\n<\/p>\n
Clashes between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria\u2019s second-largest city, Aleppo, did not come in a vacuum.<\/p>\n
Tensions between the two sides have been high as an end-of-year deadline to incorporate the SDF into the Syrian armed forces approaches.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The fighting erupted on Monday afternoon during a visit by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan but had ended by that evening after the two sides agreed to halt firing.<\/p>\n Analysts told Al Jazeera that the SDF, led by military leader Mazloum Abdi (also known as Mazloum Kobani) and the Syrian government, have seemingly reached an impasse on how to integrate the Kurdish fighters into the new state military structure and that a failure to find a serious deal could lead to renewed bouts of fighting or military confrontation between the two sides.<\/p>\n \u201cThe red lines of the [Kurdish] self-administration on one hand, and Turkiye\/Damascus on the other, do present some striking incompatibility, and I do not see a way that the two can be reconciled,\u201d Thomas McGee, the Max Weber Fellow specialising on Syria at the European University Institute in Florence, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On March 10, the new Syrian government in Damascus, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, and the SDF signed a historic agreement that planned to integrate the latter group into Syria\u2019s new armed forces by the end of 2025.<\/p>\n The SDF is largely made up of members of the People\u2019s Defense Units (YPG), the military wing of the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK). The PKK is labelled a \u201cterrorist\u201d organisation by the United States, the European Union and Turkiye.<\/p>\n The agreement was seen as a means of avoiding a potentially explosive confrontation between Damascus and the US-trained SDF. However, 10 months on, while the agreement has helped the two sides avoid clashes, little progress has been made.<\/p>\n \u201dFor there to be any progress on implementing this point, one side would have to give way \u2026 as such, the status quo prevails,\u201d McGee added.<\/p>\n A point of contention seems to be between the SDF\u2019s preferred position of incorporating their existing battalions into the Syrian armed forces with a degree of autonomy, versus Damascus\u2019s preferred position of the individual integration of SDF fighters.<\/p>\n Analysts told Al Jazeera that these two positions were likely untenable and that an agreement didn\u2019t seem imminent.<\/p>\n Turkiye has backed Damascus and even threatened unilateral military intervention should an agreement not be reached.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just hope that things go through dialogue, negotiations and peacefully. We don\u2019t want to see any need to resort to military means again. But SDF should understand the patience of the relevant actors is running out,\u201d Turkish Foreign Minister Fidan told Turkish state media.<\/p>\n After a decades-long armed rebellion by the PKK, Turkiye has reached a deal with the group to disarm and lay down its weapons. Despite Fidan\u2019s strong words, analysts said it is unlikely it would want to undermine those talks by militarily confronting the SDF.<\/p>\n On December 8, the more than five-decade rule of the Assad regime ended, allowing millions of Syrians to return to their country amid hopes for a better future. This was particularly true in areas controlled by the SDF during Syria\u2019s civil war; under Bashar al-Assad, Kurdish rights were restricted and many Kurds said they were treated as second-class citizens.<\/p>\n But during Syria\u2019s revolution and the subsequent almost 14 years of civil war, the SDF controlled areas in the northeast \u2013 at times by force and against the will of Arab inhabitants \u2013 and was able to build a level of autonomy. Analysts said the group is hesitant to relinquish that power.<\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of Kurdish self-defence and ability of Kurds to make own decisions, they think they\u2019ve now achieved something which they\u2019ve never had before, and don\u2019t want to give it up,\u201d Robin Yassin-Kassab, a Syrian writer and co-author of the book Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said on Monday that the SDF \u201dshowed no willingness\u201d to integrate into the country\u2019s central administration in Damascus.<\/p>\n Yet analysts say there is a deep mistrust between Damascus and the SDF and that the government could have taken some steps to build confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government has failed to take advantage of certain opportunities to show good faith in implementing the agreement from its side,\u201d McGee said.<\/p>\n He added that the government could have taken steps such as recognising Newroz as a national holiday or acknowledging the rife Kurdish statelessness that occurred under the Assad regime.<\/p>\n \u201cAlso, during my recent visit to Hasakah, many locals were commenting on the fact that services [such as civil documentation] that had been available to them through the Security Squares of Qamishli and Hasakah under the Assad regime are no longer in place since December last year,\u201d McGee said.<\/p>\n Syria\u2019s new administration has gained substantial international and regional backing, and that could have built its confidence in its dealings with the SDF.<\/p>\n The US, in particular, has grown closer to Damascus in recent months, with al-Sharaa making a historic visit to the White House and seemingly winning the approval of US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n The US also trained and armed the SDF in its fight against ISIL (ISIS). But Trump\u2019s special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, has said the US supports the SDF integrating into the Syrian state and that it would not like to see the SDF breaking away to form an autonomous entity or even a semi-autonomous region like Iraqi Kurdistan. Barrack also praised the \u201dreasonable options\u201d presented by the government to the SDF.<\/p>\n \u201cThe US want the SDF to integrate into the new Syrian transitional government but don\u2019t want the SDF \u2013 Damascus to descend into conflict because it will create more opportunities for ISIL to pop up in vacuums,\u201d Wladimir van Wilgenburg, an analyst of Kurdish politics based in Erbil, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n On Friday, Reuters news agency reported that Damascus \u201cexpressed openness to the SDF reorganising its roughly 50,000 fighters into three main divisions and smaller brigades as long as it cedes some chains of command and opens its territory to other Syrian army units\u201d.<\/p>\n However, officials also told Reuters a deal didn\u2019t appear to be imminent and more talks were needed.<\/p>\n Still, analysts said the March 10 deal signed by al-Sharaa and Abdi in Damascus did have a positive impact in limiting clashes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is notable that there has been extremely little direct conflict between the Syrian government and self -administration since the signing of the agreement, indicating that at least the provision relating to the \u2018ceasefire\u2019 has broadly held,\u201d McGee said. \u201cOther provisions have clearly, however, seen little progress.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s still unclear how Monday\u2019s clashes may affect the deal, and analysts say the prospect of SDF fighters integrating into government forces before the end of 2025 is unlikely.<\/p>\n \u201cThe deadline is approaching fast but some officials say it\u2019s more important to implement the agreement than focus on the deadline, so there could be an extension,\u201d van Wilgenburg said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Clashes between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria\u2019s second-largest city, Aleppo, did not come in a vacuum. Tensions between the two sides have been high as an end-of-year deadline to incorporate the SDF into the Syrian armed forces approaches. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list The fighting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Negotiations<\/h2>\n
Kurdish self-administration<\/h2>\n
Little progress<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"