they're hearing different things from many different people and kind of heard what they wanted to hear, that essentially the US Would back them up no matter what, that possibly the Israelis would help them out, and that there's no way that the US Would let ISIS prisons or detention facilities be exposed to the possibility of destabilization in Northeast. Unfortunately, they bet wrong. And part of this, I think, is that they have misunderstood the US position since the US began working with them in 2014 in the fight against ISIS, where the US has always viewed this as a transactional kind of alliance in terms of fighting isis, clearing it from the territory that it controlled at that point, and making sure that ISIS doesn't return in the way it had been previously. There is never any promises or guarantees about creating something in Syria akin to Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region, a statelet. Also, many people in Congress were saying different things to folks in the SDF than the administration itself. And I think they misinterpreted this and therefore weren't willing to negotiate down some of their positions. But the reality is, is that Damascus is the internationally recognized Syrian government. Plus, in November, it's important to note that Syria actually joined officially the global coalition against isis. The Syrian government Prior to that, had been arresting ISIS cells since the fall of the regime. And then before that, when their HTs, going back to when they created their civilian salvation government in 2017, and from 2017 until the fall of the regime, they had like I think 64, 65 counter ISIS arrests. And then since the fall of the regime, I think it's up to like 35 now with some of them being joint operations with the US and so that kind of changed. And then, you know, the biggest issue is, is the difference between visions that Damascus versus the SDF had in terms of the future of the Northeast. Obviously, Shara has said since the fall of the regime consistently that they want central control. They don't want what they perceive as potential separatist movements, even though I don't think the SDF was necessarily separatist. But there was a fear that even some form of federalism provide space to that are the most extreme within sort of the PKK core essentially indirectly having separatism. And while it is true that the SDF negotiated in good faith, I think they overplayed their hands. And you know, many people argued, including myself since the March agreement, that the longer that the SDF waited, the worse deal they were going to get. And now in many ways, we're seeing an even worse repeat of what happened to Iraqi Kurdistan, actually in Kirkuk in 2017, where they overplayed their hands and lost that area as well other territory in Iraq to the Iraqi government. And now in many ways, all of the Arab tribes that have been in the SDF have since flipped now to the Syrian government side. And in many ways, there are questions of whether we can talk about the SDF as an entity anymore and whether it's just the YPG now, which is the Syrian branch of the pkk.
- [12:44]
C
It's interesting. You hear now on social media, there's a lot of accusations that the Kurds have once again been abandoned and betrayed by the United States. We'll discuss that maybe at the end of this convers you mentioned within the United States, within the Congress, different voices saying different things. I mean, even recently, the last couple of days, Senator Lindsey Graham came out being extremely critical of the Syrian government's moves in the Northeast, sort of saying that we gotta back the sdf, we gotta back the sdf. And as with anything to do with American military, congressional funding, funding, appropriations bills, all of this sort of stuff gets involved in who we're backing and who we're not backing. It's a whole other dimension. But you mentioned the sectarian Violence that broke out in Suada in the early summer. And I think it is important to bear in mind the inter sectarian violence in general that has broken out at times in the post Assad Syria. There was the so called violence on the coast in early March between Alawites and Sunni militants directly or indirectly affiliated with the Sha' a government. It's never been entirely clear to me. Then of course, as you said, in May, June, July, there were the terrible events in Suwayda in the south where Druze militias clashed with Sunni tribes, tribal militias, jihadist militias, Syrian government forces. Again, a very twisted tale that did involve atrocities on both sides, but which definitely included massacres of Druze. This has caused great anxiety not only inside Syria. Just yesterday I saw a tweet from a reputable person, a serious thinker, who described the Syrian government forces as throat slitters, not only because of the Al Qaeda background of hts, the militia group that morphed into the power center of the new Syrian government, but also, it is claimed, because videos from the northeast in recent days show Sunni militants aligned with the government carrying out atrocities. So perhaps going back to last year, one can sympathize with the SDFs or the Kurds unwillingness to relinquish their autonomy to the new government, which they felt could not be trusted despite their rhetoric to respect minority rights. What do you think about that anxiety?
