If you put aside the continued fighting in several parts of northern and eastern Syria, and the mounting humanitarian crisis among civilians displaced by the fighting, the ceasefire between the Syrian government and the Kurdish SDF is holding.
The tribal-backed offensive against the Kurds that has left the military in control of much of what was once Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous territory in Syria, was lauded by President Trump, who says he is “very happy” about what Syria has accomplished, and did not mention growing humanitarian concerns both in camps for the displaced and in the Kurdish majority city of Kobane.
Kobane doesn’t give the impression of a city in a ceasefire. Fuel and water shortages abound, and food is starting to get in short supply as the military continues a siege of the city. While aid has been allowed in through a corridor, intermittently, fighting rages on the outskirts and there is little sign of that abating, with Syrian state media predictably declaring it to be entirely a siege of the SDF’s own making, even though it’s a Kurdish city and one that they already controlled.
Syrian Red Crescent aid convoy arrives in Kobane | Image from SOHR
Locals who remained in Kobane, instead of fleeing to the overcrowded camps, report hearing the sounds of clashes on the outskirts, and the town’s recently blanketing with snow has only worsened access to the city by aid groups, compounding shortages.
Further to the east, the town of Çil Axa seems to be the other major location of fighting. Located in the far northeast of Syria’s easternmost Hasakeh Governorate, that town is seen as vital for the Kurds to maintain control of, given it’s along the highway connecting the region to Iraqi Kurdistan.
A small town of only about 6,600 during the last census, Çil Axa (called al-Jawadiyah in Arabic) was a mixed town with a slight Kurdish majority at the time, but has thrived since Kurdish forces seized control of the area from ISIS during the Syrian civil war, and locals now report a larger Kurdish majority.
In a move intended to calm the Kurdish alarm about the military conquest, the Syrian government has advanced a promise to guarantee citizenship for Kurds in Hasakeh Governorate, with the Interior Ministry ordering the annulment of the 1962 general census which branded many of the local Kurds as stateless “maktoom” people.
This announcement follows a pledge from President Sharaa 10 days ago to resolve the citizenship problem with the Hasakeh Kurds and assure them rights. President Bashar al-Assad effectively ordered the same thing in 2011, though implementation was spotty in practice, and many Kurds who have lived in Hasakeh their whole lives remain effectively without citizenship .
At the time of Sharaa’s announcement, the Kurds expressed disquiet about him following Assad’s tactic of trying to resolve the situation by unilateral decree and urged the matter to be resolved constitutionally, assuring that the problem actually will finally be fixed and that the Kurds won’t once again find themselves without any legal options if the government decides the promise is no longer worth keeping.
