Syria: Nubl and Zahra after Minnigh?

Safwat al-Zayyat

Where will Syria’s rebels turn next after seizing control of Minnigh airbase and securing a lifeline from Turkey to Syria?

Would they try and capitalize on their surprise assault on President Bashar al-Assad’s mountain stronghold to attack Latakia city?

Answers from Egyptian military strategy analyst Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Safwat el-Zayyat, commenting last night on Aljazeera TV news channel:

Three types of war are currently being fought in Syria:

1. The cities’ wars, which are attrition wars in the main, such as in Damascus, in Aleppo – where it is into its 384^th day, and in Deraa. Al-Manshieh is the only neighborhood still standing in the armed opposition’s way to win full control of the city.

2. Open field wars, such as over control of Minnigh military airbase. It took the armed opposition not less than 244 days to overrun the airbase, which covers an area of not more than two square kilometers. This is because the regime has the airpower advantage in open field wars to limit rebel advances on the ground.

3. With the rebels’ surprise offensive in Latakia province, we’re now into mountain wars – the combat for hilltops, valleys, narrow pathways, and unavoidable corridors. Such wars reduce the effect of the regime’s air supremacy and gradually limit its use of tanks and armored fighting vehicles. We saw how rebels used their Konkurs anti-tank guided missiles to great effect earlier today (August 6) and yesterday (August 5) to capture mountain villages in their Latakia province offensive.

It took the armed opposition only three days to move into such villages as Baroda, al-Ballouta, and Aramo in close proximity to al-Haffah. The latter is five kilometers from Aramo and 15-to-20 kilometers from Latakia seaport city.

I think the rebels were smart to target al-Haffah, because it is demographically predisposed to welcome them, even at the risk of artillery and air reprisals by the regime.

As regards Latakia city, I believe the armed opposition would prefer to bide its time at this stage. It would suffice to keep the city within its firepower control at this time.

More importantly, and for the first time in 12 months, the armed opposition was able to build a bridgehead in Latakia’s mountain villages to bury the regime’s dream of carving out a statelet in the coastal area.

In another gain in northern Syria, by taking full control of Minnigh airbase the armed opposition has secured a lifeline and key supply route from Turkey into Aleppo. Minnigh is just south of the Syrian town of A’zaz and the neighboring Turkish town of Kilis. The A’zaz-Aleppo highway is thus in opposition hands.

The rebels will as a result refocus on two nearby regime pockets at Nubl and Zahra, two (Shiite-dominated) villages (where Hezbollah fighters have been training loyalist militia).

Whether they turn to Nubl and Zahra or try to overrun Aleppo central prison next, the rebels are poised to win the battle for Aleppo province.

In other words, the regime’s great fanfare about winning the war after retaking Qusayr 61 days ago has been choked back.

Syrian rebels push advance into Assad heartland

Alawite cleric Ghazal in captivity (R) and earlier in military fatigue next to Ural 

Syrian rebels are pushing toward President Bashar al-Assad's hometown of Qardaha in Latakia province.

By Monday, the second day of their surprise offensive in the heartland of Assad's minority Alawite-cum-Shiite sect, the rebels had captured some 11 Alawite villages.

The villages include Aramo, 20 kilometers from Qardaha, and Baruda, where the rebels seized visiting Alawite cleric Badreddin Ghazal, a diehard Assad militant.

You can see above a photo of Sheikh Ghazal in military fatigue standing alongside Mihraç Ural aka Ali al-Kayyali, the man I dubbed in May “the ethnic cleanser of Banias,” who was also suspected of masterminding the twin Turkish bombings in Reyhanli.

There is already talk of a “prisoner swap” underway, which would see Ghazal released in exchange for setting free the women held by Assad’s shabiha in Latakia’s sports stadium.

"The rebels are not far from Qardaha, and the threat to Qardaha has moved from being conceivable to being a real one," Sheikh Anas Ayrout, a member of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) who is from the coastal city of Banias, told Reuters.

Monzer Makhous, the SNC representative to France and future Syrian ambassador in Paris who belongs to the Alawite community, tells the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, “The Free Syrian Army’s advance into the coastal region is vital, if only to prevent the regime from carving out a sectarian canton” there.

