What Next for Syria's Kurds?

this video is brought to you by nebula if you just glanced at the headlines you'd probably assume that the rebels had captured all of Syria Assad has been Ed all the big cities have fallen into Rebel hands and the rebels deao leader Abu Muhammad Al jalani is doing triumphant photo ops in Damascus however while it's true that the rebels now control most of Syria's population the rebels only control a bit over half of its territory with most of the territory to the east of the Euphrates River still controlled by the Kurds so in this video

we're going to take a look at the current division of power in Syria the deao Kurdish state in the Northeast and whether Syria could actually split into two [Music] countries before we start if you haven't already please consider subscribing and ringing the bell to stay in the loop and be notified when we release new videos so to understand this video you need to know a bit about Syria's geography while Syria is a pretty large country in terms of territory roughly the same size as Great Britain it's quite sparsely populated with the population of just over

20 million people as you can see by looking at a map of Syria's population density most syrians live along the western coast this is where the rebel offensive took place it started in the Northwestern city of Aleppo and went down towards the southwestern city of Damascus Syria's Capital most of the remaining population live either along the Euphrates with which is where cities like raaka and dear azur are situated or in the Northeast along the kabur river which is basically a tributary to the eates the main cities here are alh hasaka and quishi which sits on

the Syria turkey border while Syria's Sunny majority are relatively evenly spread throughout the country Syria's minorities tend to be clustered in certain areas the alawites for instance which are the ethn religious group that the assads came from are mostly concentrated in the coastal areas to the west of the Syria mountains around the port cities of Tartus and Latakia the Drews are mostly concentrated in the South around the Syria Jordan border and the Kurds who account for about 10% of the population are mostly concentrated in the north the Kurds in Syria and elsewhere have always wanted

more political autonomy so when the war broke out after the Arab Spring they took their chance and quickly announced the creation of a new independent state in Syria's Northeast to the east of the Euphrates River this state was technically named the autonomous administration of North and East Syria but is more commonly known as rava rjava isn't a Kurdish state pay and it's not even clear if Kurds constitute an outright majority in the territory but it has pretty Kurdish Vibes both because it's military Wing the Syrian Democratic forces or SDF is mostly led by Kurdish forces

and because the main political group in the region the Democratic Union party is a Kurdish outfit while rjava has operated as a deao independent State since about 2012 it hasn't been recognized by any other government or institution apart from the Catalan parliament in 20121 importantly though the main political groups in rojava insist they don't want to be independent rather they want rojava to be an autonomous region within Federal Syria perhaps like the Kurdistan region in Iraq anyway rojava's borders gradually expanded over the course of the war in large part because the US allied with the

SDF to push Isis out of Central Syria in 2017 and the SDF claimed this new territory for RO Java the SDF did lose some territory in 2019 when turkey decided it needed to create a buffer zone between rojava and turkey in Northern Syria but for the past few years the SDF have basically controlled all Syrian territory to the east of the Euphrates plus a couple of cities to the west of it including most notably Mage and de azur anyway before aounds fall no one was really talking about in Ro Java Independence both because Syria was

divided into at least four minates so redrawing its borders would have been chaotic and because there was a sense that Assad could slowly but surely retake the country however with Assad gone and the rebels led by HTS apparently in control of the rest of Syria what happens to rojava is now very much an open question as we see it there are basically three possible outcomes here the first is that the new Rebel government tries to take over rojava unifying Syria by four this is what Turkish president R erdogan the rebels main International backer will be

pushing for and since Assad's fall Turkish proxies namely the Syrian National Army have already staged an unsuccessful offensive on SDF positions in miib which has ended with the US mediated ceasefire for context erdogan really doesn't like the idea of an independent Kurdish State on its borders both because it might Stoke Kurdish separatist sentiment inside turkey which has been a long-standing point of tension into Turkish politics and because it could act as a base for Kurdish Terror groups operating inside turkey while erdogan wanted a sad gone squashing the Kurds was probably the main reason erdogan supported

the rebels in the first place and he's already been lobbying the EU against considering rojava's Independence nonetheless even if this is what erdogan wants an actual offensive on rojava feels unlikely both because it would undermine all of hts's recent talks about protecting minority rights and probably restart Syria's Civil War the second and perhaps the ideal outcome would be that the new HTS Le government agree to a federal structure for Syria that grants rojava sufficient autonomy so that it can be peacefully folded back into the rest of Syria this feels possible at the moment given how

much HTS are talking about protecting the rights of ordinary Kurds and the fact that as the most recent sna offensive demonstrated it's not even clear that the rebels would be able to take roab the third outcome however is that the new Rebel government and rojava can't agree on an acceptable Federal structure but the rebels accept that they can't take rjava by force and rjava goes for Independence this wouldn't be totally surprising while HTS are currently talking a good game about protecting minorities they're still committed to Islamic law which isn't obviously compatible with rojava's Democratic secular

Constitution whether or not R Java can become an actual state will depend largely on the internal community and whether other countries recognize its statehood as a final thing a lot here depends on Trump there's an assumption that Trump will pull out the 900 or so remaining US troops in Syria who have acted as a sort of security guarantee for the Kurds this would leave the Kurds somewhat vulnerable especially if they declared independence in Ro jaava however while Trump did try to do this in his first term it didn't actually happen in the end and when

turkey tried to attack the Kurds afterwards Trump imposed massive s on turkey and forced erdogan into a ceasefire if Trump can again deter turkey from taking direct action against the Kurds rojava's prospects will look a bit Rosier as you've probably noticed the new cycle is particularly fast right now with coups elections and governmental gossip happening all over the world in fact with Trump heading into the White House that chaos is only likely to get worse if you're feeling a little lost and even a little depressed then you might want to to check out our series

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