The Western-backed Syrian National Coalition (SNC) faction has announced that they are considering the nation’s Kurdish factions “hostile” to their ongoing rebellion against the Assad government.
The Kurdish blocs had mostly stayed out of the civil war until major incursions by al-Qaeda in recent months fueled the formation of Kurdish militias. Having secured considerable territory back from the Islamists, they have set up a temporary “autonomous government.”
PYD head Saleh Muslim again insisted that the new autonomous government is only “provisional” and will only last until the civil war is over, an effort to keep Kurdistan from being overrun by foreign factions.
The SNC’s declaration of the Kurds as “hostile” to them sets the stage for yet another potential battle, between secular rebels and Kurds, at a time when the civil war is getting increasingly complicated and each faction is finding more and more “enemies” to clash with, even as the original war seems stalemated.
