The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed Kurdish coalition, faces an uncertain future as Syria's new leadership seeks to unify rebel factions under a new Syrian army. The SDF has expressed willingness to negotiate with Damascus but remains cautious about dissolving into the new military structure.
In the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad's ouster, Syria remains territorially fractured as the rebels who defeated Assad work to consolidate power. The country's uncertain future has raised questions about the fate of the U.S.-backed Kurdish coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces ( SDF ). This week, Syria's new leadership took steps to dissolve the different rebel factions and unite them under the new Syrian army. But the SDF did not join in.
In a statement, SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami said the group wasn't opposed to joining the Syrian military in principle, but that the matter required negotiations with Damascus.The realities of the new Syria, however, have left the SDF with few options to maintain its status quo.In 2014, the Islamic State extremist group began taking large pieces of territory in northeast Syria as the country was embroiled in a civil war. With the help of the United States, a coalition was formed of Kurdish militia groups to help fight ISIS and take back the territory. That's how the coalition came to control about a third of Syria, from the Euphrates River and eastward along the borders with Iraq and Turkey, according to Yerevan Saeed, director of the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace at American University. 'The Kurdish control of these areas really came in a time when there was a vacuum of power. All of these areas were taken over by ISIS, and the local population was very happy to have the SDF clear ISIS elements from all of these areas,' Saeed says. After the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in the spring of 2019, the SDF continued to guard the prisons and camps holding thousands of ISIS fighters and their families, something it still does now. Kurds are a stateless ethnic group without their own state. They are a minority spread mainly across several Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syri
SYRIA SDF KURDISH FORCES ISIL US FOREIGN POLICY
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