- [14:59]
B
It's definitely legitimate. As you just laid out in March there was the massacre against the Alawites and then in July the massacre against Druze. But one of the things to remember in this spate of fighting more recently is that all the areas that the government has taken over outside of Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo, in eastern Aleppo governorate, in Raqqa governorate, in the western side of Deir EZ Zor governorate, as well as southern Hasakah. Governor, those are all Arab lands and there was actually very little civilian casualty and ones that had happened, had happened on both sides of the fighting from the government and the sdf. Of course, people that were in the SDF that were killed, those that were fighting on the front lines were Kurdish. So Kurds were no doubt killed. But people acting as if there has been a massacre or a genocide is a little over the top. Plus it doesn't help. There's been a ton of disinformation and people using old footage of things that are unrelated to what's actually going on on that being said, there's a reason why there is that big phone call between President Trump and Ahmed Ashara just the other Day, because there's major worries by the US government as well as analysts that if they did not stop the fighting in the Arab majority areas, in these different governors that had previously been controlled by the sdf, but then going into majority Kurdish areas, that it is definitely possible and plausible that there could be a massacre of Kurds. And so these worries are definitely founded. And then you also have to add the fact that there's a ton of trauma from the war against ISIS in the way that ISIS treated the Kurdish population when they fought them, especially in places like Kobani, where ISIS literally was throwing every single person at the city to try and take it over. And the valiant fighting of the SDF turned the tide against isis. In many ways, that battle there in Kobani is what started pushing ISIS back and finally, eventually them losing all the territory by 2019. And so we shouldn't forget the valiant efforts that the SDF did in the fight against ISIS, because, you know, people forget now since it's been seven years since they lost territory, but from that, like, 2014 to 2017 time period in particular, it was a huge security dilemma, not only locally and regionally, but internationally as well. And so even if, you know, the context has since changed and the shuffleboard has changed within Syrian politics over the last year, people shouldn't forget all of the valiant things these guys did.
- [17:24]
C
And, you know, the question is always in the air about whether Ahmed Ashara's rhetoric, which is all about respecting minority rights, a new Syrian government that allows a certain degree of pluralism, all that stuff, and, you know, suspicions that that's not entirely true. I think it makes sense now to discuss a television interview that President Shara gave just last Monday. So, about what, 10 days ago, to Shempstv, a Kurdish TV station based in Iraqi Kurdistan. Interestingly, the station decided to shelve and not broadcast the interview, but the footage leaked. And in it, Shara is very candid about the frustrations he'd been having with the SDF over the past year or so. He praised the valor of Kurdish fighters, as you have just done. But he made it clear that from his point of view, despite what so many of his critics say, the conflict with the SDF is not about Arabs versus Kurds, but about the SDF itself and its PKK aligned leadership, that they're ultimately not playing fair, that the SDF deleg, including Mazlum Abdi himself, whom Shara has been negotiating with, did not really have any power, that the real power still answered to the pkk, which has long had its own objectives for an independent Kurdistan and have been living in exile in their sort of hidden mountain fortress in Mount Kandil along the Iran Iraq border, which is kind of exciting. I like the idea of the PKK and this sort of mountain fortress, but this is what Shara said said in that interview. What's your reading? Do you think that he was being really genuine and trying to explain to Syria's Kurds what was really going on politically?
- [19:07]
B
Yeah, I think in many ways he was trying to cut through some of the messaging that had been coming from the SDF that many might not have listened to anything that the Syrian government was saying because they possibly didn't trust them. And so he wanted to talk to Kurds on their own channel to try and give his perspective on things so they can actually hear what he had to say and not people misidentifying or overblowing things that he would say or people in the government would say. And it's also important to note that, you know, last Friday, on top of that interview and sort of the day after we actually originally recorded, there was the decree that Shara signed guaranteeing rights to Kurds itself. It is true that in the constitutional declaration that came out last year, one of the parts of it talked about how everybody in Syria had equal rights, but many Kurds, because of their history, especially as a consequence of the way the battle Baathists dealt with them since Ba' Athism, in many ways was an Arab supremacist ideology, as well as the fact that many Kurds didn't have rights or were stateless because they. They weren't given a citizenship. They wanted something special in the constitution on top of just being like everybody else, saying that their rights were equal. And so Sharab gave out this decree essentially guaranteeing that culturally linguistic rights, making Nowruz an official holiday, allowing Kurdish language to be used in schools, rules, giving citizenship to the Kurds that had not been given it in the 1960s. And so I think that this was also another way for Shara to show that his issue was not with Kurds itself, but more their fight was with this political problem between them and the extremist parts of the PKK within the SDF itself. And I think in many ways, everything that's happened over the last couple of weeks has kind of proven char right on that front because. Because the SDF was never able to actually agree to anything in the negotiations, in part because the PKK in some ways had a check on the final decision making. And that's what, in the end, frustrated Shara and those in Damascus and a number of people in the US Government as well.
- [21:08]
C
I mean, the pkk, if I'm not mistaken, Erin, remains a prescribed terrorist organization in several jurisdictions. And the question of the PKK raises another thorny dimension, which is the allegations. Not really allegations. It's widely known that the sdf, to the extent that the YPG was in it, and that the YPG is an arm of the pkk, has long included among its ranks very young recruits, some call them child soldiers, including teenage girls, who it is claimed might be kidnapped at times forced into military service. There is some video evidence that this is the case, and I'm quite sure people knew this was going on. But until recently, because the SDF was such a vital partner in the US led coalition's fight against isis, everyone was sort of willing to turn a blind eye to these more ideologically radical dimensions of pkk, ypg, SDF governance, the way it's run. So now it's interesting this stuff is coming out more. The SDF are being reframed as non cooperative in this larger goal of supporting a united Syria under Shara's leadership. What do you think about these allegations? They have existed for years, the child soldiers and whatnot, but now they're suddenly central to how the pkk, the SDF, is being talked about.
- [22:25]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is just that the context has changed in many ways since the fall of the regime. And of course there was many skepticisms of HTs when they took over the government. And therefore I think it took some time for the US to get comfortable also with the idea of who is now in charge in Syria and whether they can actually be potential, potentially partners. But the PKK is still a designated terrorist group by the US government, which is in part why the US rebranded the Syrian branch of it, the ypg, alongside the Arab tribes that joined in this faction to become the sdf, because then they could say they're working with the SDF and not actually a group that the US illegally probably couldn't be doing business with. Plus, you know, the biggest threat was the Islamic State then, not only to Syrians in the local Syrian population, let alone Iraqis next door, but also in the west as well. There were attacks going on almost weakly in Europe, for example. I think part of the issue is that the SDF did not recognize the changed context once the regime fell, in many regards, and the US prefers to work with states when they can. That doesn't take anything away from Everything that the SDF did in the fight against isis, as we already discussed, and I think people in the US government and the military respect highly the capabilities of the sdf. But because the US now has this budding relationship with Damascus, the US wants to fold everyone together so that they can unify the fight against ISIS amongst its remnants that have continued to be involved in more of a low level insurgency. Maybe this would be different if ISIS was still as large of a threat as it was 10 years ago ago, but the reality is is that it's a much more manageable threat. Obviously that doesn't mean that it's over and obviously there's still violence and we've seen attacks beyond just insurgent ones. We saw the attack on the church last June in Damascus and more recently against the Aloui mosque in Homs. But generally speaking, on a relative scale, ISIS is not what it used to be in Syria. And so the US wants to unify things now. The biggest question I think is whether the Syrian government will be able to scale up its capacity to deal with it in the northe because the insurgency in the northeast has been much worse than sort of the terrorism campaign that it's been able to conduct within the government areas over the last year. And then that doesn't even get into managing how the detention facilities as well as the IDP camps are dealt with, which I think is something that the US SDF and the Syrian government have been negotiating over in the last few days to a week.
- [24:59]
C
The sdf, the idf, was definitely America's closest partner among all the parties involved in the civil war, though we now know that HTS was also something of a US partner. You know, especially in the latter years though that was hidden. And since the fall of Assad, the US has become a very strong supporter of Ahmed Ashara and the new Syrian government. Back in May, President Trump began the complex process of lifting sanctions on Syria, which happened in full in early December following a visit that Sha' Ah paid to Washington in November. So America is a very important dimension to the shifting political sands of Syria over the past month or so. Aaron, what did the lifting of sanctions do for Syria economically and for Shara politically?
