Thirty meters below the town of Kobani, north-east Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) saved a watchful eye on the Turkish border. A plasma display TV displayed 16 surveillance feeds to officers in a room in one of many Kurdish-led militia’s tunnels, the place Kalashnikovs and SDF flags adorned the partitions.
The troopers dare not emerge from the tunnels, frightened of being picked off by the Turkish drones buzzing overhead. They transfer between amenities within the subterranean community on foot, rising from entrances hidden in nondescript buildings.
“Most of our forces are presently concentrated within the tunnels. When Turkey began threatening us, we began going underground,” Zinarin Kobane, the commander of the SDF’s Euphrates area, mentioned throughout a uncommon tour of the SDF’s tunnel community.
When the Syrian Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) toppled the Assad regime and seized energy on 8 December final 12 months, Syria’s battle, frozen for years, abruptly got here unstuck. The precarious steadiness between the US-backed SDF and Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces was shattered, and frontlines which had been quiet since 2019 reignited.
The SDF was quickly pushed out of the town of Manbij, northern Syria, and there have been every day clashes on the close by Tishrin Dam. The dam, which acts as a pure buffer zone between the SDF and Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria, gives electrical energy for Kurdish-ruled areas.
The Kurdish forces, with US backing, carved out an autonomous area of north-east Syria in 2012 the place they’ve dominated ever since. Now, with Syrian rebels in Damascus and Turkish-backed fighters on their doorstep, the Kurdish autonomous area is preventing for its survival.
“The dam is our first line of defence. In the event that they break via, it opens the door to occupation of your complete area. We’ve already misplaced 14,000 individuals within the struggle towards Islamic State – we gained’t give this space up,” Kobane mentioned.
At stake is a decade-long political undertaking that has ended the oppression of Syrian Kurds. Now, dad and mom can title their youngsters Kurdish names and educate their language in faculties – primary rights disadvantaged to the ethnic minority below the Assad regime’s 53-year rule.
The SDF’s struggle towards Turkish-backed factions has been punishing. Kobane mentioned the battle ways of Syrian factions had shifted over the past two months to extra intently mirror Turkish navy doctrine. Whereas Syrian teams struggle on the bottom, Turkish drones and warplanes present cowl from above, pounding targets far past the frontline.
Conscious that they’re no match for Turkey, which has the second-largest navy in Nato, Kurdish fighters are dug in. Somewhat greater than 5 years after Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria in 2019, the SDF started constructing an enormous tunnel community throughout the area.
The underground amenities, massive sufficient to accommodate hundreds of fighters, are superior. The flooring are tiled, air vents usher in oxygen from above floor and wifi permits commanders to comfortably direct battle formations from management rooms situated 10 storeys under floor whereas sipping Pepsi.
The tunnel community has allowed the SDF to shift its ways to adapt to the risk from Turkish airpower. Its fighters transfer between underground amenities, emerge behind enemy traces to hold out an assault, then disappear once more into one of many networks’ many hidden entrances.
As preventing rages on the entrance, negotiations have begun between SDF leaders and the brand new Syrian authorities in Damascus. In early January, the top of the SDF, Gen Mazloum Abdi, met the previous chief of HTS, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who’s now Syria’s president.
Describing the assembly as “constructive”, Abdi mentioned the 2 leaders agreed on basic rules and arrange two technical committees to coordinate between Damascus and the SDF on navy and civil affairs.
“We agreed that we’re part of Syria and that we need to hold Syria unified. However, our view on the way in which they’re coping with the transitional section – the sensible particulars, the instruments for us to work collectively, the timeline – our views differ on this,” Abdi mentioned. He added that he believed “Turkish intervention” was slowing negotiations and had a detrimental impact on them.
The Syrian authorities has requested that the SDF disband and combine throughout the new Syrian defence ministry in order that the north-east can return to Syrian authorities management. The SDF has mentioned that whereas it’s amenable to integrating inside a brand new Syrian military, it desires to keep up some measure of autonomy below a brand new decentralised structure.