Saudi suicide Moaz (R) and the Minnigh explosion

Also Monday, the armed opposition captured the key Minnigh airbase in the northern province of Aleppo after an eight-month battle, seizing several tanks and other munitions and taking the base commander and soldiers prisoner.

Warplanes from the base had struck at villages across northern Syria.

Activists on Facebook today give credit for the Minnigh victory to a young Saudi suicide bomber who used an armored vehicle laden with explosives to breach the airbase defenses.

The Saudi suicide was named as “Moaz al-Abdelraheem.”

Egyptian military strategy analyst Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Safwat el-Zayyat last night described Syrian rebel gains in Latakia province as “very significant.”

He told Aljazeera TV’s Syria news anchor that when the armed opposition is able to move from Salma (a village northeast of Latakia) to within five kilometers of al-Haffah, which is the principal gateway to Latakia city, the questions become: Are the rebels planning to widen their bridgehead? Do they intend winning control of Jabal al-Akrad and the hills overlooking Latakia? Are they after cutting Latakia’s roads to Idlib or Aleppo or both?

“All this,” said Zayyat, “shows the regime has no military presence on the ground. It is unable to handle two battlefronts concurrently.”

Zayyat also took issue with yesterday’s report by Human Rights Watch, saying ballistic missiles used by the Syrian military is killing civilians and many children.

He said the HRW report “comes too late. The regime started using ballistic missiles in December 2012 – first against the rural areas in Idlib province.”

Ballistic missiles, said Zayyat, “are meant to leave what the military call ‘large footprints.’  So the regime using Scud missiles with a speed of mach 4, a payload of half a ton or more, and a lethal circuit of some 200 meters against village homes can only be described as a war crime of the first order.”

Syrian rebel tanks roll into the frontline

Syrian rebel tanks rolling into the field of battle yesterday

I have seen tank kills by Syrian rebels using anti-tank guided missiles.

I have also seen rebels driving away tanks captured from Syrian army facilities.

But it is the first time I see rebels in a tank formation rolling into Reef Dimashq (see above my screen grabs from a video posted on YouTube yesterday afternoon).

The formation included one or more of the following: T-72, BMP, Shilka and APC.

As I hinted in yesterday’s post, the Syrian rebels seem to have seized back the military initiative, launching major offensives against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad on several fronts.

They used tanks and heavy artillery to advance to within 12 miles of the Assad family’s mountain hometown of Qardaha in the province of Latakia, according to activists and human rights groups quoted by the Washington Post.

Videos posted by rebel groups on YouTube showed tanks firing on mountain villages and rebel groups raising their flags over captured government positions in four villages belonging to members of Assad’s minority Alawite-cum-Shiite sect.

The Latakia Coordination Committee said scores of Alawites had fled from the countryside into the city.

Charles Lister of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center said the scale of the offensive, which appeared to be the biggest yet in Assad’s heartland, would come as a blow to the recent confidence displayed by the regime.

Aleppo's central prison under fire

Rebels in the northern province of Aleppo are meanwhile pounding Aleppo’s central prison ahead of storming it to free some 4,000 men and women being held there.

They are also threatening to seize Nubl and Zahra, two Shiite villages loyal to Assad. Activists say Assad’s allies, among them fighters from Iran and Hezbollah, had reinforced both villages.

The rebels had earlier revealed a list of six demands, including the surrender of Assad forces and their weapons, followed by a power sharing deal between the villagers and the rebels.

Assad said yesterday the country's crisis can only be solved by using an “iron fist” to eradicate “terror.”

Speaking at an Iftar meal in the countdown to the end of Ramadan, he also dismissed the political opposition as a “flop” that could play no role in solving the country's brutal war.

“No solution can be reached with terror except by striking it with an iron fist,” Assad said.

“I don't think any sane human being would think terrorism can be dealt with via politics… There may be a role for politics in dealing with terrorism preemptively,” but as soon as “terrorism” rears its head, it has to be struck down.

Also yesterday, Assad got cheering words from Tehran, where his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rohani said the Islamic Republic’s strong support of the Syrian president is unflinching.

