Syrian Kurdish battlefield successes in the past month have reinforced Coalition efforts to liberate the Islamic State (IS) stronghold of Raqqa. Having expelled IS from safe havens in eastern Syria with Coalition military support, including the strategic border town of Tell Abyad, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) are regarded as the only reliable and effective ground force to continue the momentum. Yet a deeper look into local dynamics challenges this narrative and raises concerns about strategic end-states. Most Sunni Arab populations may despise IS; however, they also oppose the YPG and its political wing, the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party (PYD), and seek to prevent Syrian Kurds from moving forward into non-Kurdish territories. Any hopes for a Kurdish-led offensive without an effective local Arab partner will not only enhance support for IS and other radical groups, but will have a backlash on Kurdish populations and deepen ethnic, resource and territorial conflicts in Syria.

Liberating Raqqa is highly politicized and involves more than expelling IS from the region. One of the immediate aims of the Coalition and PYD is to cut IS’ supply route that is centered on Jarablus, which would leave IS with one remaining border point with Turkey at Araz. The PYD also seeks to rid all radical Islamist elements from the region beyond IS, to include the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra. A PYD-controlled Jarablus would link the Kurdish territories of Afrin and Kobani and create a Kurdish belt across 200 kilometers (124 miles) of border with Turkey.

Arab groups and Turkey have harshly reacted to Kurdish territorial gains. Immediately after PYD took Tell Abyad, which has a Kurdish minority population, IS retaliated with suicide attacks in other Kurdish-controlled territories in Kobani and Hasakah. Leaders from the Islamist militant group Ahrar al-Sham, which has support in Turkey, have also condemned PYD, asserting that the “territorial integrity of Syria is a red line for Syrian opposition and revolutionary forces.” Kurdish advances in Tell Abyad have also had repercussions on Kurdish-Arab relations outside of Raqqa. In Aleppo, the regional assembly of Syrian opposition forces have suspended their September 2014 agreement that allowed the PYD to administer Kurdish neighborhoods in the city. Ankara has also reacted to PYD territorial expansionism, reaffirming its demands for a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile)-deep security zone at Jarablus to prevent a Kurdish-controlled border area.

These dynamics will prevent the YPG from liberating Raqqa city — which has no native Kurdish populations — even if the Coalition intensifies airstrikes. Raqqa has symbolic value not only for IS but for Sunni Arab groups who have been resisting the Syrian regime since the civil war started in 2011. After Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces pulled out of Raqqa in 2012, it was largely controlled by Ahrar al-Sham and then by Jabhat al-Nusra before being taken over by IS in 2014.