Syria’s Future Depends On The Kurds
After more than fifty years of iron-fisted rule, the Assad regime in Syria was finally overthrown a few weeks ago. Leading the rebel onslaught against the regime was Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, who is more commonly known by his nom de guerre of Mohammad al-Jolani. Syrian-born Al-Sharaa became al-Jolani while fighting for al-Qaeda in Iraq from 2003 to 2006. After serving some five years imprisoned by American forces in Iraq, he returned to Syria in 2011 to form the al-Nusra Jihadist group there, one of al-Qaeda’s local branches. In 2016, al-Sharaa broke from al-Qaeda and formed the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Even as he sought to project a new, more moderate image, HTS was soon accused of suppressing dissent in parts of Northeast Syria that it came to control and instituting authoritarian rule there in tandem with Sharia law.
Now, al-Jolani hopes to run all of Syria. He has increased his efforts to project moderation and inclusivity to reassure Syria’s disparate religious and ethnic communities and instructed his forces not to engage in looting or reprisal attacks. His efforts appear to be paying off: after a recent meeting in Damascus with U.S. diplomats, which the diplomats described as “good” and “very productive,” the United States lifted the $10 million bounty they had placed on al-Jolani several years back. Europeans likewise appear to be warming towards HTS and have begun discussions to remove the terrorist designation they placed on the group some time ago.
Virtually everyone from the region I spoke with about al-Jolani and HTS is not buying any of it, however. An Iranian friend scoffed when I asked him, replying, “We have seen this before in Iran. It’s an old game, just like in 1979 when people were saying that Khomeini is a democrat. We saw what happened.” Another from Iraq laughed, saying, “He and his people around him are Jihadists. What do people think? That they suddenly just changed colors?”
The risk, of course, is that as soon as Jolani’s new Sunni Arab-led regime establishes itself and begins to feel more secure, their true previous colors will return. When that happens, a radical Islamist regime will be in place in Syria, a country of much greater importance than Afghanistan, Sudan, or other places where such a story unfolded.
What can Western states or the people of Syria do to prevent such an outcome? They cannot change the nature of HTS militants hardened by years of war. No one sees the need to do so now, in the early stages, when they are vulnerable and, therefore, making all the right conciliatory noises.
Western states and the people of Syria can, however, push hard for decentralized power sharing in the new Syria in order to limit the damage that the jihadists might cause. If the jihadists just governed Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Idlib province, with constraints on their ability to exercise centralized dictatorial rule over the whole of the country, the situation could be more manageable. Alawites could remain secure within their own local administrations on the coast. The same would hold for the Druze in the southwest, the Kurds in the northeast, and the scattered Christian communities of the country as well.
Such an outcome would be very much in the interests of most of Syria’s population, as well as Western powers worried about a new radical Islamist regime emerging in Damascus. It would also be vehemently opposed by Turkey, which currently seeks to destroy the model of local autonomy that exists in the Kurdish-led Northeastern part of Syria. Turkish president Erdogan, on December 23, repeated comments he has made on several occasions, opposing decentralization: “Preserving Syria’s territorial integrity and unitary structure under all circumstances is Turkey’s unwavering stance. We will never step back from this.”
Turkey, of course, remains HTS’ main backer and also deploys a Syrian proxy force known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) made up of Sunni jihadists and mercenaries. The SNA is currently attacking the Kurdish-led autonomous administrations and their American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the North and West of Syria. It should also be recalled that not too long ago, it was Turkey that permitted Islamic State (ISIS) recruits and resources to transit through Turkey to Syria.
The result is tragic, especially because the Autonomous Administrations of Northeast Syria remain the only good news to emerge from the Syrian Civil War (along with the ouster of Assad now, of course). These secular autonomous cantons provided a safe haven for Kurds, Arabs, Christians, Yazidis, Armenians, secular Syrians, and others, keeping millions more refugees from Europe’s borders. The autonomous areas likewise promote women’s rights and elevate women and minorities to top leadership positions.
In late November of this year, I visited the Autonomous Administrations of Northeast Syria. It was my first trip to Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011, and I wanted to see for myself what these de facto autonomous areas looked like. Given the ideological affinity between the Syrian Kurdish groups running the area and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that has been fighting the Turkish state since the 1980s, I was expecting to meet ideologues and anarchist radicals akin to the starry-eyed “revolutionary” academics I sometimes meet in the West.
Instead, from the leadership down to ordinary people I spoke to, I met pragmatists only interested in improving their lives, staying safe, and holding on to the stability they had carved out from defeating the Islamic State’s onslaught in the region. Their questions to me were, “Who will help us? Will America stand by us? Will Israel help us defend ourselves? What can we do to convince Turkey to leave us alone? We are not the PKK; we want no fight with Turkey.”
When I asked them about how they run the region, their answer revolved around decentralized decision-making and trial and error. When Arab tribes in Deir el-Zor and Raqqa (the former capital of ISIS) balked at their efforts to ban polygamy, they said, “Fine—do it your way in the municipalities you run. But we will have an education campaign to discourage the practice.” When an activist from Spain came and hoisted his LGBQT rainbow flag in the center of Raqqa, they expelled him, reasoning that while they were for LGBQT rights, they did not need someone going there to offend conservative communities and destabilize the area. When I asked them about capitalism, they laughed and said, “We are not anti-capitalist. We want trade, we want investment, we want to be part of the global economy—we need open borders and more goods.”
The region is not, of course, some democratic utopia—many competing political parties, including Kurdish ones, are prevented from operating in the region, and the SDF and its sister forces work assiduously to maintain their monopoly on the use of force and keep out any other armed groups. Nonetheless, even with closed borders to Turkey, next to no trade allowed in from the rest of Syria, and a very limited opening to Iraqi Kurdistan, the region has rebuilt from the war admirably. Few destroyed buildings remain. With just a little breather from war, the local administrations welcomed ethnic and religious diversity, providing a safe space for all groups there for many years now. Especially with an additional push for political pluralism, this kind of arrangement could be a model for decentralization and power sharing in the new Syria. Decentralization would reassure all of the country’s disparate groups that they will have a place and a role in the future.
The West, worried about a dictatorial Salafi regime emerging in Damascus, would be foolish not to defend an alternative already present and on the ground in Syria. Although it will require a contest of wills with Turkey, the United States in particular—with its 2,000 troops in Northeast Syria—can and should signal its determination not to abandon the disparate communities there while simultaneously making sure they never threaten Turkey. Washington could mediate a Syrian transition that allows for decentralization in the new Syria and thereby provides hope for all Syrians.
If, instead, we allow Ankara and its proxies to demand a highly centralized and authoritarian new Syrian regime, then the Syrian civil war will not have truly ended. The Kurds will fight against any attempt to exclude and silence them like before, as will other non-Sunni Arab groups.
David Romano holds the Thomas G. Strong Chair in Middle East Politics at Missouri State University. He is the author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and the co-editor of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurdish Issue in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and The Kurds in the Middle East: Enduring Problems and New Dynamics (Lexington, 2020). From 2010 to 2020, he wrote a weekly political column for Rudaw, the largest Kurdish media site, and in 2024, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Kurdistan in Hawler (Iraqi Kurdistan).
Image: Giannis Papanikos / Shutterstock.com.