“No force on earth can destabilize or undermine the deep-rooted, historic and strategic relations between the two friendly peoples and countries," Rohani told Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halki, who was in Tehran for the Iranian president’s inauguration.

In New York, Human Rights Watch today said in a press release: “Ballistic missiles fired by the Syrian military are hitting populated areas, causing large numbers of civilian deaths, including many children.

“The most recent attack Human Rights Watch investigated, in Aleppo governorate on July 26, 2013, killed at least 33 civilians, including 17 children.



“Human Rights Watch has investigated nine apparent ballistic missile attacks on populated areas that killed at least 215 people that local residents identified as civilians, including 100 children, between February and July.

“It visited seven of the sites. There were no apparent military targets in the vicinity of seven of the nine attacks investigated by Human Rights Watch. In two cases there were nearby military objectives that may have been the government force’s intended targets, but were not struck in either attack…”

Syria: Assad isn’t winning and rebels aren’t losing

Anti-tank guided missiles seized by rebels in Qalamoun

Two body blows to the Syrian army this week dented incessant claims Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is winning the war.

He isn’t. And the armed opposition is simply not losing.

Between them, the town of Qusayr and the neighborhood of Khalidiya in Homs city – recaptured by the regime in the past two months -- don’t make up even 0.01 percent of Syria’s territory.

Assad can’t be winning the war if it takes his army – enhanced by Vladimir Putin’s arms supplies, Barack Obama’s perfidy and the complicity of Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki, Iran’s Ali Khamenei and Lebanon’s Hassan Nasrallah -- over two years to “retake” 0.01 percent of so-called “strategic” territory.

Rebels battling Assad's army captured five depots of Konkurs, Kornet and Milan anti-tank guided missiles, arms and ammunition in the Qalamoun area on the doorstep of Damascus early on Saturday.

The massive explosions in Wadi Dahab near Homs 

Two days earlier, the rebels sent a wave of rockets slamming into regime strongholds in the Wadi Dahab area of Homs, triggering a succession of massive explosions in a weapons depot that killed at least 40 people and wounded some 120. The rocket attack sent a massive ball of fire and a black mushroom cloud into the sky and caused widespread damage and panic among residents, many of who are Assad supporters.

Egyptian military and strategy expert Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Safwat el-Zayyat last night gave an enlightening news analysis of the two body blows to the regime.

Speaking live to Aljazeera TV anchorwoman Khadija Bengana, he said:

The implications of the rebel attacks on the weapons depots in Qalamoun and Homs are very significant.

The Qalamoun area, chiefly the village of Baqaa, where the rebels overran the depots, is teeming with regime forces.

It’s the nerve center of the Syrian army’s famed 3^rd Armored Division, which is renowned for its blind loyalty to the regime and is tasked with shielding the northern gateway to Damascus.

Legitimate questions need answering.

Why? Because:

§ The 5^th Armored Division, which is only 10 kilometers away from the scene, failed to send reserves to protect the site

§ The depots are close to the surface-to-surface missile brigade raining Scuds on northern Syria

§ The site is in the vicinity of al-Nasiriyah military airbase.

The rebels’ raid must have lasted several hours. Where were the reserve and mechanized units during that time?

Is this a sign that regime forces are extremely exhausted, overstretched and unable to secure the area between Homs and Damascus?

What if we also factored in the rebels’ rocket attack on the army’s weapons depot in Wadi Dahab, southeast of Homs city?

Does all this show the armed opposition is now privy to military intelligence information from within the regime?

The 3^rd Armored Division is one of the strongest in the army. It is not a simple matter for the rebels to storm the five depots under its nose and walk away with the booty in their own time.

The Kornet anti-tank guided missiles seized by the rebels -- of the type used by Hezbollah against Israeli forces in summer 2006 -- are superior to the Konkurs type they have been using lately.

The 3^rd Armored Division’s evident vulnerability could now embolden the armed opposition to go one step further, which is to cut off and win control of the highway between Homs and Damascus. They could even target Qusayr for that matter. Who knows where they will be heading next!

The army and allied militias are now busy fighting for the suburbs – in Qaboun, Jobar and Barza.

The armed opposition, for its part, has put Eastern Ghouta on the back burner and turned westward to knock at the door of Abbasid Square in central Damascus.

