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As Hayat Tahrir Al Sham establishes itself as the leading authority in post-Assad Damascus, Turkish-backed rebels have advanced across north-eastern Syria attempting to take territory controlled by US-backed Kurdish militias.
The advance illustrates the complexity of Syria’s array of opposition groups following more than 13 years of war, but also points to the future challenges of dividing control among them under new governance structures.
The Syrian National Army (SNA), affiliated to the Aleppo-based political opposition, launched an operation dubbed Dawn of Freedom three days after the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS)-led “Deter the Aggression” advance on November 27, which pushed south and east and reached Damascus on Sunday, prompting President Bashar Al Assad to flee to Russia.
The Turkish-backed rebels were advancing in the Sarrine area south of Kobani city on Tuesday afternoon, a senior SNA commander told The National. Fighters handed over control of Manbij to police after ousting the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the city in recent days.
Fighters could continue to the city of Raqqa, a stronghold of ISIS that fell to the SDF in 2017, and to Deir Ezzor near the border with Iraq. Protests broke out in Deir Ezzor on Monday to demand that the SDF withdraw and allow opposition factions to enter.
The SNA operation aims to take back territory in north-eastern Syria from the YPG Kurdish militant group, which leads the SDF in the area. The YPG is tightly linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a separatist group that has fought a 40-year insurgency against the Turkish state to the north.
“Our goal is just to end the separatist project,” the senior SNA commander said. “The PKK is trading on the Kurdish issue.”
Turkey, and the rebels it backs, see the YPG as a terrorist organisation that wants to divide Syria. The YPG says it is fighting for Kurdish rights, and is the main fighting force for an autonomously-administered Kurdish-majority area in north-eastern Syria initiated in 2013.
The Syrian National Army accuses them of carrying out attacks in territory under their control. Some SNA brigades also stand accused of serious human rights violations against Kurds.
While SNA brigades also participated in the HTS-led operation, they played a smaller role than other groups. In Dawn of Freedom, they are the leading force, and the operation is in part, analysts say, aimed at seizing territory in areas outside of HTS control. In negotiations over who controls what in a future Syria, greater territorial control will give the SNA more leverage.
“This gives the SNA more to bargain with when it comes to its rivalry with HTS, to the detriment of the SDF,” Alexander McKeever, a researcher who writes the This Week in Northern Syria blog. The SNA has a complex composition, with multiple brigades uniting to form alliances within its structure, and it is not always obvious which brigades are operating where.
From his analysis of the operation's social media account, Mr McKeever said that the main SNA actors in Dawn of Freedom are the Hamza and Al Sultan Suleiman Shah divisions, two factions with long ties to Turkey, and the Liberation and Construction Movement, an alliance led by the Gathering of Free Men of the East, largely comprised of fighters from eastern Syria.
The push to control territory points to the wider issue of reaching agreement among Syria’s myriad opposition groups over who controls what, and how. Kurdish politicians have said that they are open to talks with HTS, whereas the SNA and the SDF coming to an agreement over governance and control would hinge on a wider PKK-Turkey peace deal – an extremely hard ask.
The senior SNA commander said there needed to be “a new door opened to form a new army” for the whole of Syria, perhaps with the participation of an as-yet-unspecified second country responsible for training, and the temporary preservation of some military structures in a transitionary phase.
“The current forces would dissolve themselves into the new force,” he told The National, on condition of anonymity. “Bashar Al Assad was the most recent reason for the divisions between Syrians. He is gone, and so now we need to sit down at the table and form our state.”
The new Syrian army would have to include members of all the country’s ethnicities and sects, he added. “There would be a process for military selection of the units, so that we can form battalions, brigades and squads – an army.”
The commander acknowledged that there had been past conflicts between HTS and the SNA, which for years have controlled neighbouring pockets of territory in opposition-held north-western Syria. He hoped HTS would carry through on pledges to dissolve itself and form a new governance structure that would serve all Syrians.
“The differences haven’t been completely resolved, but Syria’s interests demanded that we participate in the battle to liberate Syria, with the conviction that the HTS project is not suitable for Syria,” he said.
The risk of infighting between different factions is still high, according to Bente Scheller, head of the Middle East division at Heinrich Boll Stiftung, a German political foundation. “For HTS and the other members to agree on a new leadership, politically and militarily, that might be difficult. We will need to see how this process goes.”
Turkey, a key player in Syria, does not want the current Kurdish governance and security structure in the north-east to have a place in the country’s future. As well as deploying its own troops in Syria, Turkey has trained and armed the SNA because it also views the YPG and the SDF more widely as extensions of the PKK, and objects to them holding territory on its southern border.
Turkey frames operations in Syria as not against Kurds as a whole, but against those it accuses of separatist aims. Ankara describes the PKK and its affiliates as its number one national security issue, and blames militants trained in Syria for terror attacks on its soil.
“Ankara wants the YPG to lay down its weapons and give up its territorial claims,” Cagatay Cebe, a Turkish conflict researcher, told The National. “I believe that Turkey’s wish is not to solve this with arms, but to want the YPG to lay down its arms and end it without further conflict.”
One factor preventing the SNA and Turkey from advancing into Kurdish-held territory is the presence of about 900 US troops in north-eastern Syria supporting efforts to eradicate remaining ISIS cells. As Nato allies, Turkey and the US have little interest in direct conflict. Ankara is backing the Dawn of Freedom operation with drone strikes and has previously struck YPG sites in northern Syria.
The presence of at least 10,000 ISIS fighters in prisons guarded by the SDF is a major potential destabiliser. The SNA says it is willing to take over control of the prisons and ensure their stability, but how that plays out remains unclear, especially if the incoming Trump administration in Washington reduces the US presence in Syria. ISIS cells used the retreat of Assad forces to advance in the Syrian desert, indicating the threat they could pose if not contained.
US willingness to get involved is already limited, according to Mr McKeever. “As for the US potentially shielding the SDF from the SNA and Turkey, I think the US will only consider action in the areas where it's present, meaning most of Hasakah, and Deir Ezzor north of the Euphrates,” he said. “And perhaps only if it or the ISIS prisons and detention centres are directly threatened.”
