US special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack is expected to travel to Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, in the coming days, marking his first formal visit to the Kurdish region, four well-placed sources told Al-Monitor. Barrack, who is also the US ambassador to Turkey, is due to hold meetings with Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government Masrour Barzani, the sources, who sought anonymity in order to speak freely, said. Barrack’s trip was planned during a June 9 phone call with Barzani. The pair decided that the range of urgent issues related to Syria, Iraq “and beyond” raised during that call necessitated a meeting in person, one of the sources added, without elaborating.

Barzani is the United States’ closest partner in Iraq and has long facilitated the US military presence in northeast Syria, providing logistical support to an estimated 500-700 forces deployed in the Kurdish-led zone. His father, Massoud Barzani, the Kurds’ eminence grise, has been instrumental in getting rival Kurdish groups in Syria to unite and also in helping to ease tensions between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds.

Barrack is also likely to meet with Mazlum Kobane, the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces, for the first time, also in Erbil, the sources said. Kobane has been holding high-level diplomatic meetings in Erbil instead of in Syria, as he did most recently with French Foreign Minister Jean Noel Barrot in April.

The Kurdish SDF is the Pentagon’s top ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. The Syrian Kurds, with much prodding from the United States, have been in talks with Damascus to integrate their civilian institutions and the SDF into central government structures under the terms of a March 9 deal signed between Kobane and Syria’s interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa.