The mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia has abandoned its outposts in the northern governorate of Aleppo after drone strikes killed at least one of its fighters in an escalation of hostilities with authorities in Damascus, sources said on Wednesday.
The violence happened two days after President Ahmad Al Shara, at a gathering in New York, spoke of war if the SDF does not disband. He suggested that neither Damascus nor Turkey would allow the militia to remain.
Mr Al Shara and SDF leader Mazloum Abdi signed a deal in March to integrate SDF areas in the new Syrian state. But it has not been realised, largely because of the SDF's resistance to disbanding, and regular hostilities have broken out between the two sides in the past two months.
A security source said hundreds of SDF fighters have spread outside their fixed positions after the drone attacks on Tuesday in the Deir Hafir area near the Euphrates river, on the eastern edges of Aleppo.
The attacks, the source said, originated from Peace Spring – the name of the Turkish zone of influence in northern Syria. It is manned by the Syrian National Army, a pro-Turkish militia that became part of the Syrian military this year.
The source said the authorities “sense that the Kurds are weak on this front because it is west of the Euphrates”. SDF forces are concentrated in areas east of the river, where there is a larger force of Kurds.
The US-backed SDF is the largest militia to remain outside the control of the state since the removal of former president Bashar Al Assad in December. Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a splinter group of Al Qaeda, now dissolved, took over power but the SDF controls areas where most of Syria's energy, electricity and commodities are produced.
An SDF statement said one of its fighters “was martyred” in an attack by “two suicide drones”, which was followed “by indiscriminate artillery shelling that lasted for hours and struck civilian-populated areas”, wounding four children. There was no comment from the Syrian authorities. Both sides traded accusations last week of targeting residential areas after the killing of seven civilians, mainly women and children, in Deir Hafir.
In Aleppo and areas to the east, many of the country's Kurds allied in the last decade with the US, which formed the SDF in 2015. The group has carved out a de facto autonomous region bordering Turkey. But unlike the autonomous Kurdistan Region in Iraq, the SDF-controlled areas in Syria contain many Arabs.
In New York. Mr Al Shara's participation at the UN General Assembly this week continues his visibility on the global stage. It follows normalisation with the US and the forging of ties with countries in the region, Europe, and even with his old foes, mainly Russia and China.
Mr Al Shara told the Concordia Annual Summit that the Kurdish ambition for Syria to have decentralised governance “in reality mean division”. An intact SDF “may lead to a large-scale war” and put “Iraq and Turkey at great risk, as well as the Syrian state”, he said.
Distrust between the central authorities and many of the country's ethnic and religious groups have been a hallmark of the post-Assad era. The former president sought to co-opt them to form an “alliance of minorities” underpinning his rule, along with the Alawite elite that dominated the country.
