GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

Syria's Kurds Return to Al Assad's Fold

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Charles Glass
Board of Contributors

Aug 3, 2018 | 10:00 GMT

The Syrian Democratic Council, including Kurdish officials and some members of Syria's domestic opposition, gather in the northern town of Tabqa during July 2018.

The Syrian Democratic Council, including Kurdish officials and some members of Syria's domestic opposition, gather in the northern town of Tabqa during July 2018. The political arm of a powerful alliance of Syrian Kurd and Arab fighters said it was working on a negotiating team for any talks with the Damascus regime. The SDC is linked to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed militia that holds much of the country's north and northeast.

(DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

The mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), which receives vital support from the United States and an estimated 2,000 special operations forces troops based in the northeast, made the unusual gesture on July 30 of returning to the Syrian army the remains of 44 soldiers who had been executed by the Islamic State in the village of Ain Issa in 2014. Ten days earlier, local officials had uncovered four mass graves near what had been the headquarters of the 93rd Brigade, and the Kurds used the occasion to help mend fences with President Bashar al Assad. The process of reintegrating the largest Kurdish-controlled region into the rest of Syria is underway, and the United States can do little to stop it....

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