Days after the Syrian government announced a ceasefire, which is being put to the test by renewed fighting, including the removal of the latter’s forces from areas west of the Euphrates River, tensions have been escalating.
Abdi has returned to the northeast after talks between SDF leader Mazloum Abdi and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus failed.
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The issues involving ISIL (ISIS) prisoners who escaped from al-Shaddadi prison during the conflict between the army and the SDF have been a source of contention and detention. On Tuesday, the Syrian government announced that 130 of the 200 ISIL escapees had been recaptured.
The SDF was charged by the ministry with using “political and security blackmail” to force ISIL fighters to flee from the al-Shaddadi prison. According to an agreement that the SDF would later hand control of the facility to Damascus, the army claimed it intentionally bypassed al-Shaddadi prison.
The SDF claims that the prison was “lost control” after an attack by tribal fighters with an army-affiliated army. It also claims that the army had attacked the SDF.
On Tuesday, SDF commander Fawza Yousef blasted al-Sharaa’s government for breaking the deal.
He told Al Jazeera, “The government has no political will to carry out a ceasefire.” The SDF cannot be disarmed if violations and attacks continue.
Within a month, the SDF will leave Raqqa and Deir Az Zor, which are both east of the Euphrates, according to the agreement reached on Sunday between al-Sharaa and Abdi.
As a result of internal disagreements, the SDF was accused of “trying to deflect blame” by an interior ministry spokesperson.
The spokesperson told Al Jazeera, “We favor peaceful solutions, but all options are open.”
The SDF’s withdrawal from the al-Aqtan prison was included in the agreement. Al Jazeera correspondents reported on Tuesday that the Syrian army had started artillery shelling around the prison and Raqqa’s SDF’s 17th Division headquarters as it appeared to be on the verge of collapse.
The army arrived at the Panorama intersection, which is located at the southern entrance to Hasakah, according to sources in Hasakah province in the northeast.
According to international standards, the Interior Ministry declared that it was prepared to assume control of the security and management of the ISIL prisons in Hasakah.
After assuming control of the prison there, according to information minister Hamza Mustafa, the army seized control of the Hasakah countryside’s city of al-Shaddadi.
Taking control of ISIL prisons
The SDF, the United States-backed force that fought ISIL in Syria, controls more than a dozen prisons in the northeast, where about 9, 000 ISIL members have been held for years without trial.
While al-Sharaa’s government has pledged to reunify Syria after nearly 14 years of war, the SDF has repeatedly underlined al-Sharaa’s previous affiliation with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly part of al-Qaeda.
In a statement on Monday, the SDF referred to the government as “ISIS sympathizers, whose actions are directed and orchestrated by the Turkish state”, and pledged to respond in a similar manner to the battle to capture Kobane in 2014.
“Today we reaffirm that the will of the people is stronger than all forms of aggression and occupation”, the statement said.
The Syrian government responded by rejecting “any attempt to use the issue of terrorism as a tool for political or security blackmail”.
“The insistence on linking the actions of law enforcement and the restoration of state legitimacy with the danger of activating terrorist cells constitutes a blatant attempt to distort the facts and fuel the conflict in order to maintain an authority that was imposed by force of arms”, it said in a statement.
“The Syrian government warns the SDF leadership against taking any reckless steps that would facilitate the escape of ISIS detainees or open prisons for them as a retaliatory measure or as a political pressure tactic”.
Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Aleppo, said the army accused the SDF of releasing the detainees while the SDF said their escape was due to their forces being overwhelmed by attacks.
A video that emerged overnight also alleged to show the execution of female Kurdish fighters. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the SDF, released a statement saying such conduct was a “reproduction of terrorism and poses a direct threat to regional and international security”.
Basravi said both sides were reverting to familiar language and using violence to settle scores in places of Syria that had been hoping for a return to peace after the ceasefire was reached.
Al-Sharaa’s offer to Abdi
Five hours of talks on Monday between al-Sharaa and Abdi aimed at salvaging the ceasefire ended without agreement, sources told Al Jazeera.
The president offered to appoint Abdi to the post of deputy defence minister and nominate him to be governor of Hasakah in exchange for the deployment of Syrian internal security forces to its capital.
The offer also included the condition of removing members of the Kurdistan Workers ‘ Party (PKK) from the territory. Turkiye sees the SDF as a Syrian branch of the PKK, an organisation that it has been at war with since 1984 and considers a “terrorist” group.
Abdi asked for five days for consultations, a request al-Sharaa rejected. The president gave the SDF leader until the end of Tuesday to accept the offer, warning that failure to do so would trigger military action and the collapse of the ceasefire.
Al-Sharaa on Monday spoke by phone with US President Donald Trump, and the two stressed the importance of preserving Syria’s territorial unity and independence and underlined the need to guarantee the rights and protection of the Kurdish people.
Ayman Oghanna, a journalist from Damascus, reported on Al Jazeera that because of its close ties to both the SDF and Damascus, the US was in a “unique position to end this crisis.”
Washington maintains about 900 soldiers in SDF-controlled areas and trains and equips them to fight ISIL. Al-Sharaa was also added to Trump’s November White House “terrorist” list and removed from it.
