The Syrian military on Tuesday told the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to leave areas near the Euphrates river as it encircled the region, days after pushing affiliated Kurdish fighters out of Aleppo, Syria's business and industrial centre.
An army statement said its forces had closed off the Dayr Hafir-Maskanah area and that the SDF should withdraw to east of the river. It told the SDF fighters to comply to “preserve your souls”, and said that all the civilians in the area should keep their distance from SDF personnel.
A takeover of the area would end any SDF presence west of the Euphrates, which runs through much of the country. However, the SDF still controls large areas to the east, where the bulk of Syria's energy and farming resources can be found.
The SDF denied government claims that it has been conducting a military build-up in the area, which lies about 40km east of Aleppo. The group said in a statement that it has a “legitimate right” to defend the area, which it mostly captured after the fall of the Bashar Al Assad regime in December 2024.
Security sources based in Jordan said the SDF has tanks and some of its elite commanders in the area, but it is unclear whether it would put up a fight.
“It is clear that the American cover has been lifted off the SDF at least in the west of the Euphrates,” one of the sources said.
The SDF was founded with US backing in 2015 as the ground component of the American-led war against ISIS in Syria. The bulk of government forces comprises Turkish proxies called the Syrian National Army, which joined the military of the new state, and personnel from Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, the now dissolved rebel group that toppled the Assad regime and is in power in Damascus.
Kurdish and other sources told The National that the SDF leader, Mazloum Abdi, was told by US Central Command to hand over the areas in Aleppo and not intervene on behalf of his men. The message was relayed before a US-supervised meeting between Israel and Syria in Paris on January 6.
The SDF has positioned itself as the defender of the Kurdish community since the civil war began in 2011, although Syria’s one million Kurds are not cohesive and some do not support the militia. But on Sunday, its last affiliated personnel left Aleppo on buses to SDF-held areas in eastern Syria. The SDF presence in Kurdish-majority hilltop areas of Aleppo was part of its territorial acquisition during the civil war.
Violence involving Syria's Alawite, Druze and Kurdish minorities has marred the first year in power of the Syrian government led by President Ahmad Al Shara. Mr Al Shara founded a rebel group affiliated to Al Qaeda that later cut ties with the terrorist group and became the core of Hayat Tahrir.
