‘This is a civil war’: Syria’s Kurds watch nervously as new violence spreads

On a warm late winter Saturday, the Kurdish minority of Aleppo celebrated International Women’s Day in a public park that looked and felt more like a fortress.

Syria’s civil war had supposedly ended three months earlier, on Dec. 8, but none of the country’s heavily armed groups have fully lowered their guard since then.

True peace feels particularly far away after days of sectarian violence in the coastal Latakia region left more than 1,000 people dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based war observer group. That figure was continuing to rise on Sunday.

The fighting has seen the new Syrian government’s security forces, which are dominated by veterans of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Muslim extremist group, clash with remnants of former dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which for decades was dominated by Alawites, who are followers of an offshoot of Shia Islam. The SOHR said 745 of those killed in the recent violence were civilians. Photos and videos posted to social media suggested that many of the Alawite men were executed in cold blood.

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The violence on the coast is more than 150 kilometres away from Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, where Kurdish forces have sealed off the two Kurdish-majority neighbourhoods. Since early in the 13-year civil war, every person or vehicle entering the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyeh – which the local council says are together home to some 500,000 people, including internally displaced people from other areas – has had to pass through one of two narrow checkpoints manned by Kurdish fighters wielding automatic rifles.

For the Kurds, the bloodshed in Latakia only emphasizes why they must keep defending their autonomy. “We were very hurt by what we have seen in the coastal areas, and we ask the United Nations to intervene. This is a civil war – and if this keeps going, there will be many more casualties,” said Haiven Suleiman, co-leader of the local council that governs the Kurdish part of Aleppo.

As she spoke, women in gaily coloured traditional clothing danced in a wide circle behind her, while others took turns painting each other’s portraits. But the mood was more anxious than celebratory.

The festival was held in a dusty park ringed by a two-metre-high wall of rocks and earth. Dozens of Kurdish fighters stood atop the barrier, keeping a lookout for any force that might seek to spoil one of the few Women’s Day celebrations taking place in Syria, which has thrown off Mr. al-Assad’s dictatorship only to see it replaced by the Islamists of HTS, a group once affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa – the former leader of HTS – has vowed to form “an inclusive transitional government that reflects Syria’s diversity.” But those words were undermined by the actions of his security forces in Latakia.

In a video speech released Sunday, Mr. al-Sharaa said Syria was confronting an attempt to drag it back into civil war and called on “remnants of the former regime” to lay down their weapons. His office also announced the creation of a seven-person panel of judges and lawyers charged with investigating the causes of the recent bloodshed and to “examine violations against civilians and identify those responsible.”

Syria’s Kurds, however, see Mr. al-Sharaa and his forces as allied with their main enemy, Turkey, which has repeatedly attacked the larger Kurdish autonomous region that covers much of eastern Syria. The main Kurdish-led force in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, has thick links to the Kurdish PKK movement in Turkey, which Ankara considers a “terrorist” force.

Relations between Turkey and its own sizable Kurdish minority appear to be on a new course after last month’s call by imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan for his followers to lay down their arms. But Syria’s Kurds say that while they respect Mr. Ocalan – whose image flew on flags at Saturday’s festival – his call has no effect on their struggle. “As long as there is no security or sense of safety, the Syrian people are not going to put down their weapons,” Ms. Suleiman said.

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Since the collapse of the Assad regime, the close co-operation between Turkey and the new Syrian government has raised fears that Mr. al-Sharaa’s forces will eventually confront the SDF, particularly if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through on campaign promises to withdraw the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops stationed in eastern Syria. The U.S. forces, alongside the SDF, have been working to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State.

The SDF is eager to continue the co-operation – which provides the Kurds with protection from their enemies – and U.S. Central Command announced on Saturday that the SDF, aided by U.S. intelligence, had captured “an ISIS cell leader” near the Syria-Iraq border.

Participants at Saturday’s Women’s Day celebration in the Sheikh Maqsood neighbourhood said the festival was a reminder of the different, more liberal, culture that Kurds are seeking to preserve. “For HTS, all women are supposed to be covered up,” said Zainab Qamber, an activist who worked in the Women’s Affairs department in SDF-ruled eastern Syria before she moved to Aleppo.

Ms. Qamber said she hoped Mr. Trump would not abandon Syria’s Kurds after the role they had played in the fight against the Islamic State. “We fought ISIS on behalf of all the world. We did them a favour,” she said. “Now, we Kurds could be attacked at any time.”

Less than 24 hours later, Ms. Qamber’s prediction seemed to come true as unknown gunmen opened fire Sunday on the main checkpoint connecting Sheikh Maqsood to the rest of Aleppo. Mohammed Abdo, a Kurdish journalist in the city, said the attack was carried out by “gunmen affiliated with HTS.”