Syrian Regime Vows to Enter Afrin in Blow to Wider Kurdish Aspirations

Sune Engel Rasmussen

Feb. 19, 2018 10:13 a.m. ET

BEIRUT—The Syrian regime said Monday it would send allied militias into the contested canton of Afrin, part of a deal that will help defend the Kurdish enclave from Turkey but would be a major blow to Kurdish aspirations for an autonomous region.

The move could ease immediate tensions if it prompts Turkey to retreat from Afrin and moderate its threats against the nearby city of Manbij, where Syrian Kurds are backed by U.S. forces.

In the past month, Turkey has carried out extensive airstrikes and a ground offensive on Afrin to block Kurdish expansion on its borders. Turkey views the main Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency it has battled at home for decades.

Syria’s pro-regime forces, backed by Russia and Iran, continue to play a larger role in the war, as the regime extends its territorial control. With Turkey’s attack on Afrin, the regime has seized an opportunity to reclaim ground long held by the Kurds.

As allies of the U.S. in the fight against Islamic State, the Syrian Kurds have carved out a large swath of territory in northern Syria called Rojava. But their ambitions ran afoul of Ankara, triggering the Turkish offensive in January to create a buffer zone between the border and the Kurdish areas.

After suffering significant losses in the absence of international help in defending Afrin, the Kurds have previously asked for the Syrian regime to intervene.

Last year, Iraqi Kurds also overshot their target, calling for an independence referendum that forced Masoud Barzani to resign as president of their semiautonomous region and prompted the Iraqi government to retake a swath of disputed territory the Kurds had effectively annexed.

Negotiations between the Syrian regime and the Syrian Kurds are unfolding as Ankara is trying for a diplomatic solution to its differences with Washington over U.S. support for the Kurds, a situation that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has called a “crisis point.”

The deal between Damascus and the Syrian Kurds reportedly permits pro-regime forces to establish checkpoints in Afrin in return for defending the city. Yet, there was disagreement about the details, including whether it had been finalized.

“Syrian popular forces will arrive in Afrin in the next few hours to support the steadfastness of our people against the Turkish aggression,” the official Syrian news agency SANA said early Monday, referring to semi-official militias.

The Syrian Kurds, however, said the deal was still being hashed out.

“If we reach a deal, we will publish all the details on our platforms. Until then, it’s all rumors,” said a spokesman for the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces.

“There is an agreement in place between the regime and the People’s Protection Unit [YPG] but it is not complete,” said Abu Omar al-Idilbi, a Syrian pro-Kurdish commander in the north. “It is a military agreement, not a political one.”

Losing control of Afrin makes the Kurdish aim of linking its cantons in the north, which are separated by a wedge of land captured by Turkish-backed forces, nearly impossible to attain.

“This is a huge blow to the YPG, however they want to spin it. They are ceding some of their supposed autonomy in one of the most Kurdish towns in Syria,” said Hassan Hassan, senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

However Turkey reacts to a deal, Ankara is likely to be more receptive to having the regime’s forces, rather than the YPG, on its borders. In fact, pushing the Kurds to relinquish control to the regime may have been Turkey’s goal all along, said Mr. Hassan.

“The Turks knew it would be tough to defeat the YPG in an incredibly symbolic and important Kurdish city such as Afrin, much less to control it long term,” he said. “So the second best thing was for the regime or Russia to take control of the town.”

While Turkey is a sworn enemy of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, it considers the presence of the Syrian Kurds on its borders an existential threat.

Turkey’s foreign minister warned the regime against an intervention to support the Kurds, but held out the possibility it would be open to the regime’s taking over Afrin.

“Whether the [Syrian] regime enters [Afrin] or not, or why it enters, this is significant,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday in a news conference in Amman, Jordan. “It is no problem that if the regime enters for clearing PKK/YPG, but if the regime enters to protect YPG, nobody can stop us and Turkish soldiers.”

—Nour Al Akraa in Berlin, Nazih Osseiran in Beirut and Yeliz Candemir in Istanbul contributed to this article.

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