QAMISHLI – Over the last months the Syrian government has encouraged the activities of ethnonationalist parties and the formation of sectarian security branches, such as the Kurdish Asayish and the Syriac/Assyrian Christian Sutoro. These ethnic minorities immediately took the chance to voice their demands, but some of their representatives remain wary of the regime's intention to preserve its political leverage.

Syriacs and Kurds shared similar grievances under the thumb of Baathist pan-Arabism, and the recent rebellion has prompted their political parties to strike an unwritten alliance to maintain their distance from the regime as well as the opposition. The backlash of this decision, however, could be the further entrenchment of sectarian divisions, thus serving the regime's interest in keeping minorities away from the opposition by bestowing concessions upon them.

“Is this a checkpoint of the Free Syrian Army [FSA]?” a worried Christian woman asked on a bus traveling between Amuda and Ras al-Ain. “No, don't worry. It belongs to the [Kurdish] YPG [Popular Protection Units],” replied her husband. Christians tend to feel reassured by the presence of Kurdish militias, and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the main Kurdish party, is ready to capitalize on this bias.

“We received Christian funding, and the Syriac archbishop of Hassakeh expressed his gratitude for the YPG in a phone call with the Vatican, since they stopped the advance of Islamist radical groups in Ras al-Ain [during clashes in February 2013],” Bashir Malla, a member of the Democratic Society Movement (TEV-DEM), which includes the PYD, asserted to Al-Monitor on May 6.