Fighting erupted between the Kurdish SDF and the Syrian Army today in the Aleppo Governorate, with the battle centering around a checkpoint in the town of Deir Hafer. At least seven people were killed in the course of the fighting, six of them civilians. A number of civilians were also reported wounded, though the number varies with conflicting reports right now.
One Syrian soldier was reported killed and another three wounded. As is so often the case with conflicts between these two factions, both sides are trading blame over who started the fight, as well as who caused the civilian casualties.
The Army’s narrative is that the Kurds attacked the military checkpoint with drones, then the Kurds also indiscriminately attacked a Kurdish-majority area within Deir Hafer for some unclear reason with artillery and sniper fire. The SDF, however, maintains that the Army attacked them first, in the Kurdish-majority neighborhood, and shelled the residential neighborhood in the course of the fighting. They maintained that the Kurdish attacks on the checkpoint were “legitimate defense of civilian lives.”
The SDF has a tentative agreement to integrate into the military, but the negotiations keep hitting impasses, and the fact that the two sides keep getting into open conflict suggests that an actual final deal is likely still a long way off.
The autonomous Kurdish government within the northeast issued a statement condemning the attacks on the Kurdish neighborhoods in Deir Hafer, accusing military-aligned forces of “a blatant violation of all humanitarian laws and norms.” They added that the incident shows a “lack of seriousness” about the central government’s promises of unity.
Turkey, which is allied with the central government and loudly opposed to the idea of Kurdish autonomy anywhere within the region, was quick to issue a statement accusing the SDF of “terrorism” and demanding that they unconditionally surrender all their weapons to the central government.
This is largely in keeping with past Turkish statements, which view the Kurds as virtually definitionally terrorists, and expressed disquiet at the idea of the Syrian military integrating them in the first place. Turkey has been quick to declare the process a failure every time these fights unfold.
This has led to some allegations that the process is being undermined by parties seeking to avoid the integration deal by sparking conflict. The difficulty is that there are opponents of integration on both sides, meaning any number of potential culprits for these persistent clashes.
