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.
France is also involved in the talks. French and US diplomats are expected to meet with KNC officials in Qamishli tomorrow to relay more information about the PYD’s thinking, the sources said.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP), which leads the Kurdistan Regional Government, is playing a constructive role, the sources added. The KDP controls strategic parts of Iraq’s border with Kurdish-controlled Syria and wields significant influence over the KNC.
The KNC’s main demand mirrors Turkey’s calls for DAANES and the SDF to purge all non-Syrian elements, notably those with known links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and to publicly renounce all its ties with the latter. As such, the reconciliation effort is seen by its critics as a vehicle for Turkey to realize its goal of driving the PKK out of Syria with US backing.
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