Syria (MNN) — It takes trust or force to lay down your weapons. And trust is exactly what the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) doesn’t have for the government under interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
The SDF is an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias formed back in 2015 during Syria’s civil war. Today, Syria’s government continues to call for centralized control of the nation. Other international voices stand with them.
Aleppo, Syria (Photo courtesy of Ahmad Sofi via Unsplash)
“External governments, particularly Turkiye and even the US, in some respects, want the SDF to be disarmed in order to unify with the central government,” says Samuel* with Redemptive Stories.
“Turkiye wants to get rid of the Kurds at all costs and help disarm them, because they are a threat on their border, and there’s constantly been a feud between them.”
But Kurds have good reason to balk at disarming. They’ve seen the government come down on other groups in Syria the past year.
“We’ve seen in places like the coastal region, where there was basically genocide of Alawites who were formally aligned with Bashar al-Assad. Then in the south, [the government] also committed atrocities among the Druze people,” Samuel says.
Months of negotiations between the SDF and the state have reached an impasse. That’s why in early January, fighting broke out between the two sides in several Kurdish-controlled neighborhoods in Aleppo.
“It was only a few nights of lobbing rockets and bombs and machine gun fire. Ultimately, the Kurdish troops backed out, and so then the government troops took over [those neighborhoods],” says Samuel.
But after the SDF retreat, the clashes moved east of Aleppo, with the threat of even further escalation. The root of distrust between the SDF and al-Sharaa administration hasn’t changed.
Syrian kids (photo courtesy of Ahmed akacha via Pexels)
The skirmish has already had a high cost. Tens of thousands of civilians have fled, many Christians among them, says Samuel.
“One of the neighborhoods was heavily populated with our brothers and sisters, Christians who had to flee their homes and into other areas,” he says. “This means loss of income. This means they have had to move locations. This has implications on their children, their families, moving schools, etc.”
Pray for endurance for Christian and non-Christian families caught in the fighting.
“Keep praying that God would heal them from those traumatic experiences that they walk through, and that ultimately, this would be another part of what God uses to bring people to Himself,” Samuel says.
*Pseudonym
Header photo of shadowed Syrian flag is a representative stock photo (Courtesy of Abdalhady Mansour via Pexels)
