Fighting in Syrian Kurdish-held areas: What you need to know

One of the biggest risks for Syria's peaceful transition lies in the country's northeast. While many Syrian Arabs around the country were celebrating the demise of the regime headed by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and the end of a long-running civil war, Syrian Kurds in the northeast were facing an existential crisis.

Clashes between Syrian fighters backed by Turkey and Syrian Kurdish forces were of great concern United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersonsaid this week. The other immediate areas of concern are Israel's ongoing incursions into Syria and the protection of Syria's minorities.

What is happening in the northeast?

Fighting in the Syrian civil war had been frozen for years, and the opposition groups controlling their different areas in the north tended not to clash. But over the past few days, fighting erupted again.

After the fall of the Assad regime, the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA), a group of fighters backed by Turkey, has tried to advance into areas controlled by Syrian Kurds.

The Turkish government opposes the Kurdish presence on their border, seeing them as a threat. This is because of a long-running Kurdish struggle for independence in Turkey that has often turned violent. 

As the Turkish-backed militias have advanced, the Syrian Kurdish forces there, known as the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF), have lost territory. Turkey has also used airstrikes and drones to support the SNA's advance.

On Tuesday, the two parties said they negotiated a ceasefire agreement with help from the United States. This will involve the withdrawal of Syrian Kurdish forces from some of the areas they previously controlled.

Another rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has taken control of the Arab-majority city of Deir al-Zour. The SDF withdrew from there following local unrest. The US-trained Syrian Free Army (SFA) has also taken some terrain here.

The SDF has now said it is open to participating in a new political process in Syria. 

Why is it happening?

The Kurdish people are often described as one of the biggest ethnic groups in the world without a country of their own. If they did have a country, it would lie in the Kurdish-majority areas where Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey meet.

There is a Kurdish independence movement in each of those countries, whose members have lobbied and even fought for an independent state or Kurdish autonomy, with varying degrees of success. Kurdish independence movements in each of the countries have also been repressed by their respective governments — also with varying degrees of success. In Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, turned to violence to try to achieve their aims.

In Syria, near the start of the civil war, around 2012, the forces of now-deposed dictator Assad, withdrew from Kurdish-majority areas in northeastern and eastern Syria without much of a fight. The move was not without controversy.

Syrian Arab revolutionaries said they didn't want the Kurds to be independent from Syria and that the country should remain united. There was also scurrilous talk about whether the Kurds had betrayed the original objectives of Syria's revolutionaries, to overthrow the regime, and that in a bid to pursue their own goal of Kurdish independence, the Kurds would maintain neutrality in the civil war. The Kurds never really fought against Assad's forces, and this alleged "betrayal" caused antipathy between Syrian Arabs and Syrian Kurds, layered on top of previous ethnic tensions and racism.

During the 13-year civil war, the US got involved with Syria's Kurds, allying with them to combat the extremist group known as the "Islamic State" (IS). The group came from Iraq and, taking advantage of the chaos of the civil war, set up a "Syrian capital" for its planned "caliphate" in Raqqa.

US and Kurdish forces were the major players in the fight against the IS group in Syria. And while fighting against the IS group, Syrian Kurds also expanded the terrain under their control, including Arab-majority areas like Raqqa and Deir al-Zour.

Locals have protested against the Kurdish leadership there, including this week when they insisted the Kurdish forces allow other rebel groups to enter.

All these issues, past and present, remain at the root of the problems the Syrian Kurds are now dealing with. Now that the Assad regime has gone, they are being squeezed between Syrian Arab groups and Turkey, with the US as their only ally.

In fact, one of the questions that most worries Syria's Kurds is how long the American alliance will last after President-elect Donald Trump reenters the White House. There are fears the incoming Trump administration will withdraw US soldiers from Syria altogether, abandoning the Kurds. Currently, there are still an estimated 900 US soldiers in the country. 

Why does it matter?

An estimated 4.6 million people were previously living in the Kurdish-controlled Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, or AANES. The area is also often called Rojava by local Kurds and was also home to Kurds from Iraq, Turkey and Iran.

Since fighting began this week, the UN estimates over 100,000 people in the area have fled the fighting, most of them Kurds. Several hundred people have been killed in the fighting.

Apart from the humanitarian aspects of the situation, the territory the Kurds held included most of Syria's oil fields and was also a major wheat producer. In particular, control over Syria's oil fields will be important to the new government, as income from them will help the country's devastated economy.

Experts also suggest the Turkish-backed SNA's race to grab as much territory as possible goes beyond Turkish aims to get the Kurds off the border. Territorial control is also about leverage and power as the next Syrian government is formed.

Additionally, the SDF runs large prison camps in northeastern Syria, which house thousands of former IS extremists. Previously, SDF fighters have said that if they are attacked, they'll be forced to leave the prison camps unguarded. 

Edited by: Sean M. Sinico