- [25:47]
B
Well, I think in many ways it gave him more legitimacy that his diplomacy alongside the Foreign Ministry's diploma diplomacy had worked. One of the biggest goals in the first year of the new Syria was to get out of international isolation that the Assad regime was under, as well as removing the sanctions. Of course, there are still some sanctions on the books and some Export controls. But the biggest inhibitor to investment in Syria was the Caesar sanctions, because it had secondary and tertiary consequences for those trying to do business there from potential sanctioning the US Finding businesses and countries and things along those lines. And that then went away in December. But at the same time, you know, a lot of the energy resources of the country were still in the east, which the SDF controlled. Now, with the fact that they have taken over most, if not all, of the oil and gas infrastructure, that makes it much more easy for the government to now sell Syria as this whole project that businesses can get access to, because even with Caesar gone, most of these businesses would not have been able to go into the east to do something because the SDF still controlled it. So it is possible that. That maybe the timing of this offensive, even though it did coincide with the aftermath of the deadline of December 31, could be related to the fact that Damascus read the situation, that if they really wanted to bear all the fruits of the sanctions being gone and things along those lines, they need to have access to all of the key sectors of the Syrian economy. Besides just oil and gas, the northeast has also been huge in agricultural, historical, and so that's something to keep in mind as well.
- [27:25]
C
So I think we've laid out pretty clearly where things stood, especially in President Shara's head, as the end of 2025 approached, as that deadline approached, by which time the SDF was supposed to have agreed and implemented a sort of transition plan. But then on the 22nd of December, things got heated and fighting broke out inside a Kurdish neighborhood in a left. Both sides blamed the other for starting it. Aaron, what happened?
- [28:10]
B
I think it was just another spate of violence that we've seen in those neighborhoods. Whenever there had been negotiations between the government and stuff, as well as them not actually leading to anything and breaking down, we would see some violence between them, you know, jockeying positions, and, you know, as they say, when you're not doing diplomacy, war in some ways, is another form of politics. And so I think that this, in many ways, was just another aspect to this. In retrospect, maybe it could have also been a test by Damascus to see how it could maneuver in these areas. Because then a couple of weeks later, starting January 1st 5th, a day after another negotiation, things began again. Though it is important to note that the fighting that began on January 5th, that has kind of led to this current situation, was actually started by the SDF when they shot two suicide drones into Ministry of Defense vehicles that led to the death of two Military men from the Syrian government.
- [29:09]
C
So that was in Aleppo tell that story. What exactly happened?
- [29:12]
B
So, you know, the deadline ended at the end of last year, but they were going to try and maybe re up the negotiation and extend the deadline farther so that they could continue to talk over the integration process. And this happened on January 4. But the talks didn't really lead anywhere. And apparently the SDF wasn't happy about how the talks went the next day. Then the SDF shot two suicide drones into two military vehicles of the Syrian government Ministry of Defense and killed two people. And that then subsequently led to the operation in, in Ashrafiya and Sheikh Maqsood, the two Kurdish majority neighborhoods in Aleppo where I stood.
- [29:54]
C
It seemed like the Syrian government's campaign in those Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo was very professionally done, like they'd planned it in advance. This wasn't just a kind of knee jerk sort of action. They carried out their campaign against the SDF aligned fighters in those neighborhoods with great professionalism. Am I right about this? That.
- [30:14]
B
Yeah. I think many, including myself, have pointed out that the military operations that we've seen in recent weeks is, is more akin to the liberation battle that overthrew Assad in some ways where it was very professional. There was limited civilian casualties and there was clearly some planning going ahead. I mean, the Syrian government reactivated their emergency committee, which goes back to the HTS days, which they originally created during the COVID pandemic. Then they used that to help out with the earthquake in northwest Syria, which also happened in southern Turkey a few years ago. And then they also did that during the liberation battle. And part of it was to create humanitarian corridors for civilians to get out. But also that once the military was able to clear areas, they would then bring in the Interior Ministry so that it would be more police forces instead of military, but then also bringing in civilian leadership to make sure that the bread was still running, running, electricity and water would continue. And then once they assessed that security wise it was okay, they would then allow the IDPs that had left during the fighting to return. And we saw that with the neighborhoods in Aleppo within a few days of them, then moving on to the Deirhofer Front where the same process that happened, and we've seen this continue in now into Raqqa, eastern Deir EZ Zor and now southern Hasakah, where they have this very sequence sequenced plan going from the military level down then to the internal security, more police level to then the civilian governance level to make sure that they're not Creating sort of a military regime in these spaces and that civilian life goes back to normal. And in most of these places now that are not at the front lines of where things are between the government and the sdf, in pretty much all these places, civilian life is, is back to normal. Of course, there's a ton of challenges now that the government has to deal with the services of these places that they didn't have control of previously. You know, making sure there's resources and capacity and bringing people on board and co opting networks that had previously been providing governance in those spaces under the sdf. You know, it's a huge challenge, just like it was when they first took over most of Syrian territory from the Assad regime. But based off of what we've seen over the last year, it's not something I don't think that they would be able to handle. It's just in an early process of that shift.
