The Other Side of SDF: Power, Politics, and Human Rights in Northeast Syria

Interview with Rena Netjes, Arabist and independent researcher

Rena Netjes studied Arabic and Hebrew at the University of Amsterdam. She taught Arabic and Hebrew, was a local politician in Amsterdam, and worked as a journalist in Egypt. Since 2016 she has focused on northern Syria, regularly visits north Syria, and is (co-)author of several publications on PYD/YPG and SNA areas. Next to her research she teaches Arabic and Hebrew.

Mrs. Netjes, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is a collective movement of various political forces. The YPG stands out in particular. What exactly is the YPG and what role does it play in the SDF?

The YPG is leading the SDF, and dominates the decisions. Most of its members are forcibly conscripts, both Kurds from the north, and Arabs from the Arab areas like Deir Ezzor. In Deir Ezzor for example the vast majority, 90-95% locals say, of SDF are Arabs. Over all SDF is majority Arab, approximately 70% according to local observers.

It also has abducted minors in its ranks, young Kurdish teenagers, boys and girls, mostly abducted in Syria, and Yazidi and Assyrians teenagers. The forced conscription and abduction are the main reason for young people in the area to leave. 

YPG is the US’ favorite partner in fighting IS in Syria, for a number of reasons, among them: One line command (no democrats), willing to fight IS only and not Assad, veteran PKK fighters had decades of experience due to combat fighting against Turkey. All these things were more or less lacking at the FSA. The FSA argued that Assad was their biggest problem and that Assad facilitated and helped create and used IS, in short.

For some political organizations or movements, the name reflects the goal. To what extent does the name SDF, Syrian Democratic Forces, reflect the program? In other words, how democratic are the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces?

The SDF is the armed wing of the PYD-led Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), who are only Democratic in name but when you take a close look they are not democrats but they rather rule their areas with an iron fist: they have imprisoned, murdered and exiled fellow Kurdish opponents of the Syrian Kurdish National Council Until as recently as last month when local KNC politician Ismail Haj Fattah was kidnapped, on January 16. A few days later on January 18, he was found murdered, dropped in one of the villages in northeastern Syria. His brother stated at his funeral that it was the PYD security forces, asayish, who were behind the killing. Since 2011, a number of KNC leaders and members have been murdered, and approximately 150 spent shorter or longer periods in PYD prisons, including several of the current leadership. Several KNC offices have been burned. Now recently the KNC chose to team up with SDF in the talks with Damascus, despite all the above. Some KNC politicians who are still in northeast Syria are a bit or much closer to the SDF than others who had to flee or have been assassinated. 

An informed Kurdish observer put it this way: The majority of the Syrian Kurdish National Council’s decision is the unity of the Syrian Kurdish position. They signed a political agreement in 2021. The decision came from Erbil from Masoud Barzani, therefore, they withdrew from the Syrian National Opposition Coalition (SOC) in order to be part of a joint delegation from the PYD for dialogue with Damascus, based on Barzani’s directives and Mazloum Abdi’s approval. The Americans also were pushing for the KNC and the PYD to develop a joint stance.

Furthermore, there are no free media, no free elections, and the Americans regularly have to intervene when Kurdish (KNC/ENKS) or Assyrian (ADO) political opponents still in the area want to travel to conferences abroad. One example, senior KNC member Ne’mut Daoud told me in Geneva in 2017 that he had to smuggle himself out of Qamishli to attend the UN-led talks on Syria in Geneva. More recently both Assyrians and Kurdish politicians said they had to call in the Americans to be able to travel to Erbil, to join international meetings for example.

Another important topic and underreported in Western and Arab media, is the continuous abduction of minors, girls and boys, by PYD-affiliates into the ranks of the SDF. American diplomats had told their European counterparts in 2018 that they were unable to stop this. Parents are left in total despair and many are even too afraid to say anything because they received threats to not speak. It happens at a rate of at least one per week, the ones that are published, for example by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR). They are mainly Kurdish children, but also Assyrian and Yazidi children, this is one of the major reasons why so many Kurdish families have left the area. General forced conscription for all young people is the other major point, Young Arabs who fled the area have told me that they do not want to be put on frontlines and “have to fight against their cousins (members of the same tribe).” In recent years there has been an uptick in young men especially, leaving the area, Arabs and Kurds mostly to Germany, but also to the Netherlands and Austria. 

