WASHINGTON — Leaders of the Syrian Kurdish parties agreed Dec. 24 to participate in the Geneva II peace conference on Jan. 22 with a single Kurdish voice as either part of the Syrian opposition bloc or as an independent Kurdish delegation. But differences remain over how to administer the Kurdish areas in the future, which could again lead to tensions among them.

The Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Kurdish National Council (KNC), a coalition of 16 Kurdish parties backed by Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), concluded the Erbil agreement in 2012 to administer Syria’s Kurdish areas together through the Supreme Kurdish Council (SKC).

The agreement between the two main Kurdish nationalist blocs in Syria never came to fruition. The Syrian Kurdish parties failed to share power, and the PYD remained the strongest Kurdish party on the ground in Syria and gained more popularity by fighting al-Qaeda.

The PYD was also one of the founding members of the National Coordination Body (NCB) that calls for a dialogue with the regime to solve the conflict peacefully.