BEIRUT: Syrian Kurdish forces and the Damascus government have reached an agreement for the Syrian army to enter the Afrin region to help repel a Turkish offensive, a senior Kurdish official told Reuters on Sunday.
Badran Jia Kurd, an adviser to the Kurdish-led administration in north Syria, said army troops will deploy along some border positions and could enter the region within the next two days.
The agreement underscores the increasingly complex situation in northern Syria where Kurdish groups, the Syrian government, rebel groups, Turkey, the United States and Russia are tangled in a complex web of enmities and alliances.
The complex relationship between the Damascus government and the Syrian Kurds, which each holds more territory than any other side in the war, will be an important element in determining the future course of the conflict.
Turkey launched an air and ground offensive last month on Syria’s Afrin region, opening a new front in the multi-sided Syrian war to target Kurdish fighters in the autonomous canton in the north.
The Kurdish YPG militia, which has received arms from the United States, has seized swathes of northern Syria from Daesh during the conflict, and has a rival vision for the country’s future to that of the Damascus government.
But while the United States has a military presence in the much larger area of Syria the YPG and its allies control further east, it has not given any support to the YPG in Afrin.
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government has had a complex relationship with the YPG during the conflict. They have mostly avoided direct conflict and both sides have at times suggested a long-term agreement between them might be possible, but they have also sometimes clashed and espouse utterly different visions for Syria’s future. Assad has said he wants to take back control of the whole country.
Jia Kurd said the agreement that had been reached with Damascus was purely military and that no wider political arrangements had been made yet.
“When it comes to the political and administrative matters in the region, it will be agreed upon with Damascus in the later stages through direct negotiations and discussions,” he said.
He added that there was opposition to the deal that could prevent it being implemented: “We don’t know to what extent these understandings will last because there are sides that are not satisfied and want to make (the understandings) fail.”
Syrian Kurdish official: deal for Syrian army to enter Afrin
Syrian Kurdish official: deal for Syrian army to enter Afrin
Death toll in Iran protests over 3,000, rights group says
- The protests erupted on December 28 over economic hardship and swelled into widespread demonstrations calling for the end of clerical rule
- President Donald Trump, who had threatened ‘very strong action’ if Iran executed protesters, said Tehran’s leaders had called off mass hangings
DUBAI: More than 3,000 people have died in Iran’s nationwide protests, rights activists said on Saturday, while a “very slight rise” in Internet activity was reported in the country after an eight-day blackout.
The US-based HRANA group said it had verified 3,090 deaths, including 2,885 protesters, after residents said the crackdown appeared to have broadly quelled protests for now and state media reported more arrests.
The capital Tehran has been comparatively quiet for four days, said several residents reached by Reuters. Drones were flying over the city, but there were no signs of major protests on Thursday or Friday, said the residents, who asked not to be identified for their safety.
A resident of a northern city on the Caspian Sea said the streets there also appeared calm.
The protests erupted on December 28 over economic hardship and swelled into widespread demonstrations calling for the end of clerical rule in the Islamic Republic, culminating in mass violence late last week. According to opposition groups and an Iranian official, more than 2,000 people were killed in the worst domestic unrest since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“Metrics show a very slight rise in Internet connectivity in #Iran this morning” after 200 hours of shutdown, the Internet monitoring group NetBlocks posted on X. Connectivity remained around 2 percent of ordinary levels, it said.
A few Iranians overseas said on social media that they had been able to message users living inside Iran early on Saturday.
US President Donald Trump, who had threatened “very strong action” if Iran executed protesters, said Tehran’s leaders had called off mass hangings.
“I greatly respect the fact that all scheduled hangings, which were to take place yesterday (Over 800 of them), have been canceled by the leadership of Iran. Thank you!” he posted on social media.
Iran had not announced plans for such executions or said it had canceled them.
Indian students and pilgrims returning from Iran said they were largely confined to their accommodations while in the country, unable to communicate with their families back home.
“We only heard stories of violent protests, and one man jumped in front of our car holding a burning baton, shouting something in the local language, with anger visible in his eyes,” said Z Syeda, a third-year medical student at a university in Tehran.
India’s External Affairs Ministry said on Friday that commercial flights were available and that New Delhi would take steps to secure the safety and welfare of Indian nationals.
