Kurdish Forces, Caught in a New Ethnic Conflict, Face Existential Threat From Syrian Government

Mazloum watches the videos he wishes he could unsee. A young female Kurdish fighter’s body was thrown from a fourth-floor window. Men from Syria’s national forces jeer below. She was already dead, but that wasn’t enough to slake the bloodthirst.“We are very afraid for the Kurdish people,” Mazloum, a 39-year-old father and professional in Aleppo, tells the New York Sun, his voice steady but hollow with the weight of what he witnessed over five days last week.Mazloum speaks for a community that has learned to measure its survival in neighborhoods lost and alliances broken. His own neighborhood is gone now, swallowed in the latest round of fighting that has compressed Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria to a fraction of what it was just a week prior. The Kurdish-led militia, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, which has controlled swaths of the north since the battle against ISIS in 2019, now clings to a “small place,” as Mazloum puts it, as Turkish-backed forces with tacit acknowledgement from Damascus, press in from all sides.“All people are sad for that,” he says of the losses, “and they are afraid that what happened to Druze and Alawites will happen to them as well.”It’s a fear rooted in pattern recognition. Syria’s minorities have learned to read the signs of what comes next: displacement, sectarian violence, the erasure of communities that don’t fit the victor’s vision. Once more, Syria’s Kurds find themselves in the middle of a power struggle — caught among Syrian instability, shifting American priorities and attention, and Turkey’s desire to eliminate one of the world’s largest stateless ethnic groups. The pattern is especially bitter because it involves an ally they fought beside and an abandonment they’ve experienced before. The Kurds have been left asking why the partner they bled with against ISIS — the United States — is standing by as their neighborhoods fall to Syria’s national army. “People are criticizing SDF leadership and the U.S.,” Mazloum says, “that they allowed those forces to attack Kurdish people.”A Bloody AleppoOn Sunday, Syria’s government forces announced a ceasefire with the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces — its second of the weekend — after more than a week of fierce fighting. The agreement foresaw Syria retaking all of the previously autonomous Kurdish neighborhoods at Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, including the predominantly Kurdish districts of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh. The announcement, accompanied by fierce clashes on Monday that don’t bode well for a lasting resolution, was intended to resolve a conflict that emerged on January 6 after both sides failed to implement a March 2025 agreement to integrate Kurdish-led troops into Syria’s new state institutions, as envisioned by the country’s newest president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. What began as sporadic exchanges quickly escalated into a full-scale assault at Aleppo. The Syrian National Army declared the Kurdish neighborhoods “legitimate military targets” and launched a combined arms assault with tanks, artillery, and Turkish drone support. Artillery shelling struck the Othman Hospital at Sheikh Maqsoud on January 8, killing eight civilians and injuring nearly 60 others. Three major hospitals ceased operations. By week’s end, dozens of fighters had been killed and over 140,000 displaced. Syrian health authorities calculated at least 24 civilians killed and 129 wounded. Damascus now has complete control of Aleppo for the first time since the Kurds carved out its enclaves during the civil war years when Bashar al-Assad’s forces were fighting for survival. The Kurdish neighborhoods had operated as de facto autonomous zones since 2012, when Mr. Assad’s government pulled back forces to defend Damascus and other strategic areas. For more than a decade, the Kurds maintained their own security, administered their own affairs, and largely stayed out of the broader civil war — until now. The Bigger Picture The U.S. had supported that framework back when the Kurds were pivotal in helping the United States destroy the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate — losing more than 11,000 fighters in a brutal campaign that culminated in the liberation of Baghouz in March 2019.Then came Turkey. Turkey views Kurdish autonomy as a threat to Ankara’s fight against terrorism. Turkish officials have long pressed the Syrians to take action against the Kurdish forces, seeing their freelancing militia as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a terrorist-designated organization that Turkey has been fighting for nearly 50 years. For Turkey’s president, hardliner Tayyip Erdogan, Kurdish autonomous control of any part of Syria represents an unacceptable threat along Turkey’s southern border.Critically, Aleppo lies west of the Euphrates River, outside the informal understanding that had confined American aerial protection of Kurdish forces to eastern Syria — making it a strategically feasible target that aligns with Turkish interests without directly confronting American forces.Despite the Syrian Democratic Forces’ essential role against ISIS in the north, the precariousness of the Kurdish position became starkly apparent in October 2019, when President Trump in his first term ordered American forces to pull back from the Turkish border, effectively greenlighting a Turkish military operation that displaced more than 300,000 people. The episode shattered Kurdish confidence in America’s commitment. Though some American troops returned after the initial withdrawal in 2019 — the U.S. still stations roughly 900 American troops in Syria as a deterrent against novel threats — they are not there to guarantee long-term Kurdish security. A Christian Syrian reformist and defected Assad government adviser, Ayman Abdel Nour, says the presence of American soldiers is still pivotal.“Their numbers are small, but their presence is extremely important, not because they will fight, but because of their symbolic meaning. They are the U.S. Army, and that alone creates a powerful deterrent,” he tells the Sun.But the U.S. military presence should not be mistaken for a broader security guarantee. This reality leaves the Syrian Democratic Forces, which still control roughly a quarter of Syrian territory, including vital oil and agricultural resources in the northeast, facing ongoing territorial and strategic ambitions by Turkey and Assad ally Russia, as well as Syria’s national government. “There’s been no sign that the presence of U.S. troops has been seen as a guarantee of Kurdish security,” a Middle East expert, James Bowden, tells The New York Sun. “Current operations suggest that the relationship is entirely based on the mutual need for ISIS detainment and elimination but that it does not extend to long-term preservation.”Defense analyst John Wood is more blunt.