The regime is clearly lacking foot soldiers and unable to maneuver on the ground. It is mostly using heavy artillery, airpower and missile strikes.

But fighting without moving ground forces to occupy, or control, or in one way or another liberate areas, towns, townships, villages or a neighborhood raises many question marks (about Assad winning the war).

Hezbollah tells Lebanese president to “buzz off”

Al-Akhbar's front-page screamer

This morning, a Beirut daily’s one-word front-page screamer read: Erhal إرحل , Arabic for “Buzz off!”

It was addressed to President Michel Sleiman.

It marked one of the unique times in Lebanese peacetime that a newspaper tells a sitting President of the Republic to step down.

The newspaper is al-Akhbar, Lebanon’s mouthpiece for Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. The author of إرحل is none other than its editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin.

Amin slammed the president and told him to quit for doubting the wisdom of Hezbollah’s military involvement in Syria and urging a national defense strategy to end the twofold possession of legal (read Army) and illegal (read Hezbollah) arms.

Sleiman was speaking Thursday during celebrations of Lebanon Army Day.

Overnight, three rockets slammed into Beirut’s Fayyadiye, Yarze and Baabda districts, all home to presidential and army facilities.

Back to Ibrahim al-Amin’s إرحل editorial:

Strange is President Michel Sleiman.

What’s happening to him? Who’s pushing him? What’s he thinking? What’s he worried about? Who’s his team? Who does he consult? Who thinks for him or on his behalf and whispers to his ear? Who’s he addressing today?

Strange is this president.

Who put in his mind that he is the number one statesman? Who made him believe Lebanon’s salvation can only come through his hands? Who told him his words are sacrosanct? Who put in his head the country lives by his words and by his thoughts?

Strange is this president.

Who put across to him that extending his presidential term is inevitable? Who made him believe he is the eternal commander in chief of the Lebanese Army?

Who made him believe he is the trusted master of the country and people? What’s his grasp on facts in the country, the region and the world?

Which facts does he gather and how does he discard what needs to be discarded and highlight what needs to be highlighted?

What calculations govern his steps when figuring his conduct as President of the Republic?

Why his family members’ haughtiness – whether in charities, or by ruling the roost in clubs and municipalities, or in the way they commute back and forth from their homes?

Yesterday, President Sleiman expressed a sudden whim.

He said: “The Army’s task becomes more difficult when one or several Lebanese factions get embroiled in conflicts beyond the borders, thereby importing external crises to the interior (…)

“The Army’s task becomes more difficult, if not impossible, if the twofold possession of legal and illegal arms persists (…)

“It is urgently necessary to address and approve the national defense strategy, given developments in the region and the sudden redirection of Resistance weaponry to a target outwith Lebanon’s borders.”

What the president said is that he decided, without us knowing, that the Resistance is putting the country and its people at risk.

His Excellency decided yesterday that the Resistance has exceeded its limits – and Lebanon’s limits as well.

Discussing with the president his remarks is of no consequence anymore. Discussing anything with him is useless anyway. Debating his or his aides’ brilliant ideas and creative proposals is pointless.

The only logic, or the only language, or the only short expression that can be used with him today and tomorrow is: “Time you left office. Buzz off!”

Separately, U.S. Ambassador-Designate to Lebanon David Hale said in a statement at his Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday:

…The Syria crisis is having a profound effect on Lebanon.  The spillover threatens to disrupt Lebanon's progress toward democracy, independence and prosperity.  There are those who would drag Lebanon into the Syrian conflict.

Hezbollah is putting its own interests and those of its foreign backers above those of the Lebanese people.

Hezbollah’s active military support for the Syrian regime contradicts the Baabda Declaration, violates Lebanon’s disassociation policy and risks Lebanon's stability.

My mission, if confirmed, will be to do everything possible to support the Lebanese in their policy of disassociation from the Syrian conflict, help them maintain their sovereignty and ensure that America is helping to meet the humanitarian and economic challenge posed by refugee flows into Lebanon.

Violence is already spilling over. The work of the Lebanese Armed Forces and Internal Security Forces to protect Lebanon from these consequences reminds us that U.S. security assistance is a pillar of our bilateral relations and serves U.S. interests.

