Syrian town of Ain Issa flashpoint for latest phase in conflict

Most of Ain Issa’s 7,000 people are fleeing escalating violence between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The small town, less than 30 miles from Tell Abyad, which is on the border with Turkey, is also a node on the strategic M4 highway from Iraq via Aleppo to the Syrian coast. Northeast Syria has also been a mix of Arab, Kurdish and Druze communities, which until the war has mostly lived peacefully. No more.

Here are six takes on why Ain Issa matters in the latest phase of the Syria war, based on Al-Monitor’s reporting:

Erdogan vows to crush ‘the head of separatist terror.’ For Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ain Issa can’t remain in control of the Syrian Kurdish autonomous governing authority and its gendarme, the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which he considers the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In October 2019, Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring to drive Syrian Kurds out of key towns along the border. While the United States and the European Union, like Turkey, consider the PKK a terrorist group, they do not extend the designation to the YPG, which makes up the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the on-the-ground US partner in the battle against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. On Dec. 17, Erdogan again lumped the PKK/YPG with IS and said, “We will maintain our fight until the eradication of [this] herd of murderers.”

‘Only a matter of time.’ Its Syrian proxy forces have picked up the Turkish line that the YPG is a separatist arm of the PKK. Turkey has blocked efforts to include SDF-affiliated Syrian Kurdish parties from UN-mediated negotiations among the Syrian opposition. A commander of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is doing the bulk of the on-the-ground fighting for Turkey in Syria, told Sultan Al-Kanj, reporting from Idlib, that Ain Issa “is a Syrian land occupied by a non-Syrian terrorist organization,” referring to the YPG. The commander added that the FSA dislodging the SDF in areas it controls is “only a matter of time.”