Fighting between the Syrian military and the Kurdish SDF continues with the government cracking down on perceived SDF loyalists and trying to consolidate gains from the recent offensives against them. Much has been said about the fighting, but less so about the people being displaced by it.
A new round of displacement started in the first week of January, with fighting over control of the Kurdish neighborhoods of Aleppo and their declaration as a “closed military zone.” As the fighting has spread, so has the difficulty for civilians living in north and northeast Syria.
The UN is now suggesting that over 170,000 civilians have been displaced by fighting in the Aleppo, Hasakeh and Raqqa Governorates. The displacement camps were established quickly but now dangerously overcrowded as more and more people retreat from tense areas where fighting either is ongoing or is liable to resume at any moment.
A UN aid convoy carries goods to Hasakeh | Image from SOHR
Recent reports suggest the fighting right now is confined to Hasakeh and the area around the Kurdish city of Kobane, in the far eastern part of Aleppo Governorate. Kobane is still under SDF control, still under siege, and many people have fled as the opportunity has presented itself.
Aid agencies are trying to step up the level of relief at the camps, but the overcrowding and is making it a challenge, and so is the weather. Harsh winter storms have done quite a bit of damage to some of the sites, with the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs saying over 1,700 tents were destroyed in one recent storm in Aleppo.
The northeast of Syria is getting so unstable even Russia is reportedly packing their bags and going home. Russia long held a military airport in Qmishli, an important city in Hasakeh. Though the area around the airport is still under SDF control in practice, the Russians have reportedly been moving what equipment they still had there out, and the SDF is now stationing their own guards at the base instead of Russian ones. Though Russia was still reported to have some presence left there, it seems to be minimal, and decreasing all the time.
That roughly mirrors the US military position in northeast Syria. Long aligned with the Kurdish SDF, the US last week announced they were cutting all military aid to the Kurds and while they seem to remain for now for the sake of transporting Kurdish-held detainees to Iraq, and there doesn’t seem to be a plan to remain in that part of Syria beyond that ongoing operation.