- [32:27]
C
You mentioned the Sunni tribes, the Sunni tribes of the Trans Euphrates areas. We now know that behind the scenes, and probably for a long time, Shah's people were reaching out to these tribal elements, mainly Sunni tribal elements, trying to get them to switch their allegiance away from the SDF and to the government. And this is, you know, very important dimension of everything going on in Syria. It's linked to the problem of sporadic intersectarian violence as well. Because often it is these tribal elements that are behind intersectarian violence. I mean, back in September, Shara created the Bureau of Tribes and Clans, an attempt to rein in the propensity of Sunni tribesmen to undermine the post civil war order that the President was struggling to create. And you know, a lot of Sunni tribes remained allied to the Assad regime almost to the very end, only switching to the revolution just before Assad fell. This alone has created tensions between these latecomers and the Sunni tribes that had revolted earlier. It is usually these tribal elements, lots of whom were particularly vulnerable to recruitment to ISIS and Al Qaeda and other jihadist movements during the civil war. These elements are often the instigators of intercommunal or sectarian violence against Alawites, against Shia, against Druze, sometimes against Christians, though less so. This new Bureau of Tribes and Clans was meant to mediate between them to neutralize any threat to Syrian stability. And it's linked to the conflict with the SDF as well, because as you said before, the SDF includes or did include Sunni tribes on the other side of the Euphrates. And it was Sunni tribes in those areas who sometimes allied with isis. So, Aaron, do you think it was this bureau or people attached to it who were in talks with Sunni tribes allied to the SDF and convinced them to switch?
- [34:25]
B
Yeah, definitely. I mean, this office that Shara created has been really important. Part of it, I think, is that they recognize that they didn't have command and control of a lot of these tribes and clans. The aftermath of some of them being involved in the massacres against the Alawites and Druze earlier last year and trying to rein them in, bring them into sort of the official structures of the state, such as the Ministry of Defense or Ministry of Interior or even. And potentially demobilizing people and saying that we're the state, you need to follow what we're doing. You can't just freelance. This isn't a civil war anymore. And it's interesting, there's this British Syrian academic, Han Du Khan, who wrote this excellent book about the history of tribes in Syria in the modern era. Essentially, his thesis was that whenever the state is really weakened, the tribes are able to extract more power, but then once the state gets stronger, it's able to kind of discipline the traction tribes and use them for whatever purpose that they're trying to do or make sure that they're not causing any trouble. I think that after what happened in Suede, in particular with the Bedouin, Damascus recognized that they really need to get this under control, otherwise they're going to lose everything. Because I'm sure many people remember the statements coming out of the US and West in general sort of being like, maybe this wasn't a good idea to back Shara and this new government. Government, they clearly can't control what's going on. There's all this sectarian letting. And so Shara appointed this guy named Jihad Isa Al Sheikh to head this office and be a senior advisor for Shar on these issues. They go back all the way to 2012 during the Jabba Tul Nusra days. They actually had a little falling out, honestly, in July 2023 through parts of 2024. But they were able to reconcile, especially in the aftermath of the Assad regime falling, since they were realized that they needed each other. And since September, when this office was created, Jihad has been doing meetings and engagements with tribes, clans, Bedouins throughout the country. In the north, near the coast, in the south, in