At least 100 non-Syrian militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party have crossed from Syria into the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and traveled to the outfit’s main headquarters in the Qandil Mountains on Iraq’s border with Iran, three well-placed sources with knowledge of the scheme told Al-Monitor. The exfiltration of the rebels, facilitated by Iraqi Kurdish authorities, is in line with a US-brokered integration deal signed between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and the interim government of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Jan. 30.
The agreement, a revised version of an earlier one signed on Jan. 18, improved the terms for the SDF and ended weeks of clashes between the two sides that claimed dozens of lives and saw the Kurdish-led entity in northeast Syria lose more than 80% of the territories under its control. Under the terms of the amended deal, the SDF gets to retain four brigades, albeit under the overall command of Syria’s national army, a key Kurdish demand that is meant to assuage Kurdish security concerns.
Turkey was strongly opposed to the preservation of the SDF in any size or form because of its links to the PKK, which fought the Turkish army for self-rule inside Turkey until last summer. That is when it announced that it was disbanding and renouncing its four-decade-long fight in response to orders from its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
The process of transferring non-Syrian PKK elements to Iraqi Kurdistan came after a Jan. 22 meeting between Nechirvan Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and the SDF commander in chief, Mazlum Kobane, the sources briefing Al-Monitor said. Barzani, who has played a key role behind the scenes in bridging differences between all the key stakeholders, told Kobane that this would be a critical confidence-building step. Kobane agreed. Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and the head of Turkish intelligence, Ibrahim Kalin, were “extremely pleased” upon receiving news of Kobane’s acquiescence, one of the sources said. The move likely contributed to a softening in Turkey’s position regarding the establishment of the four SDF brigades.
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