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How Will Kurds Fare in a New Syria?
By HENRY SREBRNIK Syria’s 13-year civil war ended abruptly in December, when rebels belonging to the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) swept south from their bastions in the northwest of the country, precipitating the fall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. In a matter of weeks, a regime that had lasted decades came to an end.
One group of Syrians was particularly worried. Since 2014, Washington has backed a de facto autonomous government in northeastern Syria formed principally, but not exclusively, of ethnic Kurdish factions. This coalition, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), took advantage of the chaos unleashed by Syria’s civil war to carve out an enclave along the border with Turkey.
Much of northeastern Syria has been controlled by Kurds, who call it Rojava, meaning western Kurdistan. The SDF fought off a host of enemies: Assad’s troops, Turkey and Turkish-backed militias, al-Qaeda-linked groups, and the Islamic State (ISIS). U.S. forces worked closely with the SDF in chasing ISIS from its last redoubts in Syria. The United States still maintains around 2,000 troops as well as contractors in roughly a dozen operating posts and small bases in eastern Syria.
But six years after the SDF captured the last ISIS stronghold in Syria, ISIS fighters still operate in central and eastern Syria. The SDF’s actions also bred resentment among local Arab communities. Tightly controlled by the People’s Defense Units, a Kurdish militia known as the YPG, the SDF committed extrajudicial killings and conducted extrajudicial arrests of Arab civilians; extorted Arabs who were trying to get information about or secure the release of detained relatives; press ganged young Arabs into its ranks; twisted the education system to accord with the political agenda of the YPG; and recruited many non-Syrian Kurdish fighters.
To be sure, these excesses pale in comparison with those of the Assad regime, but they caused substantial friction with Arab communities, especially in Arab-majority cities like Raqqa. Particularly in areas where the YPG led SDF forces, many in the region were therefore calling for reintegration with the rest of Syria
The SDF was also hampered by ongoing hostility between Turkey and the YPG. Turkey viewed the YPG is a terrorist group. But in late February, a key Kurdish leader in Turkey called for a cease-fire with Ankara. Abdallah Ocalan, the head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK — a Kurdish militant group affiliated with the YPG that has long fought the Turkish state — told fighters loyal to him to lay down their weapons and stop waging war against Turkey. This allowed for a rapprochement between the SDF and the new government in Damascus.
Syria made the announcement on March 10 and released images of a signing ceremony featuring the Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and the head of the SDF, Mazloum Abdi. The deal will integrate SDF institutions into the new government, handing over control of border checkpoints as well as the region’s oil and gas fields to the central government.
The safety and prosperity of Kurdish communities depends not on foreign powers but on the Syrian government respecting their rights and those of all Syrian citizens. For Christians and Alawites, the situation is more worrisome. Unlike the Kurds, many of them face Sunni Arab violence; they are seen as collaborators of the late regime. For years, the vast majority of Syrians have suffered humiliation and degradation at the hands of an Alawite ruling minority, whose dominance under Assad has left an indelible mark of resentment. Gruesome videos of executions of Alawites have begun to emerge, alongside reports of attacks on Christian neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, Syria’s new interim constitution makes no mention of specific ethnosectarian groups or divisions. The new government claims they didn’t want a quota system, because of how they’d seen these play out in Iraq and Lebanon. The idea behind consociationalist or confessionalist systems, as they are called, is to give each ethnic and religious group a voice in government to ensure their needs are covered. But this has led to problems in the longer term, with different groups competing for privileges. Religious or sectarian priorities are always part of politics.
“The best day after a bad Emperor is the first,” wrote the Roman historian Tacitus. The hard work will now have to follow. It remains unclear how genuinely willing the new Syrian government is to establish an inclusive democracy. But it appears that right now Syrians living under its control generally enjoy more political and personal rights than they have had since the Assads took power in 1970.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
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ISIS Threat Surges Across Syria and Beyond, Raising Alarm Bells From Iraq to Sub-Saharan Africa
Islamic State – Central Africa Province released documentary entitled “Jihad and Dawah” covering group’s campaigns in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo and battles against Congolese and Ugandan armies. Photo: Screenshot
US and Iraqi officials are warning of a resurgent terrorist threat posed by Islamic State (ISIS), with the number of militants in Syria reportedly soaring to 10,000 and regional instability raising concern from Iraq to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Earlier this week, Iraqi intelligence services sounded the alarm over the surging ISIS threat, warning of a sharp increase in the terrorist group’s fighters in northern Syria, the country’s western neighbor, and expressing growing concerns among officials.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri revealed that ISIS fighters in Syria have skyrocketed from roughly 2,000 to 10,000 in just one year.
This number far surpasses last year’s estimate in the UN Security Council report, which placed the total of ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq at roughly 3,000 as of August.
“This represents a real danger for Iraq, because ISIS — whether in Syria, Iraq, or anywhere else in the world — is a single organization and will likely seek to establish a new foothold to launch attacks,” al-Shatri told the Washington Post.
He also noted that the terrorists who joined ISIS in Syria over the past year include men previously linked to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and al-Qaeda, many of whom have expressed dissatisfaction with the current political leadership.
As the Syrian government advances to retake territory long controlled by Kurdish forces, Iraqi officials are increasingly concerned about a resurgent ISIS threat.
