In the Syrian capital, Damascus, the new leader of the country has organized a National Unity Conference and welcomed foreign dignitaries while crowds gather in cafés, who pronounces freely in decades.
But 400 miles away in northeastern Syria, a region outside the control of the Damascus government, fighting that have been going on for years, are still furious. Drones buzzing over the head day and night while air strikes and artillery fire have forced thousands to flee their homes.
The fight there sets two opposing militias against each other by Kurdish-guided Syrian Democratic troops, supported by the United States, and a predominantly Syrian Arab Militie supported by Turkey. And the battle alone has been intensified since Islamic rebels at the beginning of December the old dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, drove.
There is a lot at stake in this conflict, including the ability of the new interim president, Ahmed al-Sharar, to unite the entire country, to control the many religious and ethnic armed groups and to keep the terrorist group of Islamic State under control, which has started to collect strength again in parts of Syria. Neighboring countries are concerned that instability of any number of factions could spill over their limits.
Also hanging in the balance is the fate of the Kurds of Syria, an ethnic minority that makes up around 10 percent of the population. Over the years, the Kurds have carved a Semi -Autoonome region in northeastern Syria.
One of the driving forces behind the fight in the northeast is the growing advantage of the Turkish government in relation to the Kurds, which Turkey regards both at home and in neighboring Syria, because some violent Kurdish factions have driven to a separate state.
At home, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey scored a victory last week when the leader of the PKK, the Kurdish separatist movement that has fought a decades of uprising against the Turkish state, called on his hunters to lay down their arms and dissolution. On Saturday, two days after the profession by the leader, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK explained a cease-fire in Turkey.
Turkey has also emerged in recent months with a greater influence in Syria because of the ties with the rebel group that Mr Al-Assad ignored.
The decisions of the PKK in the past week are reflective in northeastern Syria. Some hunters in the Syrian Democratic forces also have roots in the PKK, and Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish leader of the Syrian force, has been a close follower of Mr Ocalan’s ideology. But tackling the call from the PKK leader to disarm, he said: “It has nothing to do with the SDF”
The new government in Damascus puts pressure on Syrian democratic troops to disarm and merge a national military force, as it has required of any other armed group in the country. But so far the Syrian democratic troops have been cautious, for fear that this could threaten the autonomy of the Kurds in northeastern Syria.
Mr. Abdi has said that he wants his troops to be part of a new National Syrian army, but he also wants the power to retain his weapons and continue to operate in northeastern Syria.
However, Mr. Erdogan opposes any autonomy for the group. He recently referred To the Syrian Democratic troops such as ‘separatist murderers’, which suggests that they were related to the PKK and said they ‘had to say goodbye to their weapons or that they are buried with them’.
For the neighbors of Syria and many others in the international community, the care is that if the Kurds of Syria are housed in a national force, they may no longer be able to keep the Islamic State under control.
The Syrian democratic troops started fighting during the 13-year civil war of Syria when the Islamic State took over control over large parts of Syria and the neighboring Iraq. They gained crucial American military support – including weapons, financing and training – after they had proven that they were the most effective force on the ground in Syria when it came to fighting the Islamic State.
The more than 20 prisons in northeastern Syria also keeps the Islamic Staats hunters and nearby camps that contain around 40,000 family members of the Islamic state fighters.
“Syria is currently the most important issue,” says Hoshyar Zebari, a former Iraqi Foreign Minister and a KURD who remains close contact with many regional leaders. Mr Zebari said that the Kurdish issue, in particular with regard to keeping the Islamic State at a distance, was especially important because instability tends to spill in neighboring countries.
“We know that what is happening in Syria will not stop at the Syrian Iraqi limit,” Mr. Zebari said, and noted that the conflict was tipped in Iraq during the Syrian Civil War, with the Islamic State taking over from Northern Iraq. Millions of Syrian refugees and fled to neighboring countries and to Europe.
The pressure to connect both the new Syrian government and to defend Kurdish autonomy in Syria has brought Mr. Abdi to a heavy position. He could accept the new Syrian government in the hope that this would guarantee a certain degree of long -term security for Syrian Kurds. But he is also confronted with calls from some Kurdish factions to keep a semi-independent region.
In a briefing with reporters last week, Mr. Abdi ran a fine line. He said that the Kurds welcomed the new government in Damascus, but also made it clear that he was reluctant to dissolve his troops and, in particular, to hand over the fight against the Islamic State to a new and still not tested Syrian army.
“The SDF has a lot of experience in the fight against ISIS, and we have strong points to offer the new Syrian army,” he said.
It is also unclear whether Mr. Al-Shara The Turkish-supported militias can convince to stop attacking the Kurds.
Another big unknown is what the Trump government will decide on the involvement of the US in Syria. During President Trump’s first term, he tried to remove American troops from Syria, reducing the support for the Syrian Democratic forces and risked an opening for the Islamic State -hunters to regain the ground.
The Pentagon insisted to maintain a small American power in Syria to perform complex operations and to train and investigate Syrian democratic troops.
But now there is fear among residents of the northeast who supports support from many sides for the forces in Syria guided by Kurdish. Both Kurdish and Arab inhabitants of the area say they are tired of a conflict, but prospects for a peaceful resolution look remote.
Khokh, a 40-year-old who crossed the border of Syria to Iraq with her family, said that many of the worst fights far from their village, Deric, but that the buzz of Turkish security drones was constant in recent months. She asked to be identified by only her first name from taking care of her safety.
“We feel scared every day when we hear the sound of the drones and the planes, and sometimes my children don’t go outside for a week because we are afraid of even sending them to school,” she said. “My 11-year-old daughter doesn’t even go to the bathroom alone.”
Many do not trust that the new government in Damascus will be able to protect them against the Islamic State or respect their ethnic background. In the past, Kurds have had fewer rights than Arabs, and some have not received any citizenship.
“We don’t know what the new government will do with us,” said Sheikh Khalil Elgaida Elhilali, 75, the leader of a mixed trunk of Syrian Arabs and Kurds. “We want the war and fight to stop.”
For the Arab neighbors of Syria, the most urgent care is that the thousands of Islamic state hunters who are kept in Kurdish prisons in northeastern Syria remain under tight guard and that the vast camps are closely monitored for their families.
If even a small number of the 9,500 prisoners of the Islamic State – many of whom are hardened hunters – would break out of prison, this would pose a big threat.
The prisons “are time bombs,” said Mr. Zebari.
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