Damascus: On Monday, Syrian state television confirmed what unofficial sources have been whispering for three days: Regime troops will be entering Afrin, the highly contested Kurdish city lying west of the Euphrates River.
Initial reports claimed a deal has been hammered out by the Russians and the Turks, whereby Kurdish fighters will withdraw to their cities in the Syrian northeast, giving the Turkish government enough reason to stop its assault on Afrin, which has been going on since January 20, 2018.
Other reports claim the Turks will not back down that easily, and that Syrian regime troops will carry arms, shoulder-to-shoulder with the Kurds, against invading Turkish forces.
Speaking in Amman, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday: “If the regime is entering there to cleanse the PKK and PYD, then there are no problems.”
The PKK is the Kurdish group mounting an insurgency in Turkey. The PYD is an influential Syrian Kurdish political party.
But, he added: “If it comes in to defend the YPG, then nothing and nobody can stop us or Turkish soldiers.”
Technically, Damascus also regards the Kurdish fighters as “traitors.”
United Syria
YPG spokesman Nuri Mahmoud said: “Syrian soldiers haven’t yet arrived. We are calling on the Syrian army to protect Afrin because we’d love to preserve a united Syria.”
Government troops are expected to arrive in Afrin “within hours” he added, which shouldn’t be difficult given that the city is perched in the heart of Russia’s sphere of influence in Syria.
Hours before the Turkish operation started last month, a senior Kurdish delegation had privately visited Damascus, where it met with senior officials, requesting military support against the invading Turkish forces.
They offered to recognise “symbolic presence” of Syrian officialdom in Afrin, like raising a flag and opening schools, but insisted that Afrin would remain part of the “federal government of the Syrian north”, a project categorically refused by Turkey, Iran, and Syria.
The idea was to link the city of Afrin, administratively and politically, to Kurdish towns across the Euphrates, like Al Qamishli and Al Hassakeh, creating a Kurdish canton that could potentially transform into a Kurdish state.
A geographic linkage would be technically impossible, given that the Kurdish territories are separated by land and river, and there is no single city with a 100% Kurdish majority.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to never let that happen, however, sending troops into Syria in the summer of 2016, aimed at creating a buffer zone that keeps both Daesh and Kurdish fighters away from the Syrian border.
Buffer zone
Erdogan’s zone included the border cities of Jarablus and Azaz, and the inland city of Azaz. The Turkish president also hoped to annex the strategic town of Manbij, located 30km west of the Euphrates, to his Syrian safe zone.
A multi-ethnic city, Manbij was overrun by Daesh militants in early 2014.
Erdogan pleaded with both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump to give him the honour of liberating Manbij and Raqqa from Daesh rule, yet, to his dismay, both tasks were delegated to the US-backed nearly all-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Last week, in its 2019 budget, the Pentagon noted that $550 million had been set aside for the SDF, becoming the only Syrian militia still receiving steady US arms and funds.
All other training and arming operations by the CIA have been suspended by Trump since he came to power in January 2017. He sees the Kurds as vital allies in the war on terror — friends who ought to be embraced, empowered, and protected.
Hassan Hassan, a Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told Gulf News: “In this phase of the Syrian conflict, Damascus is simply reaping the benefits of the rise of “third forces” that we witnessed over the past few years, especially since 2014.
Foreign forces
Foreign forces are intervening in Syria to deal with such threats, whether it is Daesh, the YPG, or Al Nusra.”
He added: “The biggest beneficiary of these attempts at containing these forces is the regime” noting that it could not have benefited without the Russians, “who knew how to play all forces against each other to emerge as the one force redrawing the political and military map”.
During Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Ankara last weekend, it was agreed that Turkish troops would finally get to enter Manbij, where they would deploy side-by-side with US forces. The Kurds, who have been running the town for two years will retreat upwards, towards Kurdish territory east of the Euphrates. In exchange for getting a threshold in Manbij, Erdogan would back off on Afrin, and if Russia gets its way, in Idlib as well.
Prominent Kurdish writer Badirkhan Ali told Gulf News: “There are serious talks underway between the YPG leadership and the Syrian army, with unconfirmed reports that an agreement has been reached to deploy army and YPG troops against the Turkish aggression.”
The new agreement, he added, is along the following lines: Regime troops will deploy according to military necessity, along with the YPG. The Syrian regime’s army will defend Afrin from the skies, preventing Turkish warplanes from flying over it or attacking it.
He added that Turkey has been unable to march on Afrin, despite the non-stop bombing by the Turkish Air Force. There is a joint benefit in halting the Turkish onslaught, notes Ali, for both Damascus and the Kurds.
“Russia’s role will be crucial. We don’t know how long the Russians will stand idle or whether they will activate Syrian Air Defences against the Turkish warplanes.”
Others are speculating that Erdogan will be forced by the Russians to back off from Afrin and the northwestern city of Idlib, which his troops entered in late 2017, as part of the “de-conflict zones” agreement.
Steven Heydemann, a Middle East Studies professor at Smith College and Senior Fellow at Brookings noted: “The contours of a ‘final status deal for Idlib and northeast Syria have been visible for some time. The only equilibrium point at which the conflicting interests of actors converge, in my view, is an outcome in which the Al Assad regime’s sovereignty is recognised — which is consistent with Russian and Iranian interests, some measure of local authority for the PYD is acknowledged, and Turkish concerns about the irredentist ambitions of the PYD are addressed”.
Speaking to Gulf News, he added: “I can only speculate about the US role in this arrangement, but it seems likely to me that the recent trip by Secretary Tillerson to Turkey included some discussions of an end-state for Idlib, at least, and perhaps, the northeast more broadly.
"I see the recent news of agreement between the PYD and the Al Assad regime, and, potentially, between the US and Turkey, as logical steps in the implementation of an overall strategy along the lines I mentioned.”