“It is utterly disgusting,” he tells the Sun. “Erdogan sees an opportunity to crush the Kurds, and Trump seems okay with dumping them.” The ‘Peace President’For the new Syrian government, the latest fight for Aleppo represents more than a tactical victory; it is essential to establishing national sovereignty and achieving state unity in a post-Assad era. As Mr. Trump tries to bill himself as the peace president, America’s attention is currently preoccupied with several global flashpoints with varying degrees of heat. Having established close ties to Mr. al-Sharaa’s government, the Trump administration is now pushing the Kurds to implement the March 2025 plan, an arrangement that obliterates the possibility of enjoying the autonomy they hoped to maintain.“We want to see Syria succeed. And so far, I think they are succeeding, but this is just breaking out, and we want to see that stopped,” Mr. Trump told reporters on January 9. “The Kurds and the Syrian government, we get along with both, as you know very well. They have been natural enemies over the years, but we get along with both,” he added.Framing the American role as a mediator, the president’s envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, also met with Mr. al-Sharaa. He emerged to restate America’s support for a single, undivided Syria. “President Trump recognizes this moment as a pivotal opportunity for a new Syria — a unified nation in which all communities, including Arab, Kurdish, Druze, Christian, Alawite, Turkmen, Assyrian, and others, are treated with respect and dignity.”After the fragile ceasefire was announced on Sunday, Mr. Barrack praised the “two great Syrian leaders, driven by the shared vision of liberating their country and people from tyranny.” He called the agreement “a pivotal inflection point, where former adversaries embrace partnership over division.” For the Kurds, choice has little to do with it, says Mr. Bowden. “The Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian state are now at war with each other, and it appears that the end of the SDF and control of eastern Syria is likely going to happen by the summer.” “Syria is now seeking to implement sovereignty over all of Syria fully and to do so directly, not being mediated by various groups,” he tells the Sun. “I think that the integration experiment is over.”For the Kurds, the consequences are existential, adds Mr. Wood. “The Syrian government is in the process of evicting the last of the Kurds in Aleppo,” Mr. Wood tells the Sun. “Then, with the backing of Turkey, they will begin the process of eradicating the Kurds in the Jazira and pushing the Kurds in the Euphrates region into Iraq.”A Need That Still ExistsBeyond geopolitical maneuvering, the Syrian Democratic Forces are still managing a significant problem for the United States and the region — detention of ISIS fighters. The Kurds currently hold almost 10,000 suspected ISIS members in makeshift facilities, including about 2,000 foreign nationals from dozens of countries. Amid the ongoing skirmishes nearby the prison, several ISIS members have escaped.“Guarding these camps consumes a significant portion of SDF personnel and resources. Although this effort is funded through annual international grants, it remains a heavy burden on the SDF,” Mr. Nour says. Another 40,000 people, primarily women and children with family connections to ISIS members, are nearby in displacement camps like al-Hol, which human rights organizations describe as dire settlements that allow radicalization to fester.“Leaving these camps without proper protection, security, and oversight would be extremely dangerous. That is why the international community and the coalition must guarantee that security is not compromised by fighting between the SDF, the Syrian government, or Turkey,” adds Mr. Nour.Western governments have mostly refused to repatriate its citizens detained in these facilities, leaving the Kurdish forces to bear the cost and risk of long-term detention. In the meantime, ISIS sleeper cells are still operating in Syria’s desert regions, launching regular attacks. The impact is widely felt by the Kurdish forces. “Guarding these prisoners strains their manpower availability. It means that numerous men are unavailable for important operations in other locations,” Mr. Bowden says. “Without precise numbers of guards or prisoners, it is hard to develop that assessment further; however, more importantly, as the Syrian campaign against them progresses, the United States intelligence community should be closely monitoring whether there is a threat of prisoners breaking out due to reduced manpower.”On Monday, Senator Lindsey Graham warned Mr. al-Sharaa against letting the ISIS prisons go unchecked.“In the strongest terms possible, it is my core belief that America should defend the prisons in Syria that house the worst of the worst ISIS members. There are thousands of these lunatics in prisons, and if they get out, all hell will break loose. I’ve been saying this for years. To the Syrian government: be on notice that an ISIS jailbreak is a disaster for the U.S., Syria and the region,” he posted on X.For Turkey, the calculus now extends beyond Kurdish counterterrorism. Mr. Erdogan faces domestic political pressure to address the millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, and he has proposed resettling the Arabs in northern Syrian areas currently under Kurdish control — a demographic engineering project that Kurdish leaders view as an attempt to further displace Kurdish populations. Turkish-backed Syrian opposition groups already control a strip of northern territory previously populated by the Kurds. The predicament reflects a familiar pattern across the Middle East; the Kurds serve as effective partners against shared threats, then find themselves expendable when geopolitical winds shift. For America’s once-hallowed Kurdish partners in Syria, the question is not whether they will face abandonment, but how many times. “They have no real friends in the neighborhood,” says Mr. Wood.

Kurdish Forces, Caught in a New Ethnic Conflict, Face Existential Threat From Syrian Government

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