Beirut: The commander of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia has said the involvement of big powers in Syria means its civil war could continue for 10 years.
Sipan Hemo, whose group has ousted Daesh from swathes of the northeast this year, was speaking to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Tuesday, the day before Russia launched its first air strikes inside Syria, the monitoring group said on Thursday.
Russia had already alarmed western powers with a military build-up to prop up its ally, President Bashar Al Assad, as the United States leads its own aerial campaign against the Islamist militants in Syria and Iraq, in some cases giving the YPG air support.
“The solution is now out of the hands of Syrians,” Hemo told the Observatory.
“What is happening now can be called a clash of the titans on Syrian land ... a war of changing maps,” he said. “It looks like a third world war, where great powers fight to divide areas of influence ... Unfortunately, we see this as a long war that could last 10 years.” Some 250,000 people have been killed in 4-1/2 years of conflict in Syria, and more than 11 million driven from their homes.
