BRUSSELS, Belgium — Middle East analyst Joost Hiltermann sees Syrian Kurdistan, or Rojava, at a crossroads, where they are going to have to deal with the reality that the United States will not remain forever and without a state, Kurds will need to strike a deal with Damascus.
Hiltermann is Program Director for the Middle East for the International Crisis Group in Brussels. He disputed the belief that Kurds are “friends” of the US government.
“The United States doesn't have friends in the world. The United States has allies, and it uses these allies as long as it needs them. Once the United States doesn't need them anymore, it will drop them,” Hiltermann told Rudaw.
“Western countries, they don’t think in the terms of Kurds or other people or Arabs or Persians, they think in terms of their self-interest,” he added.
Rojava, split between the three cantons of Afrin, the northern Euphrates and Jazira, has previously benefitted from Russian support in Afrin. Russia previously acted as a buffer between Turkish proxies and the YPG in Afrin.
Moscow has also been Syrian regime leader Bashar al-Assad’s primary backer.
Hiltermann explained, "Russia is trying to balance between the two. It needs both of them. It needs the Syrian regime and it needs Turkey. So it has to give a little bit to both and it has to ... make them equally angry, if that's what it wants.”
Turkish leadership has openly stated Kurdish-controlled Manbij, east of the Euphrates, will be their next target after Afrin.
“I think PYD leaders will have to decide, what is their top priority – to be a Syrian organization or to be a Syrian organization linked to an organization in Turkey, the PKK,” said Hiltermann, who doesn’t believe PKK-Ankara talks are likely to “happen soon.” The YPG denies any organic links to the Qandil-based Turkish political party.
The United States has had a very public presence in Manbij and isn’t likely to leave until they are satisfied with the total “defeat of ISIS.”
"In terms of the areas where the United States and the YPG jointly fought against the Islamic State, in those areas, the United States wants these areas to be stabilized and it's very happy for the YPG and PYD to do it. In those areas it will be much for difficult for Turkey to try to attack them,” said Hiltermann.
Without a state and understanding previous betrayals by the West (i.e. the Algiers Accord), a deal with Damascus is likely.
“This region [Rojava] exists because the Syrian regime allowed it to exist,” Hiltermann explained, “because they were busy fighting in other parts of Syria and they preferred the PYD over any other group controlling the north.
“But sooner or later the Syrian government is going to want to come back into Rojava. What the YPG and the PYD need to do in order to manage that situation and maintain control of their areas in Rojava is to make a deal with the regime and continue to hope that the United States will support them.”
Hiltermann dismissed the argument that the situation in Afrin is similar to what happened on October 16 in Kirkuk, which is oil-rich and more diverse.
“The historical problem that the Kurds have is they don't have state of their own,” said Hiltermann.
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