The Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish proxy force in the neighboring country, captured the Kurdish-held city of Manbij, the Kurdish outlet Rudaw confirmed on Tuesday, a day before Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) claimed to take the city of Deir ez-Zor.
Manbij – along with several other major population centers in Rojava, or Syrian Kurdistan – have been under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) since the fall of the Islamic State “caliphate” in the country in 2017.
The SDF is a U.S. ally that did much of the fighting against ISIS in Raqqa and is primarily composed of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
The Kurdish control of Deir ez-Zor (or Deir Ezzor) was much shorter – the SDF essentially filled the vacuum there left by the collapsing regime of former dictator Bashar Assad for some days. Assad fled the country on Saturday after fighters associated with HTS, an al-Qaeda offshoot, arrived in Damascus.
“Our forces have taken complete control over Deir ez-Zor city,” HTS confirmed on social media on Wednesday, according to Rudaw. “Our fighters continue to advance in areas and towns of Deir ez-Zor countryside after controlling the city center.”
The HTS operations in SDF-controlled territory currently appear limited, and the Kurdish-led force claims it has not engaged in any significant conflict with the militia. The SNA, however, has prioritized the elimination of Kurds from northern Syria rather than the deposing of Assad. The SNA and HTS also have a history of conflict despite both being Sunni Islamist militias and SNA leaders have openly admitted to disagreements with HTS.
In addition to taking Manbij, the SNA has displaced 120,000 people throughout northern Syria, Rudaw warned, and appeared to be making progress on Tuesday towards the city of Kobani, site of a key battle against ISIS in 2014. The SDF claimed to have “successfully thwarted” an SNA attack south of Kobani on Tuesday.
The dynamic situation between the SNA and the SDF is occurring in the greater context of the fall of the official government of Syria, for decades under dictator Bashar Assad, this weekend. HTS entered Damascus on Saturday, prompting Assad to flee to Russia, and has declared itself in charge of a “transition” process way from the Iran- and Russia-backed Assad regime. HTS launched a surprise attack on Aleppo, the second-largest city in the country, in late November, rapidly capturing it and taking less than two weeks to topple the entire regime. The group’s victory is in large part the product of the official Syrian military being left in a derelict, corrupt state; pro-Assad Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah having no forces to spare to protect him after over a year of war with Israel; and the Russian government abstaining from taking any meaningful action.
The SNA is a coalition of militias that arose from what was once the Free Syrian Army (FSA), at one point during the Syrian Civil War the main opposition group. Today, however, it serves largely as a proxy for Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who aggressively opposed the Assad regime but has more directly acted to push Kurdish forces away from the Turkish border.
Shortly after HTS took over Aleppo, the SNA launched what it called “Operation Dawn of Freedom,” a simultaneously military campaign unrelated to Assad or HTS to eradicate Kurdish forces from northern Syria. Much of the fighting has occurred in Aleppo province, though not in the city itself.
Both sides in the SNA-YPG conflict confirmed on Tuesday that Manbij had fallen to the Turkish proxy force, ending Kurdish control of the city that began in 2016 after a brief and harrowing period of ISIS control. The Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu described destructive scenes in Manbij in which SNA militants burned bunch of the city to the ground, allegedly targeting YPG “bases,” and “captured a female terrorist [sic] hiding in one of the tunnels.”
While the YPG maintains friendly relations with the United States, Turkey’s NATO ally, Ankara considers it indistinguishable from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Marxist, U.S.-designated terrorist organization that occasionally still claims attacks in Turkey. Erdogan has repeatedly insisted the destruction of the YPG and its women’s wing, the YPJ, is a matter of Turkish national security.
In Shahba, a Syrian city the SNA captured last week, Kurdish sources accused the SNA of displacing and disappearing thousands of people. Rudaw reported on Tuesday, citing senior Kurdish official Sheikhmous Ahmed, that at least 120,000 people fled the city to other parts of Rojava, though the true number may be higher as Kurdish officials struggle to document the displaced.
“We do not know the exact number because many have not been registered,” Ahmed said, adding that many of the displaced at now in Raqqa province.
As of Tuesday afternoon local time, SNA leaders claimed to be progressing deeper into SDF territory. Speaking to the Emirati newspaper the National, an unnamed “senior SNA commander” said that his group may move into the city of Raqqa, the former Islamic State capital, causing global alarm as many ISIS prisoners remain there under SDF control. The SNA consists of some Sunni Islamist groups that may have sympathies aligned with ISIS.
“The SNA says it is willing to take over control of the prisons and ensure their stability,” the National reported, “but how that plays out remains unclear, especially if the incoming Trump administration in Washington reduces the US presence in Syria.”
The SNA commander said the goal of “Operation Dawn of Freedom” was to “end the separatist project.” The SDF supports the establishment of a sovereign Kurdistan carved out of Syria, a longtime dream of many Kurdish people. The Kurds – spread throughout Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran – are currently stateless.
The National observed that, in addition to neutralizing Kurdish forces, seizing their land grants the SNA leverage with which to negotiate with the ultimate winners of the civil war, HTS. While both largely Sunni Islamist outfits, HTS and the SNA in their current and prior forms have often not maintained friendly ties. In contrast, a senior SDF official said as recently as last week that the Kurds are in contact with, and have no conflict with, HTS.
“The SNA has a complex composition, with multiple brigades uniting to form alliances within its structure, and it is not always obvious which brigades are operating where,” the National noted.
The SNA commander speaking to the newspaper conceded that “the difference haven’t been completely resolved” between his group and HTS and that SNA believes “the HTS project is not suitable for Syria.”