Dara and Sua in the east, Indira Zor to try and get them all on board with what the government was doing. But also I imagine that it was part of the process of negotiating with them. If and when there was some operation in the east and northeast of Syria, Syria, they would essentially declare that they are now on the side of the government, because in many ways then that would limit civilian casualties, too. And as we've seen over the last few weeks, while people have died, of course, in the fighting, most of it has been people in the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, the government, as well as from the SDF themselves, and not civilians, even though there are, of course, civilian deaths. But it's been relatively limited because the tribes just decided to pick up the Syrian government flag, essentially, and push out the sort of cadre of the SD and tell them to leave their checkpoints and go back to more of the Kurdish majority areas. And as a consequence, now they are able to flip this territory relatively quickly and easily. At the same time as they have gone farther north into sort of the core areas close to where the Kurds live, mainly there still is the concern that the state won't be able to control them. Many of them have grievances for the way that the SDF and the autonomous administration treated a lot of people in these Arab majority areas over the last 10 years, since there's such a difference in worldview where the SDF autonomous administration, ypg, is very Marxist, secular, open to women in life, in a way that many of these tribes are more religious and conservative. And so there was always tensions, especially when they're trying to force some of these educational reforms into these areas, where for them it seemed totally foreign. And so there is this worry about revenge now. And I think that's one of the reasons why the US has tried to reiterate to Syria with this call between Trump and Shara. But, you know, it hasn't really been talked about publicly. But there are also a number of calls between Vance and Shara, too, to reiterate. Don't go into these majority areas. Make sure that you guys are actually controlling the front line. Otherwise we could see a repeat of what happened on the coast and ensued with the Aloits and Druze. But now to the Kurds, thankfully, we haven't seen anything along those lines yet, but is, of course, a legitimate and serious concern, and hopefully, hopefully, nothing does happen.
- [38:41]
C
Well, having laid foundations among the tribes of the east, the government forces began to advance in a big way on Saturday, last Saturday, the 17th of January, and just over 24 hours later, the SDF had agreed to an immediate ceasefire on all fronts, having withdrawn its forces from the Deir Ezor Governorate, a huge chunk of land on the other side of the Euphrates stretching to the Iraqi border. Meanwhile, in Araka, so that's to the north of Deir ez Zor, fighting was ongoing. But by the 19th, so that's Monday, the government had captured vital oil and gas infrastructure, those important hydroelectric dams, while talks between the SDF and Shara again collapsed. And initially there was a sort of flush of, wow, this is amazing. It's like some velvet conquest has occurred. It's going to be great, great. But then end of Monday into Tuesday, people started to get worried. The SDF called for full scale mobilization in the Kurdish majority areas that they still controlled in Hasakah, in the far northeast, and around the city of Kobani, at which point it seems Sunni tribal elements in Hasakah province began fighting SDF fighters. In the meantime, ISIS prisons, ISIS detention camps, other prisons were handed over over, or were broken out of, or were being fought over. There was a lot of conflicting news coming out. Political prisoners held by the SDF were being released. It seemed some of these were women and children. On the one hand, it seemed very nice and easy, you know, smooth. But there were pockets of weirdness. What actually do you think was. Was happening?