We work with these two institutions to fight common terrorist threats.  We have a strong commitment to support the Lebanese as they build-up these institutions so they can project state authority to all corners of Lebanon.  Only with such institutions can Lebanon ever attain stability, sovereignty and security.

There are over 700,000 refugees from the Syrian conflict in Lebanon, a nation of four million. 

The strain is great. Our humanitarian aid helps the refugee population as well as Lebanese host communities, many disadvantaged themselves, with food, shelter, healthcare and schooling. If confirmed, I will seek new ways to support Lebanese protection and assistance for those fleeing the terrible violence next door.

Lebanon's banking sector is the backbone of its economy.  For the financial sector to continue to attract capital, it must meet international standards on countering money laundering and terror financing. If confirmed, I will work with the Lebanese banking community to ensure that it remains a stabilizing force for the economy…

Turkey takes the side of Syria's Kurds

Yesterday's Erdogan-Barzani meeting and the title of Michael Weiss' piece

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has now played his “Kurdish card” -- not to win Syria back, but mire Turkey and hopefully walk away with an Alawite state.

This explains why he mobilized his Qaeda-linked surrogates to take control of Kurdish areas in the north of Syria on the border with Turkey.

In the face of the Syrian uprising, Assad forces originally pulled out of those areas in July and August 2012, hoping the vacuum would be filled by Turkey’s nemesis at the time, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The March 2013 peace deal between Turkey and the PKK spoiled Assad’s plan.

His fallback in recent weeks on his Qaeda-linked proxies – Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – is to keep the plan alive.

In context, I can’t think of a better eye-opener than yesterday’s commentary by Michael Weiss fittingly titled “Assad’s no enemy of al-Qaeda.” You can read it here.

Overnight, news broke of jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda -- read Assad -- having taken hostage around 200 Kurdish civilians after violent clashes with Kurdish fighters in two villages of northeastern Syria.

“Fighters of Jabhat al-Nusra and the ISIL have seized control of Tall Aren village in Aleppo province and are laying siege to another village nearby, Tall Hassel,” said the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Clashes between jihadists and Kurdish fighters have raged for some two weeks, after jihadists were expelled from the key town of Ras al-Ayn on the Turkish border.

The fighting claimed a prominent casualty on Tuesday, as a car bomb planted by Jihadists killed Kurdish leader Isa Huso, a leading member of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), a pro-PKK organization of Syrian Kurds and the most powerful faction of the ethnic group in the region (see yesterday’s post).

Politically, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met yesterday with Nachervan Barzani, prime minister of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government and nephew of KRG President Massoud Barzani.

The two-hour meeting at the Prime Ministry in Ankara was closed to the press.

The talks are believed to have focused on bilateral relations, the PYD’s agenda in Syria and the upcoming three-day Kurdish National Conference.

The latter opens in Erbil on August 19 with 500 Kurdish delegates attending, mostly from Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran.

Before Barzani's visit, PYD co-chair Salih Muslim, a graduate of Istanbul Technical University in the late 1970s, was able -- on Turkey’s invitation -- to fly from Erbil to Istanbul after 35 years.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu told reporters after meeting with Muslim he acknowledged Syrian Kurds’ need to establish a “civilian administration” in their areas, just as other opposition groups have. He warned such provisional measures were possible provided the administration does not gain “permanent status.”

The understanding is that such a provisional local administration would include other ethnic groups such as Christians, Turkmen and non-Kurds who live in the Kurdish-majority areas of northeastern Syria.

Turkish columnist Sedat Ergin, writing for Hurriyet daily, says Turkey’s dilemma of late was to choose one of two options that would serves it interests best: Control of Syria’s Kurdish areas by the PYD or by the Qaeda-linked groups?

“We understand from Muslim’s interview with Ali Çelebi for Özgür Gündem daily,” writes Ergin, “that the Justice and Development (AKP) government has gone for the first option.

“…This being the case, instead of approaching the Syrian Kurds with animosity, building a permanent friendship with them starting today appears to be a wiser, more realistic policy. The path to this passes along a road that approaches them with respect, knows them and talks to them as counterparts.

