Syria: Slippery-Slope To Another War – OpEd
It was touch-and-go in Syria for three days. The question that everyone kept asking would a civil war ensue. It was a perilous moment for fighting, strife, more displacement, general fear, anguish and anxiety.
However, and for the first time, Friday, all these harrowing ideas seemed to have been blocked at least for the time being through the ceasefire deal reached between the government of Ahmad Al Sharaa in Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-lead alliance whose commander-in-chief is Mazloum Abdi that is looking for political power in a new Syria.
The fighting which erupted in the northern districts of Aleppo including Ashrafieh, Sheikh Maqsoud and Bani Zaid between government soldiers and SDF forces and led to 140,000 civilians being forced out of their homes brought images of Syria’s past 14-year-old civil war that ended last December 2024 when extremist-turned-politician Al Sharaa ousted long-time president Bashar Al Assad and Baath Party rule.
Worrying is the fact that the ensuing fighting was also in areas where forces entrenched themselves in civilian neighborhoods whose population is estimated to be around 400,000 and where over three days, fire was traded between rival SDF forces and government soldiers sky-jacking tensions to the limit and where up to 22 people were killed and more feared to be injured.
With the ceasefire in place, fighting now rolled back for the time being, the SDF and the government however still in a tension-mode stand off and loggerhead with the heart of the problem waiting to be resolved. For the time being SDF fighters have been persuaded to leave these neighborhoods but one wonders for how long and when will they return for these areas Kurdish-dominated regardless of the other ethnicities like Arabs, Armenians, Syriacs and Yazidis.
Their agreement reached last March 2024 to integrate SDF forces in a post-Baathist state has broken down yet again. The accord was due to go into effect at the end of last December but fell through because of persisting political ambition, nationalism and Kurdish identity and state institutionalization.
For a moment, it looked like the new emerging Syrian state was being dashed in favor of the skirmishes between government forces and SDF operatives that flared up between 7 – 9 January, 2026 and threatened to return the new political system that is being built upside down. The crux of the matter is the SDF has long made it clear they don’t wish to integrate their forces into the mainstream Syrian army in the way envisaged by the new government in Damascus.
What they want is to maintain their military personnel – including the People’s Protection Units, Women’s Protection Units and the Anti-Terror Units – as one distinct bloc with its own structure in the Syrian army. What the Damascus government made clear as agreed on when the March 2025 accord was signed with the Kurdish-led alliance, is they want the SDF fighters to “melt” in the Syrian army as officers and soldiers rather than as a distinct body.
And this has been the current source of troubles and why the SDF operatives are backtracking on implementing the March accord. Despite their initial agreement, the SDF continue to see themselves as a formidable force in Syria politics with at least 50,000 fighters equipped over the last decade with top sophisticated arms from the United States.
The Syrian Democratic Forces came into being in 2015. They see themselves as a central part of military groups that ended ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) rule in 2019, as a major ally of a superpower that of the United States and control 30 percent of the north and eastern part of Syria and self-styled themselves as those ruling over what they termed as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES).
This region, only recognized as autonomous by the SDF and no one else, controls 90 percent of the oil and gas output of Syria and this may be why both the SDF and the new government continue to be in a “political” tag fight over who should control the future of this region.
The new government says the “autonomous administration” with all its resources must come under a united Syria because of its promise of a prosperous future for the new state. The Al Sharaa government, which labels itself as transitional, and who has been building much foreign policy alliances over the past year rejects any form of a federalist solution put forward by the SDF; like other parties such as the Free Syrian Army it is called upon to enter into the new structures introduced by the government and hence the wave of reintegration to build a new Syria.
The external foreign dimension has been rocky as well. While the USA continues to be a stronger backer of the SDF over the years, and still so today, it now also supports the new Syrian government as emphasized by US President Donald Trump and in his two meetings with Al Sharaa in 2025. Today Washington, under the US Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack, is currently also trying to bring both parties to bridge the gap whilst giving the impression it wants to work with both parties.
Turkey’s long role in Syria is emphasized by the fact it supports the new government and quickly wants the SDF, and particularly its military units to be integrated into the Syrian national army. It argues this is the best way to end their links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which Ankara recognizes as an illegal terrorist organization and a threat to its national security.
For them, they are watching and waiting. They are fully prepared to go after SDF fighters if need be. Hence, the recent fighting in Aleppo is viewed with much concern. The government, along with its external partners don’t want to see a prolonging and widening of the skirmish but experts argue Damascus must provide a credible way out for the SDF and persuade them to reintegrate. Otherwise, the current ceasefire would only be just temporary and what Syria needs is a long-term solution.
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