Dutch diplomats told me after their visit to Sulaimaniya, in northern Iraq, where they met with the leadership of the SDC in 2019 that they “could not discover anything democratic about them.” A third point is that they do not allow Syrian opposition media to work in their areas, only PYD friendly media, the same goes for NGOs, foreign journalists and researchers. Several Syrian Kurds and Arabs have told me that their NGO could not get permission, only those that do are directly connected to them, or would have to work under such circumstances which would oppose their policy. Syrian anti-Assad. TV channels such as Orient TV and Syria TV were not allowed to operate independently or at all, nor were the White Helmets or the Independent Doctors Association.

How did the SDF/YPG-PKK establish its control over north-east Syria, and what role did the expulsion of Arabs, Turkmen and opposition Kurds play in this?

Assad handed over areas with Kurdish presence, majority and minority, in the north, like Afrin, Kobani and Hasaka province, to the YPG in 2012, including weapons, jeeps, police stations and border posts. Assad needed his troops around Damascus, and the YPG was prepared to crush the revolution in the Kurdish areas for him, that was the deal. 

Gradually, as they fought IS – and renamed YPG SDF to absorb Arab fighters and go into Arab areas – they remained after defeating IS in the Arab towns and villages, often expelling part of the Arab population or the whole population, including from areas where the FSA had already defeated IS before YPG started fighting IS. In Aleppo and its western and northern countryside, for example, FSA brigades launched an offensive against IS about nine months earlier, liberating town after town.

The majority of the inhabitants of the north and northeast are Arabs, YPG wanted to control all these areas along the border with Turkey (and many in the West believe the ultra Kurdish Nationalists when they claim that all this Arab lands are also Rojava.) This triggered in the end reaction of the Arabs and anti PKK Kurds as well.

Are there reliable figures or reports on the number of displaced persons and the severity of the violence perpetrated by the SDF/YPG-PKK?

Yes, there are, Amnesty, among others, have documented it, for example in a report in 2015 Syria:

US ally’s razing of villages amounts to war crimes.

UN reports have documented this, alongside journalistic and think tank pieces such as this one from early 2016 on the YPG’s expansion in the northwest.

Over the years I encountered several Syrians from that area living in exile outside Syria or in SNA areas and in Idlib within Syria and they told me what they had experienced. I also think that the Western public is in general unaware of all these violations by YPG/SDF, which ultimately led to a response from the Arab FSA plus also Kurdish anti PKK fighters: expelling the YPG from Afrin. Parading killed Arab FSA fighters on a truck loader IS-style in Afrin City, these were Arab fighters defending their towns and villages in the Tal Rifaat area, was maybe the drop. The way SNA then acted in Afrin was a horrible response, with many crimes against the Kurds. These were widely reported, contrary to the human rights violations executed by SDF.

In March 2016 I was for the first time on the border with Syria when displaced people from Tal Rifaat fled to Turkey. I thought they were from Aleppo, but to my surprise they told me that the YPG had taken their houses. I thought: What? Aren’t they the good guys? This is a piece about the displaced people from Tal Rifaat and Manbij.

What strategies has the SDF/YPG-PKK used to carry out ethnic cleansing against Muslims and Christians?

I don’t know whether this is indeed ethnic cleansing, but the Amnesty report documents in detail what happened. By the way, all these Arab tribesmen are still unable to return to their areas in northeastern Syria until today. We are talking about many 100,000s, still scattered over northern Syria, Idlib, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria etcetera.

In addition to being expelled, there was an ongoing exodus of young Kurdish and Arab men from northeastern Syria to mainly Germany, but also to my country the Netherlands, which lasted at least until the end of November, when I was in two areas in northern Syria where they were arriving and some tried to cross into Turkey. Christian opponents have also fled. In Ra’s al-Ayn, Christians told us that all 400 minors were sent to Turkey in 2014 to prevent forced enlistment into the ranks of the YPG. They didn’t return. This also happened a lot in the Kurdish areas: sending your children to Turkey, and from there most went to Europe.