“From this aspect, Muslim’s visit has been a positive step in the sense that a dialogue has been launched between Turkey and Syrian Kurds; also, it complements the peace process launched with the aim of solving the Kurdish issue domestically.”

Separately, Turkey has also stepped up economic relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.

The KRG is now pushing ahead with plans to build an oil pipeline between Turkey and northern Iraq despite objections from Baghdad and the United States.

The Syrian Kurdish leader’s whodunit killer

Clockwise from top: The late Isa Huso, his car and flower draped casket

Yesterday’s assassination of Isa Huso, a prominent Syrian Kurdish politician, in Syria’s northeastern town of Qamishli falls into a category police call whodunits-murders.

They are called such because they are notoriously tough to solve, there is more than one potential suspect, with each having a distinct motive.

In Isa Huso’s case, the two prime suspects are:

(1) The Syrian regime, which imprisoned him under President Bashar al-Assad after the 2004-2005 Qamishli uprising by Syrian Kurds and during the rule of Assad's late father Hafez for campaigning for human rights

(2) Al-Qaeda-linked militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra, who are trying to rest control of Syria’s oil-rich Kurdish areas near the border with Turkey.

In a way, the two potential suspects are connected.

The al-Qaeda-linked organizations were a creation of the Damascus government, designed to discredit those who oppose Assad and to hide the regime's own brutal tactics.

This reminds me of the notorious “قناص” -- Arabic for “sniper” -- in the years of Lebanon’s civil war.

Between 1975 and 1990, the Syrian army often planted a sniper on a Beirut rooftop to shoot at one side in the conflict, then the other, to keep them fighting.

Isa Huso, 60, was a member of the Higher Kurdish Council, aimed at bringing together Syrian Kurdish groups, and an opponent of Assad.

Syria's main Kurdish militia later issued a call to arms to all Kurds to fight jihadists operating in the north.

It follows weeks of intense fighting between jihadist groups and Kurds, who make up a little over 10% of the population and are largely concentrated in northeastern Syria, towards the Turkish border.

Huso was leaving his home in the border town of Qamishli when a bomb planted inside his car detonated.

He was a member of the foreign relations committee in the Higher Kurdish Council, an umbrella group for regional Kurdish factions.

"Huso sought to promote Kurdish rights within a united Syria free from the grip of the Assad regime," his former neighbor, Massoud Akko, told Reuters news agency.

“No-one knows who killed him but the fingers point to the militant Islamists. They are the only ones who are targeting Kurds as Kurds,” he added.

Responding to Huso's killing, Kurdish fighters known as the Popular Protection Units (YPG) issued a call to arms.

“(The YPG) called on all those fit to carry weapons to join their ranks, to protect areas under their control from attacks by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) fighters, al-Nusra Front and other battalions,” said a London-based Syria watchdog, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The YPG, which claims to have no political affiliations, was set up to counter offensives in majority Kurdish areas.

In recent months it has been battling to drive out rebels from the north, including the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra.

Areas near the Turkish border have seen some of the most intense fighting, with clashes reported between the strongest local Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and al-Nusra in the town of Ras al-Ain.

The PYD has said it aims to set up a local council to run Kurdish regions until Syria's war ends.

PYD leader Salih Muslim reassured Turkey last week that his group’s call for a local administration in Syria’s Kurdish regions does not mean it is looking to divide Syria.


Muslim, who flew to Ankara from Erbil, told the media he was in Turkey to allay Ankara’s concerns over Kurdish separatism, and to explain why Syria’s Kurdish regions needed a local administration.


"Kurds will need to have a status in the new order in Syria,” Muslim told Anatolian news agency. “But what's in question now is a provisional arrangement until we arrive at that phase. ”


Muslim told Turkish officials a local administration would include other ethnic groups such as Christians, Turkmen and non-Kurds who live in the Kurdish-majority areas of northeastern Syria.


Muslim’s visit appears to have eased suspicions between Syrian Kurds and Turkey.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters yesterday he acknowledged Syrian Kurds’ need to establish a “civilian administration” in their areas, just as other opposition groups have. He warned such provisional measures were possible provided the administration does not gain “permanent status.”