New battles threaten Kurdish-Turkish truce in northern Syria

Battles between Kurdish and Turkish-backed fighters in northern Syria threatened on Wednesday to upend already shaky ceasefire agreements and stymie U.S. attempts to contain escalating violence just as the country’s 13-year civil war is ending.

A spokesperson for the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces said skirmishes with a militia supported by Turkey had broken out in a number of sites around the city of Kobani and the nearby Euphrates River.

“Our forces are currently establishing defensive positions to counter ongoing attacks and safeguard all areas within north and eastern Syria, with a particular focus on the defense of Kobani,” Farhad Shami, the Kurdish forces’ spokesperson, said on the social media platform X.

He accused Turkey and its allies of “attempting to exploit the current truce to continue its expansionist agenda and deceive the international community.”

Efforts on Wednesday to reach Turkish defense officials for a response were not immediately successful.

Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesperson, said earlier this week that the outgoing Biden administration was trying to help prevent “any increase in fighting in northern Syria at this point.”

But a senior U.S. official in the region said Wednesday that the Kurdish fighters faced a “not imminent but serious” threat from the Turkish-backed militia.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation, predicted that the commander of the Kurdish forces, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, would need to be embraced by the new rebel-led government in Damascus, Syria, to “keep his people safe and ISIS detained,” referring to an alternative name for the Islamic State group.

The violence highlights the precarious, fragmented condition of Syria just days after the overthrow of Bashar Assad. The rebel alliance that toppled him — which is not involved in the Kurdish-Turkish clashes — is struggling to assert control over the country and keep its government functioning.

For years, the Kurdish-led forces, who control northeastern Syria, have been America’s most reliable partner in Syria, liberating cities seized by the Islamic State group and detaining around 9,000 of its fighters. About 900 U.S. troops are based in Syria to prevent the extremist group from rising again.

But Turkey has long seen the Kurdish forces in Syria as an enemy, allied with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in Turkey. The PKK has fought the Turkish state for decades and is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the United States.

Kobani is a Kurdish-majority city on the Turkish border and holds enormous emotional significance for the Kurdish fighters who reclaimed it from the Islamic State group in 2016 after a monthslong siege.

Last week, the dueling Kurdish forces and Turkish-backed militia agreed to a pause in fighting in Kobani and a ceasefire in Manbij, about 37 miles to the southwest, in agreements that the United States helped broker.

Miller said Tuesday that the ceasefire in the Arab-majority city of Manbij would last “into the end of this week,” but did not give an exact day for when it would end, or whether it might be extended again.

Both Kobani and Manbij have long been flash points in Syria, especially after the Islamic State group took advantage of the chaos of the civil war.

With the help of U.S. troops, the Kurdish fighters liberated both cities from the Islamic State group in 2016, leading to the end of the extremists’ self-declared caliphate that had seized large parts of Syria and Iraq.

Manbij later became a focus of Syrian factions battling for control in the region. Last week, the Kurdish forces agreed to withdraw from Manbij under a ceasefire deal with the Turkish-backed fighters known as the Syrian National Army, and to pull back to the eastern side of the nearby Euphrates River. The river was also a dividing line between the Kurdish fighters and their Turkish-backed rivals under a tenuous 2019 agreement brokered by the Trump administration.

U.S. officials have hoped the Kurds’ withdrawal would ease tensions with the Turkish-backed fighters who, in recent days, have attacked Kurdish positions around Kobani, east of the Euphrates, prompting thousands of people to flee, according to Kurdish military officials, activists and Syria analysts.

But the Kurdish fighters’ spokesperson, Shami, said the fighting has continued, and Abdi said his forces were willing to create a demilitarized zone in Kobani supervised by U.S. troops “to address Turkey’s security concerns and ensure lasting stability in the region.”

A second U.S. official in the region said that plan would pull back the Kurdish fighters to about 18 miles outside of Kobani. The city’s police forces would remain and residents would not be displaced. U.S. troops would monitor the situation in hope of establishing a ceasefire across northern Syria.

But it is not clear if President-elect Donald Trump will agree, given that he sought to withdraw U.S. soldiers from Syria during his first administration.

Miller said the Biden administration was talking with Turkey about the tensions but declined to give specifics.

“There are long-standing tensions between Turkey and these groups,” he said. “And so it is not an easy path forward, but it is certainly one that we’re pursuing.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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