How do you assess the reaction of the international community to these expulsions? Is there a difference in the perception of the SDF/YPG-PKK compared to other armed groups?

Lots of difference in responses. Because these Syrians from the north largely fled to Turkish controlled opposition areas, and to Turkey, both Kurds and Arab tribesmen, and not to the US, I think there is overall a difference in information gathering about the repression in the area, with Turkey on the receiving end being better informed and obviously very keen in stopping this influx of Syrians.

What role do human rights organizations and local actors play in documenting the crimes of the SDF/YPG-PKK?

Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the UN and the Syrian Network for Human Rights have documented these and US funded NGOs as well. But the SDF gets almost a free pass in the Western and Arab media, when it comes to the human rights violations. The latest example being the interview with Mazloum Abdi on al-Arabiya TV. It is actually a bit strange, since the Saudis have many ties with Syrian tribes, they have ‘cousins’ so to speak in northeastern Syria. But also those tribes are divided, the Shammar and Baggara tribes work with SDF.

To what extent do the SDF/YPG-PKK and its political structures benefit from international alliances, for example with Western states? Has this favored the violence?

Yes, for example, in October and November there was an increase in attacks and raids by the SDF on SNA areas. I have seen videos of these attacks, that aren’t publicly shared, and local SNA fighters who were attacked told me that ‘in the past a group of SDF would have one advanced US-supplied weapon, but now all members have one’. However, all of this is virtually ignored by the Western media, but when there is a response from SNA, it is widely reported. Locals say this is due to the large number of PKK members in Western countries such as Germany, France, Sweden, the Netherlands and the US: the SDF lobby in the West is huge.

I think it has made the group quite arrogant – I see some similarities with Israel – in the way it acts with impunity. Whatever human rights violations or war crimes they commit, the US supports them. They get away with child abductions and recruitment, and the US knows everything that is happening in Syria. Also, expelling Arabs from their land, and even many Kurds have fled the area, locals say that in recent years there has been a real exodus of Arabs and Kurds. To Germany and the Netherlands especially, we discovered in Mabrouka and Ra’s al-Ayn when we started investigating this on the ground in February 2023 (during the earthquake we were there) and in September and October 2023. The last time was in November. Actually on the day the rebel offensive from northwest Syria took off, we were in Ra’s al-Ayn and the village of Aziziya a bit west of it, a new smuggling hub, interviewing Syrians who had just arrived from Lebanon. Young men among them were preparing to go to Germany. The latter all came from East Deir Ezzor. We even interviewed a man who, we found out later, was a well-known smuggler, the local military police told us. He had come from Germany to help his ‘cousins’, he told me in fluent German. We already wondered how and what exactly. 

The US got involved in Syria because of the fight against IS, and found the YPG more suitable than the FSA for a number of reasons, one line command being one of them, and the FSA was unwilling to fight only IS because they are claiming that Assad was helping IS and Assad was the biggest problem. The second reason was to prevent Iran and Russia from expanding their influence in Syria. That reason has now disappeared.

In summary, Assad first gave them territory and weapons, although he left strongholds in their area: Qamishli city center and Hasaka city center, plus Qamishli airport and some areas south of Qamishli and Jebel Kawkab, north of Hasaka City. Also Assad’s intelligence never left the area, it is already present at Samalka, the border crossing with Iraq, when you enter northeast Syria.

And secondly, the US supported them heavily. The Americans dropped (small) support the FSA and for a number of reasons then started supporting YPG by weapon droppings in the Kobani area. Without US support, the YPG could never have stood against IS in Kobani. Also Peshmerga from Iraq and some FSA from Aleppo and Azaz came to help defeat IS there, we cover that in our Clingendael report from 2021. The US provided them with not only weapons but also money for salaries. It is much cheaper to provide salaries for Syrians than to deploy American troops to fight. The US doesn’t want Americans to die there either, the Iraq war was fresh in mind. A golden opportunity for Abdi and the Syrian branch of the PKK to establish a PYD/PKK statelet in northeast Syria.

