D is Power struggle for northeast Syria can no longer be postponed. The question is whether it will be fought militarily or diplomatically or with a mix of both, and whether the end result will be sustainable for both sides.
The central government in Damascus finally wants to expand its control over the entire country. The Kurdish-dominated SDF militias, on the other hand, want to maintain the self-government they have practiced there for years and continue to exist militarily as the protective force of the Syrian Kurds.
In recent days, announced ceasefires have alternated with renewed military actions. Damascus clearly wants to use the military momentum on its side to build diplomatic pressure. Syrian head of state Ahmed al-Sharaa is now faced with the question of how these military victories can be translated into political integration of the northeast and especially the Kurdish core areas.
He makes offers to the Kurds, promising them their cultural and linguistic identity as part of Syria’s national identity. But the crucial question is whether and how the SDF militias will be integrated into the Syrian security apparatus. As complete units, as the SDF has offered, or as individual soldiers and officers distributed among the existing Syrian units, as al-Sharaa demands.
The fear of minorities
On the one hand, this would enforce the state’s monopoly on the use of force. But on the other hand, the Kurds would lose their military protective power. The past bloody days have not made the solution to this question any easier. But everything stands or falls with her.
Among the non-Sunni, non-Arab minorities in Syrialike the Kurds, there is fear – also of the government troops, some of whom are recruited from the old Islamist networks of the former rebels against the deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Al-Sharaa would now have to prove that he is taking these fears seriously. This means that he would have to find a formula for bringing these areas under the control of the central government while at the same time granting them a kind of federal self-government. In doing so, he also inherits inherent problems in these areas, such as those where Kurds and Arab tribes live together.
The Syrian president currently has two advantages: his troops have the upper hand and the US supports a diplomatic solution in which the northeast is integrated into the rest of Syria. But the SDF militias have an important card in their hands: They can sabotage any development enough to make it unsustainable. In the end, the in-between can only be negotiated.