The US encouraged the Kurdish-led SDF to sign a deal with the new Syrian government led by the al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The leader of the SDF and Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), signed a deal for the SDF to be merged into the Syrian government and military on Monday.
The US-backed SDF controls northeast Syria, where about 2,000 US troops are deployed. The Trump administration has drawn up plans to withdraw from Syria, but a Pentagon official told Reuters that there was no sign that a pullout was imminent.
The signing of the deal came after a weekend of massacres of mainly Alawite civilians by HTS forces in northwest Syria. The Reuters report said the killings “nudged” the SDF deal along.
A senior regional intelligence source said the US played a very “crucial role” in getting the deal signed. The details of how exactly the SDF will merge with the HTS-led government still need to be worked out, but the agreement states that the Kurds will be able to have “constitutional rights.”
Sources told Reuters that they expected the deal to ease Turkish pressure on the Syrian Kurds, although the SDF continues to battle with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in northern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed the agreement in a statement on Tuesday.
“The full implementation of the agreement reached yesterday in Syria will contribute to the country’s security and stability. The beneficiaries of this will be all our Syrian brothers and sisters,” Erdogan said.
“We attach great importance to the territorial integrity of our neighbor Syria, the preservation of its unitary structure, and the strengthening of its unity and stability,” the Turkish leader added.
Turkey considers the SDF the Syrian wing of the PKK, which has been battling Ankara for decades. The PKK’s jailed leader recently called for the group to disarm, which was followed by the PKK announcing a ceasefire with Turkey. But Turkey has continued military operations against Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq.
"Encouraged" means "blackmailed".
Same for the Öcalan declaration from prison.
All this smells very bad but only time will tell what happens.
BTW, Abdi can't sign that: he's top general and NOT a democratic authority, the co-presidents of the AANES (to which SDF serves as military branch) are Ilhan Ehmed (woman, Kurdish) and Mansour Seloum (man, Arab). Also anything like that would have to go through the Syrian Democratic Council, which is the legislative body.
Abdi is overstepping his role and will almost certainly face a rebellion, because SDF are not a mere vertical "army": they are a popular militia.
Anything with a name “democratic” is suspect. SDF was from day one a proxy force. My question is — will YPG go along?
All of this realignment is suspect. In Turkey, PKK will not give up power. But PKK is Western funded, and for the time being PKK must derail Erdogan.
Tbis happened to Assad after Kurdish groups signed a deal with Damascus, promising territorial integration, recognized Syrian sovereignty, border control etc. it was all tactical.
It is repeating itself now in Turkey, and in Syria. However, HTS leader has no choice. Both HTS and SDF being Western funded for
decades now have to come together to consolidate the rule over Syria.
But still do not have enough people power _ their total ranks are low. But now HTS can legitimately be armed by US.
This deal must cone with HTS promise to grant Kurds autonomy that leads to statehood. Erdogan must know that .
These strange bedfellows otherwise make zero sense.
In absolute disagreement. Before SDF, it was YPG (people’s protection units, a self-defense community force against the Islamists) and then YPG-YPJ (the latter meaning women’s protection units, who proved the best asset, fighting to the very end where the men wanted to retreat, that’s how Kobane was won and resists to this very day). SDF was formed only when non-Kurds joined the Kurds, creating their own self-ruled communities and militias. Democratic only means “rule by the people” or “people’s power” and is used very disparagingly: some say that the USA is a democracy, others that North Korea is (official name Democratic Republic of Korea). I have my own opinion on the matter but it doesn’t matter much, what matters is that by fusing Leninism and Anarchism (and trascending both), the wider Kurdish+ revolutionary movement is commited to real democracy in both senses: political (Swiss style, approx.) and economic (Cuba style, roughly). They’re nobody’s “proxy” but their pact with the USA (only since the 2016 Obama U-turn on ISIS and Turkey) is of course very questionable: it may give them some protection against Turkey and its fascist proxies but it also delegitimizes them somewhat.
The former NSF became DAANES by that agreement with Assad’s Damascus. Why did it happen? Because even if they insulted each other almost all the time, they almost never fought each other and, at the moment of truth, which was the Afrin genocide (tolerated by Putin and Trump alike) only Damascus provided some help to the SDF. You could again say that they became a “proxy” of Assad but again that would be false: they are their own thing and have a unique system of democratic communism, so to say, that is a true beacon of hope for the whole world.
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Really…! Constitutional Right…! Similar to Alawites having Constitutional Deaths…!!!
It looks like it is time for the ritual screwing of the Kurds.