With the Syrian city of Aleppo now mostly in rebel hands following a surprise offensive, the danger emerges that Kurdish forces could be drawn into the conflict on the side of Assad dictatorship. Kurdish militias have for years controlled their own enclave within the city, the neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are now trying to open an evacuation corridor between Sheikh Maqsood and the Kurdish-held town of Tal Rifaat to the north. An evacuation of Tal Rifaat itself to Kurdish-held areas to the east is also being prepared. This effort is being blocked by one of the rebel militias, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), with clashes between the two forces reported.
The SNA has been repeatedly implicated in abuses against the Kurdish population in areas it took from SDF-aligned forces in a 2019 offensive. This offensive drove the SDF into a tactical alliance with the Assad regime—although this alliance has repeatedly broken down over the regime’s rejection of the SDF’s principal demand of Kurdish autonomy. (Rudaw, Rudaw)
The other major pillar of the rebel alliance that has taken Aleppo, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has also been accused of ethnic cleansing of Kurds from territories under its control.
In a hopeful development, Hadi Albahra, president of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), Turkey-based political umbrella for the opposition, said in an interview with Kurdish news site Rudaw that the rights of Kurds should be respected in Aleppo. “We have learned from past mistakes and the events of the previous years, especially in the early stages of the revolution, and there has been great care taken not to repeat them in Aleppo against any Syrian citizen,” he said.
However, the SNC does not control forces on the ground, and the threat of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war in northern Syria clearly persists.
Map: Google
