Fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) have started to leave Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood of Aleppo city.
Kurdish YPG figters (Photo: flickr.com / Kurdishstruggle)
On Monday, fighters of the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG) started to leave Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood of the Syrian city of Aleppo, moving in the direction of the northern Aleppo’s countryside, the Ara News press agency reported on Tuesday, citing an unnamed source close to the YPG.
According to the agency’s source, about 50 YPG fighters have already left the neighborhood and headed towards the northern countryside of Aleppo in order to take part in the fighting against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group there.
Meanwhile, social networks’ activists reported that YPG units from Sheikh Maqsoud are currently heading into Afrin, one of the four cantons of Rojava, a de-facto autonomous Kurdish region, established in Syria and controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).
Earlier, it was reported that the Syrian government gave the YPG time to vacate Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood of Aleppo until the end of December. Though, this information still has not been officially confirmed by the YPG or the Syrian government, the last development indicates that these rumors likely turned out to be true.
Did they pay them or what?
Anyway, I hope they go and fight ISIS in Raqqa.
Priority defend Afrin canton, need airlift to reach Manbij
Good news! OK, notice that it’s only “fighters”, and not “fighters and their families”, meaning that the kurds obviously trust the syrian government enough to leave their families back in government controlled territory. could we be seeing some quiet warming up of the relations here? I think that regardless of the same YPG ideology, we need to politically look separately at Afrin and Rojava. dont lump them together! rojava is openly pro-american, but Afrin has been much more isolated from american influence (read: arms deliveries, special forces, and air strike help), while the cooperation with SAA was greater due to shared zones of control (and enemies), which naturally induced a certain level of cooperation. Thus the released fighters might not just serve as seasoned fighters, but also as a kind of de-facto ambassadors that “syrian regime” changed and is not all bad, and so some separate negotiations could be made to reintegrate Afrin back.
Good analysis, only problem is Turkey never concedes anything willingly to Kurds, especially west of Euphrates.
They trust Russia military more then Iranian militias.
Given the extremely decentralised nature of the SDF/PYD (being Anarcho-Syndicalists), your analysis of the potential differences between cantons are likely to be very true.
They accepted over 100 nusra fighters during the aleppo offensive. Perhaps allowed even more to escape (most likely paid). While they did switch sides more than once, they ” usually” sided with assad and should not be robbed of their homes. It makes sense to disband them. Letting them control their own corner of aleppo would be an invitation for nusra to smuggle fighters back in.
YPG forces needed to re-inforce defense of the Afrin canton, now surrounded north & west by Turkey, south by western supported jihadist in Idlib countryside, east by Turkish forces and FSA mercenaries controlling Azaz. Isolated, cut off, facing threat of Turkish blitz up/down river valley from Reyhanli to attack Afrin city itself, and this time with no NATO air support ?
Do you have any evidence at all for this story?
USA is right the destruction of ISIS fall in USA election campaign manifesto.Kerry has requested thousand of cease fires in order to ordain Clintin and that has failed.But still Obama is the antichrist.
According to YPG, this story is fake.