MEDirections is delighted to share a new Blog Post from the Wartime and Post-Conflict in Syria project (WPCS).
Introduction
The leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has recently amplified its critique of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), and in particular of the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Mazloum Abdi. The old guard in the PKK are also increasingly demonstrating a clear inclination towards co-existence with the Syrian regime.
Recent remarks by the Qandil leadership also reflect two different approaches by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the SDF. Mazloum Abdi and those aligned with him try to follow a pragmatic political approach in northeast Syria, while Aldar Khalil, the main PKK-leaning figure within the PYD, follows and leads a different approach to Abdi’s. Using open-source data and relying on several interviews, this paper presents the two political approaches within the PYD/SDF.
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