US efforts to reconcile rival groups in northeast Syria amid the looming threat of a major Turkish escalation against the Kurdish-led autonomous administration and its military arm, the Syrian Democratic Forces, have resumed with the arrival in the region of the State Department’s point person on northeast Syria, Scott Bolz, two well-placed sources with close knowledge of the process told AL-Monitor. 

Bolz, who has been in northeast Syria for roughly a week, is mediating between the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which shares power in the local government known as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), and the Kurdish National Council, an umbrella group for 17 Kurdish Syrian opposition parties and civil society organizations.  

With the collapse of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in an offensive led by the Sunni militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its Turkey-backed allies, the need for Syria’s Kurds to forge a common front as the new power constellation takes shape is more urgent than ever before. The Kurds' aim is to finalize an earlier US-mediated attempt to bring the sides together that collapsed amid mutual recriminations and Turkish pressure.  

The idea is for the sides to send a joint delegation to Damascus to meet with Syria’s new masters. However, no tangible progress has been made so far, the sources said. This is because the PYD has yet to respond positively to several conditions that have been laid down by the KNC to move forward, one of the sources noted.