What impact have the expulsions had on the ethnic and religious composition of the region?

Yes, many Arabs have left areas in the north, in Tal Rifaat, west Euphrates it was the total population of the town in 2016, in cities like Manbij it was part of the (Arab) population. In response, all these Arab tribesmen were asking Turkey to intervene. And Turkey didn’t want to take in any more refugees, in 2018 Turkey and SNA groups entered Afrin, after negotiations with YPG and KNC failed, the KNC had asked the YPG fighters to leave Afrin. With all the crimes that took place there in Afrin, more than half of the Kurds returned within the first month of leaving. And many more people have returned in recent years, especially from the Tal Rifaat area and Aleppo where they had fled to. Now in December, with the end of YPG rule in Tal Rifaat, another 70,000 Kurdish displaced returned to Afrin.

The situation in some SNA areas is still not good; Kurds cannot get all their property back, that is the biggest problem – also because there was/is a huge housing crisis in both SNA areas and Idlib, the small rural strip in the northwest received about five million displaced people from all over Syria (this is of course no excuse to steal someone’s house). In some areas in Afrin the situation is good, the displaced family that was in the house for example agrees to leave but needs a few months to find alternative housing or a camp. 

It was three months after the war in 2018 that the PYD, not the SNA which has also still hundreds of Kurdish fighters in its ranks, blocked the return of these Kurds to Afrin. Kurds could only return after paying significant amounts of money to leave, and consequently at various checkpoints. Only the least poor were able to do so, and others couldn’t. “It is better to be in your own home (in Afrin) with problems than in a tent.” 

In June last year, the cost from Tal Rifaat or Aleppo to Afrin, via Aoun Al-Dadaat near Manbij/Jarabulus, the only humanitarian crossing to reach opposition areas northern Aleppo, and through them to Idlib, was $150. Kurds returned with increasing frequency, including from Lebanon and Turkey. There were also deportations among them, but certainly not all, of for example young Kurds who were deported from Bulgaria trying to cross into the EU.

After Tal Rifaat was liberated, as the people from Tal Rifaat say because they could now return to their town after almost nine years, another 70,000 Kurds returned to Afrin in December. Not that everything is well and that everyone can go to his own home as described above. At least one of the brigades in Sheikh al-Hadid is demanding large sums of money, locals speak of $2,000, $3,000 and even higher amounts, which are demanded from returning Kurds. Damascus should address directly. The commander of that brigade was promoted though.

When the military operation on Ra’s al-Ayn happened by SNA, many Kurds, Arabs and Christians fled the war, and not all of them have returned. Others, Arabs and Kurds who had fled PYD-rule, have returned to their town. Next to for example having PYD sympathy or having a job at the Self Administration, a reason to not return is that there is no university in Ra’s al-Ayn, so families fled to Hasaka or Damascus and stayed there until now because of their children’s study. Recently, efforts have been made to get them back to Ra’s al-Ayn.

In Afrin, most Kurds fled the war and went with the YPG in 2018 to the nearby Tal Rifaat area from which the YPG had expelled all the Arabs in 2016. They fled because they were told that ‘the jihadists’ were coming by PYD media. In the first three months after the end of the war, more than half of the Kurds returned to Afrin, not that they could get all their belongings back, and in some areas such as in Jinderes or Afrin City this is still not the case. 

Several local Kurds, such as the Association for Independent Syrian Kurds and Kurdish FSA commanders, worked intensively from the beginning to prevent the Kurds from leaving Afrin, and to encourage those who had left to return. And the Kurds returned in waves, more than half who had fled returned in the first three months, but after those first three months the PYD, not the SNA, had prevented the Kurds from returning. 

To conclude: Kurds can return to Afrin and Ra’s al-Ayn, despite all the problems that are still there, but Arabs cannot return to their lands: in Deir Ezzor, Raqqa and Hasaka provinces.

What prospects do you see for the return of displaced persons to their homes, especially under the current political and military circumstances?