- [40:19]
B
There was definitely a lot of disinformation, but, you know, the SDF or core of the YPG was trying to hold on to as much as they could because I think they realized that the game was up in some ways. And the thing too, which wasn't helpful was that they were not just calling for a general mobilization of Syrian Kurds, but Kurds globally as well as anybody that wanted to support them. It's important to remember that during the fight against isis, there were a number of foreign fighters that actually joined the YPG from Western countries as well. Interestingly too, we saw a shift in the message messaging, which was much more blunt and less trying to talk to a western audience, in many ways honoring life and dying, a death worth living and martyrdom, and things along those lines, as well as messaging that was mostly Kurdish, whereas in the past a lot of it was in Arabic and English to try and, you know, more outward facing towards the west and things along those lines. So it's kind of interesting to see that messaging shift more going back to maybe how one one would perceive messaging from hardcore type of ypg, PKK types. It's important to note that the US in the background has been trying to facilitate negotiations on shifting the ownership of the detention facilities from the SDF to the government, especially the ones related to isis, to do it in a manner so that Nobody was left out. But in one of these cases in Shadadi, and you know, it's hard to know know exactly what happened, but at least 120 individuals got out of that prison that were ISIS members. It's believed that there are around 800 ISIS members that were imprisoned, so not all of them. Some claim it was tribal related forces. Some blame the SDF for letting them out because they're just being sore losers or something along those lines. There could have also been a fog of war situation where people on the ground don't know the difference between a prison that is one for political prisoners versus one that is for a prisoner related to isis. You know, I imagine these tribal guys don't have that intelligence and the US is scrambling a lot in the background and it's so fast moving. But either way, within a day the Syrian Ministry of Interior announced that they actually found 81 of the 120 or so of the people and rearrested them and put them back in prison at the same time. 40 ISIS operatives out in the loose is not great. And that's just one potential case. And then you also have, you know, there are a lot of reports that the science SDF left the Al Hol camp, which is the IDP camp that held the women and children associated with ISIS. At its peak it had around 72,000 people. Now it's more, probably closer to 20,000 people. So it's become more manageable. But still, obviously when we're thinking about the Islamic State as a state project and not just as an insurgency and terrorism campaign, they obviously provided an important impetus for that generational project. But based off of discussions I've had with folks in the US government, government, the Syrian government's actually secured the all whole camp with the global coalition. And as of today at least, we already are now seeing UNHCR going in to check up on things. And I think some contractors that have been working on the services within the camp, such as Blumont, will be returning back to the camp again tomorrow as well. And so I think there was a lot of worries about how this might all go down and the potential for people to be broken out out. So far it's not been perfect, as I mentioned, with the Shadati prison, but it's probably better than many would have expected. And the thing too is that in the areas that the sdf, YPG still control, in the Kurdish majority areas, that's where I think a majority of the detention facilities were. The ISIS guys still are. And so they're still secured on some level. But again, the question will be on negotiating how that all plays out now between Damascus, Damascus, the sdf, the us because it is complicated. Essentially, the SDF is negotiating themselves out of power on some levels after having this glorious project from their perspective, where they finally created this autonomous administration since 2014, providing for Kurds, but also from their perspective, other communities too, in a way that lived up to maybe how they viewed their ideology. And now it's all crumbled in a couple of weeks.
- [44:36]
C
So what's going to happen then? Eamonn is pretty negative in the sense that. Or pessimistic, I should say. He thinks that the PKK element within the YPG is just going to double down. He foresees terrorist attacks against Syrian government assets, agents, people, maybe civilians, as the PKK reverts to type. They're not going to give up their dream. You know, it's important to remind everyone that the PKK and that form of Kurdish nationalist politics does not define all Kurdish politics. The form of Kurdish politics that dominates in northern Iraq around the Barzani family, they are opposed to the pkk. They support President Shara's basic ambition for a unified Syria. So it's not like the PKK determines what all Kurds think politically, but they are, you know, they're tough. Already I see flooding social media and flooding the news this idea that once again the US has stabbed the Kurds in the back back, abandoned the Kurds, we must rally round and, you know, that same narrative that Kurds of that nationalist type return to again and again. It doesn't seem accurate to me that they've been abandoned or betrayed. So I don't know. What do you think is gonna happen? Are you pessimistic? Are you optimistic?
- [45:46]
B
I definitely worry about sort of a remnant PKK insurgency or terrorism campaign now for sure. I mean, we saw this from the regime remnants when Assad fell, and we're still seeing it on the coast of coast. And so it's definitely a possibility. And I think it's important to broaden the aperture, too, to the context of the peace agreement between Turkey and the PKK as well. This was their last best hope for trying to do something. So I don't think they're going to give up on it when they've been trying to accomplish these goals going back four or five decades now, and the territory has been cut to size on some level. I do agree that it's not accurate that they. That the US abandoned Kurds. If that was the case, Trump and Officials would not be leaning on Damascus to make sure they don't go into the Kurdish majority areas because they don't want there to be a massacre. It's important to remember that the areas that Damascus has taken over are pretty much all Arab. But for the most part, obviously there's some small, like Syriac, other Christian populations, Yazidi, but mostly these are Arab locales. One of the interesting things is that as SDF had always argued that, look, we're not just Kurdish, like two thirds of the SDF was Arab to try and show that this wasn't a Kurdish project in and of itself, even if the leadership was Kurdish, the fact that the Arab tribes switched sides shows that what's been going on doesn't really have to do with Kurds per se. It's more just a political fight. And as you said, the PKK YPG are what, whatever, they don't necessarily represent all Kurds. Many Kurds that had previously been displaced from Afrin, a Kurdish area in northwest Syria, many of them had been stuck in SDF territory over the last year, wanting to return home to, say, Afrin. But the SDF wouldn't allow them to because it would undermine their messaging that this was a paradise for all Kurds, essentially. Whereas now that the government has taken over some of these areas, people displaced from Afrin are actually starting to return home now after being displaced there originally by the Turkish invasion with the Syrian national army during the civil war. And so it's a bit more complicated and there's intra Kurdish political dynamics that we're not even getting into. But I think it's a bit more complicated than some like to make it out to be.
