A 47 year old teacher [naam bekend bij de redactie] was teaching on Tuesday in the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo when she heard bombs going off behind the school during recess. From that day on, the area, together with the neighboring Ashrafiyeh district, was the scene of heavy fighting between the Syrian government forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of predominantly Arab and Kurdish militias. Both groups accused each other of initiating the violence. “This is not the first time there have been fights, but this time they are much more intense and last longer,” says the teacher, who is Kurdish herself, on the phone.
Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyeh were under the control of Kurdish militias of the SDF, the rest of Aleppo of the Syrian government army, which tried to take control of the entire city with this operation. “When I walked outside to go home, I saw chaos. Buses were rushing through the streets and people were panicking.” The teacher lives on the outskirts of Ashrafiyeh, right next to the front line. There she saw that government forces had previously captured damaged and abandoned buildings and converted them into barracks.
When the Syrian government declared the neighborhoods military zones the next day, she, like many of her neighbors, decided to leave her home. A total of around 400,000 people live in the two boroughs, of whom local authorities say more than 160,000 have fled. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 25 civilian deaths, including women and children. “Two of my students were arrested by the government army while fleeing because their phones contained photos of them holding Kurdish flags and celebrating Newroz (Kurdish-Persian New Year).” The teacher herself is now staying with her parents on the other side of the city.
Residents of the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsood in Aleppo fled the violence between government forces and militias of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Thursday.
Photo Omar Haj Kadour / AFP, Photo Ghaith Alsayed / AP
Division
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the SDF has enjoyed autonomy in the northeast. But since the fall of dictator Bashar Al-Assad, Syrian interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa has been trying to forge the country into unity. In March, the Syrian government and the SDF agreed to fully integrate Kurdish parts of the country by the end of 2025. The SDF would also merge with the Syrian government army. Little has come of this yet.
Adam (25, last name known to the editors) is a journalist and lives with his family in a Christian neighborhood a ten-minute walk from the fighting. He sees people who have fled throughout the city camped out on the streets or sleeping in churches and mosques. “It is freezing outside, so we try to help them as much as possible by handing out tea, food and blankets.”
Adam is a Christian himself and believed that the SDF should have withdrawn from Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyah long ago. “The SDF has set up checkpoints where they interrogate people who want to enter the neighborhood. They pick out Arabs who they interrogate. Sometimes they are then refused entry.” Adam wants that to end. “We are all residents of the same city. We don’t want war anymore, we want to continue in peace, regardless of your origin.”
Ceasefire
The warring parties reached a ceasefire on Friday morning. The SDF leadership agreed to lay down its arms and leave the area. But when buses arrived to pick them up, fighting broke out again. According to news channel Al Jazeera was this due to divisions within the SDF: more radical factions resisted the call to lay down their weapons.
Arthur Quesnay, a researcher at Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris, said the Syrian government had been preparing for a new confrontation for weeks. “Because the negotiations reached a standstill, the Syrian government decided to carry out a large-scale operation in the next confrontation to force the Kurds to surrender.” According to Quesnay, it is difficult to say which party started these fights, but the decision to intervene harshly had already been made earlier.
“The timing is striking,” he says. A day before the fighting broke out, Al-Sharaa signed a security deal with Israel to share intelligence and coordinate military de-escalation. Quesnay: “That agreement can be interpreted as a military defeat for Syria, because Israel occupies parts of southern Syria, such as the Golan Heights. The Syrian government had to demonstrate its authority again. When these fighting broke out, Al-Sharaa could no longer afford inaction. The damage is relatively limited, but the message is great.”
An armed patrol in Aleppo last Wednesday.
Photo Ahmad Fallaha / EPA / ANP
Fear
The government army had captured large parts of the two neighborhoods on Saturday. The Syrian army leadership said it was suspending all military operations in the Sheikh Maqsoud district, reported state news agency Sana.
Later in the evening, SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi announced that their fighters were being evacuated from the area. He called on mediators to keep their promise and work towards the safe return of the displaced people to their homes.
The 47-year-old teacher is terrified. “I don’t think I can live in Ashrafiya any longer, because I am afraid of mass murders as we have seen before among Alawites in Latakia and the Druze in Suweida. If my neighborhood remains under the control of the Syrian government, I feel forced to leave for Lebanon.”
Quesnay does not think that the violence will spread to other areas in Syria, but that the result in Aleppo will give the Syrian government a stronger negotiating position with the SDF. “The expectation was that the US and France would persuade the Kurds to make concessions, but that has proven difficult so far. A military defeat for the SDF may have been necessary to break this.”
In the Syrian city of Qamishli, on the border with Turkey, Kurds demonstrated against the violence in Aleppo on Thursday.
Photo Delil Souleiman / AFP
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