The window for the SDF to make a take care of Damascus is closing. As negotiations stall, Damascus is shifting forward with the formation of the brand new Syrian state, with or with out the Kurdish authority.
On Thursday, the Syrian authorities mentioned any teams that didn’t lay down their arms wouldn’t participate in a nationwide dialogue convention geared toward creating Syria’s first everlasting authorities.
Abdi mentioned: “There needs to be no pre-emptive situations for participation within the dialogue convention … We need to work with the brand new Syrian administration for the sake of the way forward for Syria, we will construct Syria collectively.”
The SDF is additional squeezed by the potential for a US troop withdrawal from north-east Syria below the Trump administration. The US maintains about 2,000 troopers in jap Syria, nominally to help the SDF of their struggle towards IS. The troop presence is seen as a key deterrent to any Turkish or Syrian invasion of Kurdish-held territory.
The Trump administration has made no announcement concerning its presence in Syria, however its purpose of lowering US entanglements overseas and Trump’s erratic decision-making has put Kurdish authorities on edge. In 2019, Trump abruptly determined to tug out US troops in a single day after a cellphone name with Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, leaving the SDF to fend off a Turkish incursion by itself.
The US partnered with the SDF in 2014 to defeat IS, which held swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria as a part of its “caliphate”. Over the past decade, this partnership has change into a cornerstone of the Kurdish authority’s safety.
US armoured personnel carriers patrol the streets of Hasakah, north-east Syria, as individuals stroll by unfazed, used to their presence. A plaque from the previous CIA director Gina Haspel that thanks Abdi for his management greets friends within the basic’s reception corridor.
That relationship has been more and more tough for the US to clarify to Turkey, which views the SDF because the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Staff’ occasion (PKK) – a gaggle it classifies as a terrorist entity and with which it has fought a 45-year conflict. Turkey, which tolerated the presence of the SDF on its southern border through the struggle towards IS and Assad, has put rising stress on Washington to desert its associate.
The US diplomat James Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Turkey, envoy to Syria and envoy to the worldwide coalition to defeat IS, mentioned: “The issue is that a lot of the rationale that we partnered with the SDF has gone away. Inform me the way it ends? The Turks are questioning: ‘What occurred to what you mentioned was a brief transactional relationship?’”
The Kurdish-led forces will not be, nevertheless, with out negotiating playing cards. The Kurdish-led authorities maintain about 70,000 suspected IS fighters and their kinfolk – hundreds of whom are foreigners. International powers are cautious of permitting the brand new authority in Damascus, which holds many international jihadists amongst its ranks, to imagine management of the prisons and camps the place suspected IS members are held.
Kurdish officers have additional warned {that a} US withdrawal and a subsequent Turkish invasion of north-east Syria may hurt their means to maintain IS in test.
“A US pullout would encourage Turkey to assault the world, and that will have an effect on the conflict towards IS generally,” Abdi mentioned, as a result of a safety vacuum would hinder the SDF’s means to protect IS prisons and camps.
In Kobani, the prospect of a looming Turkish invasion has created an oppressive sense of unease.
Within the countryside surrounding the town, Turkey carries out airstrikes usually. The streets of the town’s predominant industrial market are coated by corrugated steel sheeting to defend pedestrians from view of Turkish drones overhead. Assaults on the Tishrin Dam and different civilian infrastructure has left the town with out water and electrical energy for days at a time.
“Day-after-day, the drones are above our heads. It has been two months with out water and electrical energy,” mentioned Fidan Shamsi, an 18-year-old visitors officer who misplaced 4 tooth and suffered facial scarring in a Turkish drone strike whereas protesting on the Tishrin Dam on 15 January. 9 out of the ten girls in her police unit have been injured in drone strikes – one was killed.
“Should you lose your nation, you lose your soul. In the event that they assault Kobani, they gained’t spare anybody,” Shamsi mentioned.
Baderkhan Ahmad contributed to this report from north-east Syria
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