Syria’s interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has said that the Kurds should be allowed to return to their homes and that the Kurds should return to Syria – about half of Syria’s Kurds are outside Syria and mainly because of the repressive regime of the YPG: forced conscription, child abductions, threatening, imprisoning and even killing some opponents, oppressing Arabs in the Arab areas, even indiscriminate killing such as the SDF snipers in Sheikh Maqsoud in Aleppo for example and also in East Deir Ezzor. Al-Sharaa could set a good example by forcing its allies in the SNA to immediately return Kurdish properties to their owners in Afrin and Ra’s al-Ayn. 

To what extent is the SDF/YPG-PKK involved in other forms of human rights violations such as the forced recruitment of children, torture or restrictions on freedom of expression? The United Nations (UN) and the human rights organization Human Rights Watch have repeatedly criticized the forced recruitment of children by the SDF/YPG-PKK. What is your assessment?

Yes, in all these cases I have mentioned some above. Child abduction is even worse than in the areas of the former Assad regime.

What steps need to be taken to bring those responsible for the crimes of the SDF/YPG-PKK to justice and what obstacles exist on this path?

The support of the US, for the YPG-led SDF has proven over the years that they are not really willing and or not able to negotiate. It’s not just about Kurdish rights, they don’t want to give up the huge territory they have, nor the oil and gas reserves. Which they use for their own benefits, not for Syria, not for the locals. PYD and later SDF have been in talks with the KNC/ENKS and also with its predecessor PDKS since three weeks after the Syrian Revolution officially took off, March 15, 2011. PYD’s Salih al-Muslim suddenly showed up at Abdul Hakim Bashar’s clinic (later the head of the KNC) in Qamishli, and still after all these years, no real deal has been made or certainly not implemented between the two Syrian Kurdish parties. So after almost 14 years of negotiating with fellow Syrian Kurdish parties in the area, killing a number of them, imprisoning about 150 KNC politicians for shorter or longer periods, forcing many opponents into exile, and burning KNC offices many times have put in, it is hard to believe there will be a deal between Damascus and Ein Eissa. And even if Abdi wants it, the PKK might not let him. So at least his hands look tight from that side for a significant amount of time. And now Israel is intervening in the file. 

Can you say something about the organization of the SDF/YPG-PKK? What are its goals, and can the extremist militia survive without foreign support?

The aim is to retain about a third of Syria’s territory, which they can use as a huge source of personnel through forced conscription, including the kidnapping of minors, and through most of Syria’s oil and gas reserves, which are located in the Arab areas in Deir Ezzor mainly and in Rumeilan. In addition to that, the oil is being taken in a very primitive way, and it leaks into the environment, this also needs to be addressed. This is the golden opportunity for the PKK. They won’t just give that up, I believe. The Americans and the Kurdish Region of Iraq are doing their utmost to broker an agreement between Damascus and Ein Eissa, which would include the return of the displaced people to their areas. The Americans, like everyone else, want stability in the area and want a good working relationship with the new rulers in Damascus. They exchange intel on IS and Al-Qaida, and have been doing that for quite some time. What I understand is that there are people on both sides who are not happy with a deal. Whether the Americans will succeed in brokering an agreement between the two remains to be seen. And if there is an agreement, will it be implemented? Can Turkey live with that agreement?

It largely comes down to what the new Trump administration has in mind for northeastern Syria. No short-term or mid-term decision on the American troops has been taken I understand, so that would mean they will remain in Syria for the coming months. What will happen after is unknown. I don’t think the situation will be solved any time soon. It means more than a million of Syrians can’t return, Arabs and Kurds combined. No one can really do anything without a green light from the US, not even solve the snipers situation in the northern neighborhoods of Aleppo City, who have expanded their areas and range of fire in December. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) they killed at least 63 civilians in December and January, and abducted dozens more, even from other areas of Aleppo then the two Kurdish neighbourhoods. Some of them are believed to be dead as well, acc to SNHR.

And one final but important point: the Americans were increasingly frustrated by the SDF’s unwillingness to fight Iran, I was hearing, there were even Hezbollah bases in Hasaka province for example, which, has made them look again to the former FSA and other rebels in the northwest over the past two years: Getting Iran out of Syria was the goal. And this happened much faster than anyone thought was possible.

Mrs. Netjes, thank you for the interview.