The SDC is the ruling umbrella authority of northern and northeastern Syria, which includes Kobani and Raqqa. Its statement came in response to claims by the Syrian regime accusing the alliance of Arabs and Kurds of “treachery”.
On Friday, May 3, the SDC held the Syrian Tribal Conference in a bid to breathe new life into the fragile Arab-Kurd alliance formed to combat the Islamic State group (ISIS).
Its future looks uncertain now ISIS has been defeated and the US looks for an exit. As a result, several Arab tribes have already begun cutting deals with the regime.
The Syrian government responded a day after the conference, denouncing the event, its organizers, and participants as traitors whose work is doomed to fail.
The SDC in return accused the Syrian government of “opening doors” to Turkey to “occupy” Jarablus, Azaz, al-Bab, Afrin, and parts of Idlib.
“These people aren’t entitled to talk about the unity of Syrian soil and the sovereignty of the Syrian state,” the statement read, accusing the Syrian regime of preventing several tribal leaders from attending the conference.
“They also absolutely don’t have the right to throw accusations at the meeting of Syrian tribes held in Ain Issa,” the statement said.
“We can’t be accused of division or separatism because the components of north and eastern Syria, under the umbrella of the local administration and the Syrian Democratic Council, have been the only powers that have defended north and eastern Syria,” it added.
The Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian government has been ratcheting up its rhetoric against the autonomous north ever since it retook all major rebel strongholds last year. It has also grown in confidence since Washington announced US forces would soon be withdrawn from northern Syria.
Damascus has repeatedly threatened to retake the northern provinces by force and seize control of the region’s critical oilfields as it battles a deepening fuel crisis.
Kurdish-led forces largely avoided confrontation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad throughout the Syrian civil war, focusing instead on the fight with ISIS and the preservation of their new found independence.
This has come at a cost, however, as the SDC and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) have been locked out of both the Astana talks led by Russia, Turkey and Iran, and the UN-sponsored Geneva peace process, mainly due to Turkish objections.
Turkey considers the PYD, and its armed wing the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as offshoots of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a Kurdish rebel group fighting for greater Kurdish political and cultural rights in Turkey but considered terrorist by Ankara.