- [48:04]
C
Well, you know, Syria, it's the gift that keeps on giving in terms of keeping us biting our nails. What is going to happen next?
- [48:12]
B
Next?
- [48:12]
C
It seems that President Shara has achieved a tremendous victory. He's extended the sway of his government now much further to the east, slowly, slowly reconstituting the borders of Syria as they once were. You know, I don't know, more power to him. We all hope that Syria is a place where people can thrive and where justice reigns and where prosperity grows. That's what we would all like. And slowly but surely, hopefully that's where we'll get. But there are a lot of threats, a lot of threats down the line.
- [48:42]
B
Yeah. I mean, beyond just the potential that there could be an insurgency or possible terrorism campaign from PKK remnants, there's obviously the threat from the former regime, folks that we've talked about here. And in past podcasts, there's still the issue of isis. And as we noted during the podcast, they're the strongest in the northeast. So I suspect that, that we could see in a possible vacuum within these territories that ISIS will be able to take advantage, at least in the coming months as the Syrian government tries to build up its assets there. We haven't obviously gotten into any of the issues surrounding Hekmat Al Hijri and his Druze militia that have been running Sueda since the massacre. But because of what has happened in recent weeks, there will be no doubt a perception in Israel too, that Turkey has strengthened its hands as well. Well, even if this has all primarily been done from the Syrian government side, and therefore there might be a focus back on the south again in relation to the issue of the Druze and Sweda as well as Israel's position, obviously there was those negotiations in Paris a few weeks ago between Syria and Israel, but maybe it'll be more contested again. Even though there seemed to be positive momentum at least a few weeks ago because of this change situation, the Israelis might dig in more now because they feel that they have less cards to play since many thoughts thought that they could have potentially been working with the Kurds as well. And so while maybe this has been resolved in terms of the Arab majority areas and the places the SDF had previously controlled, all these other security challenges will continue. And the possibility that there are more issues with Israel could also possibly arise in the future.
- [50:23]
C
Well, as you know, Aaron, last week when we recorded an episode which will never see the light of day, we take talked about a lot of these issues in much more detail. And if, dear listeners, you have subscribed to the conflicted community, at the end of this episode, after the credits stay on, stay listening because you'll hear some of the best bits from last week's recording with Aaron. We talked about Hijri, we talked about Israel, we talked about Lebanon asset regime loyalists in Lebanon, we talked about the Captagon trade, we talked about lots of stuff. It would be a shame if it wasn't heard by anybody. So we're saving that for our subscribers. If you want to hear it, you better subscribe for now. Aaron, thank you so much for giving us another hour of your very valuable time sharing your expertise with us on Syria. It's a country we all care a lot about. So thank you very much.
- [51:09]
B
Yeah, it's been a pleasure as always, and I'm sure we'll all be talking again soon in a few months of something else. That we have no idea. That's yet to happen.
- [51:17]
C
So I'm absolutely certain. Take care, man.
- [51:19]
B
All right, have a good one.
- [51:21]
C
That was Aaron Zachary, a great expert on Syria and a good friend of the show. If you'd like to follow him, you'll find links in the show notes. And remember, for deeper dives into the ideas we explore on this show, including extended conversations and Q&As with my CO host, Eamon Dean. Check the show notes for details on how to join the conflicted community. I'm Thomas Small. Conflicted is a Message Heard Production Our executive producers are Jake Warren and Max Warren. This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.