Opposition turmoil

Since our last post on the situation in northern Syria, everything has changed and nothing has changed. The world has witnessed terrorist attacks in Sinai, Paris, Beirut, San Bernardino, and elsewhere, which have contributed to increased international attention focused on ISIS and the crisis in Syria. Accusations, threats, ultimata fill the air, competing for space with French, Russian, British, US, and Turkish jets. Last week, in advance of the proposed next round of “Vienna” talks, an opposition conference was held in Riyadh, with representatives from a broad range of armed and political groups. The representatives agreed on a transition plan, following six weeks of negotiations and Assad’s departure, but it remains to be seen how much of it the regime and internationals will accept.

Neither the Kurdish PYD nor any of its affiliates were invited to Riyadh. They staged their own conference promising to begin a ‘Syrian Democratic Front’ in its liberated territories. Christian, Arab and Turkmen representatives also participated in the heavily Kurdish conference.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Aleppo, things continue to grind on. Villages have been taken and lost by all sides. Regime forces made gains under Russian air cover, taking the towns al-Hader and al-Eis south of the city, one day after they finally broke the siege on Kweiris airport to the east. Aleppo city’s opposition administrative council held elections mid to late November, with few problems and little disgruntlement. It continues to strain on a daily basis to provide services, especially water, with the limited resources available.

The Kurdish-dominated SDF has advanced in ISIS-held territory in the northeast, in a push toward Raqqa. But they are also operating in the countryside around Aleppo, reigniting tensions with opposition forces there. One analyst has called the stage on which these tensions are playing out, the A’zaz corridor, ‘the epicenter of the war’.

On November 18, fifteen groups allied themselves with SDF. Most are small and without much influence, but a couple stand out: Kurdish units local to Afrin Canton and an umbrella grouping named Jaysh al-Thuwwar now operate under the SDF banner. Jaysh al-Thuwwar is an amalgam including  Jabhat al-Akrad (the Kurds’ Front), remnants of the Syrian Revolutionaries’ Army and the Hazm Movement, a few FSA brigades, Northern Sun, and the Turkmen Seljuks Brigade.

The details remain murky, but from November 27 clashes broke out between Jaysh al-Thuwwar and Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, and FSA groups near A’zaz. Shots fired happened to coincide with Russian airstrikes, giving the advantage to Jaysh al-Thuwwar and intensifying the conflict, leading the Ahrar Syria Brigade to declare the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo a military zone and shell Kurdish positions there.

There ensued clashes in the countryside, some villages exchanged hands and some civilians were killed before a ceasefire was signed in Kashta’ar at the urging of Aleppo’s Consultation and Reconciliation Council. It does not seem to have held. Afrin Canton in particular is in a tense position, isolated as it is from the rest of Kurdish-controlled Rojava, but the hostilities are mutual and simmering. The Kurdish security service, Asayish, on December 8 arrested several activists in Afrin.

Some argue that the Russian intervention and subsequent increased support for rebel groups from the US and others is inducing the rebel factions to unite. But in the past five years rebel groups have created and disbanded alliances, operations rooms, and joint commands frequently. Some last longer than others. In the north, Ahrar al-Sham and the Levant Front have proved relatively effective.

But the ongoing hostilities in Aleppo province highlight the tenuous nature of these unions. Last week there were two mergers that bear mention. First, the brigades Fursan al-Haqq and 101 Infantry Division have joined together as the Northern Division (al-Firqa al-Shamaliyya). Second, the existing Sultan Murad Brigade, already heavily populated with Syrian Turkmen, expanded to include several other Turkmen groups, including Sultan Mehmet Fatih. Both fall under the nebulous umbrella of the FSA.

The latter merger in particular highlights the surprising re-entry of Syrian Turkmen groups into the battlefield. The ISIS advance through Aleppo province in 2014 had dispersed many of the Turkmen forces and caused most to retreat from the province. Now the Turkmen could be reasserting themselves; at the very least, they have become a useful rhetorical card for Turkey in opposing both Russia and the Kurds. Erdoğan has cautioned Russia about bombing Turkmen areas of the northwest, such as Jabal al-Turkman in Latakia. After Turkey shot down the Russian jet, some posited it was done to protect Turkmen populations.

The conflict among opposition forces in the north is not drawn on clear-cut ethnic or sectarian lines. Though armed groups and political parties often try to represent the situation as black-and-white, ethnic and sectarian categories still bleed into each other. Jaysh al-Thuwwar and the SDF count fighters from all three ethnicities in their ranks. In Hasaka, they are also allied with Assyrian and Syriac Christian groups. The FSA, though largely Sunni Arab, likewise includes Kurd and Turkmen fighters.  The FSA has a nebulous quality – yet their presence and their effect in battles against the regime is nevertheless real. Both Jaysh al-Thuwwar and the SDF, as well as their current opponents, include members who have been or still count themselves as part of the FSA. 

It was rumored that the commander of Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, in an interview released on December 12th, claimed that there was no such thing as the FSA. (In fact, he stated ‘it is a group of factions that join under a name without any organizational links between them …. [the FSA] is not an army and it is not a group, but a banner and a name that have become common among the people’.) This sparked a reaction on a local level, as seen in the video below. No matter how nebulous, many Syrians on the ground are rooting for the FSA and identify with it.