In the wake of escalating violent clashes across Syria over the past few weeks, chaos erupted in regional prisons holding thousands of ISIS members, allowing many to escape into the desert.
Even though many escaped ISIS members were later recaptured, the Iraqi government rapidly deployed thousands of troops to bolster its border with Syria, warning that the threat of further attacks remained high.
Last week, the US military began relocating ISIS detainees from northeastern Syrian prisons, formerly controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to Iraqi facilities following the SDF’s withdrawal as Syrian government forces advanced into the area.
On Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the decision to temporarily transfer ISIS detainees to local prisons aims to safeguard both Iraq’s national security and the stability of the broader region.
According to the US Central Command, around 2,500 ISIS fighters remained at large in Syria and Iraq in 2024, but no updates have been released since.
These latest warnings from the Iraqi government come amid rising concerns following the departure this month of the last US troops from Ain al-Asad Airbase in western Anbar province, bringing to a close a mission that had supported local forces in combating ISIS terrorism.
The United States is now focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, where analysts have identified rising Islamist terrorist threats, making the region a central concern in the fight against global jihadist terrorism.
Last week, the deputy commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Lt. General John Brennan, said Washington is stepping up equipment shipments and intelligence support to Nigeria as part of a wider government effort to strengthen its presence across the region and assist African forces in combating Islamic State-linked militants.
Brennan also revealed that the US military continues to engage closely with the armed forces of the junta-led Sahel nations — Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali.
Under US President Donald Trump, “we’ve gotten a lot more aggressive and are working with partners to target … [regional] threats, mainly ISIS,” Brennan told reporters.
“From Somalia to Nigeria, the problem set is connected. So, we’re trying to take it apart and then provide partners with the information they need,” he continued. “It’s been about more enabling partners and then providing them equipment and capabilities with less restrictions so that they can be more successful.”
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Antisemitism Witnessed by 78% of EU Teachers in Classrooms, UN Survey Finds
Krakow, Poland – Oct. 5, 2024: Pro-Palestinian activists in front of the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University. Photo: Artur Widak via Reuters Connect
Teachers across the European Union are witnessing antisemitism as a near daily social occurrence in the classroom and the workplace, according to a new survey issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Released on Tuesday, the survey of 2,030 teachers found that 78 percent have “encountered at least one antisemitic incident between students,” and 27 percent have “witnessed nine or more such incidents.” It added that 61 percent saw students promoting Holocaust denialism, while others had students who drew or wore Nazi symbols. Forty-two percent witnessed “other teachers being antisemitic.”
“Hate speech, notably antisemitism and Holocaust denial, has reached levels not seen since World War II,” UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany said in a statement. “Most teachers have never received specific training to confront this reality, including the consequences related to AI development. UNESCO provides policymakers with unique tools to empower teachers in more than 30 countries — from classrooms and campuses to sports clubs — and soon even more.”
Included in a UNESCO report titled “Addressing Antisemitism Through Education: A Survey of Teachers’ Knowledge and Understanding,” the survey comes amid a global rise in antisemitism following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Since then, many European antisemitic incidents have occurred on college campuses, including someone assaulting a group of Jewish students while shouting “Zionist fascists” at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Vienna hosting an “Intifada Camp,” a pro-Hamas encampment. At the Free University of Brussels campus in Solbosch, a pro-Hamas group illegally occupied an administrative building and renamed it after a terrorist. Elsewhere across Europe, anti-Zionists damaged property to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Euros, desecrated Jewish religious symbols, graffitied Jewish students’ dormitories with swastikas, and carried out gang assaults on Jewish student leaders.
Violence in the streets of Europe’s major cities is also a regular occurrence. In July 2025, a group of people wielding knives attacked Jews walking home from an event on the Greek island of Rhodes; in Davos, Switzerland a man spat on, attacked, and verbally abused a Jewish couple— an offense he reportedly perpetrated multiple times against other Jewish people.
European governments are responding to the antisemitism crisis by paying closer attention to its linkage with the politics and ideology of anti-Zionism, a connection many political leaders hesitated to acknowledge and which UNESCO, despite having exuded anti-Zionist hostility in the past, also cited as a leading cause of rising antisemitism.
“Almost half of teachers (43.6 percent) had encountered students articulating hateful comments in relation to the State of Israel either once or twice, or often,” the report, summarizing the survey results, stated. “Hateful comments targeted at the State of Israel might not necessarily be antisemitism and may be motivated by other forms of hostility. However, comments motivated by hate are significantly more likely to include prejudice, or incite further dehumanization and violence.”
The document added, “Moreover, the prevalence of emotionally charged comments around the conflict in the Middle East highlights the salience of this topic and the need for targeted training and guidance for teachers on how to handle difficult conversations in an increasingly polarized environment.”
Across the Atlantic, teachers in the US have seen a surge of antisemitism in K-12 schools.
According to another survey conducted by the StandWithUs Jewish advocacy organization, 61.6 of teachers have been both targets and witnesses of antisemitic conduct in a professional setting. Meanwhile, nearly half suffered antisemitism perpetrated by their teachers unions, purportedly their advocates and representatives in collective bargaining.
School districts, obligated to comply with civil rights laws which proscribe discrimination, fail at prevention, according to the data. Of the 65 percent of respondents who said they are required to take anti-bias trainings, only 10 percent said those trainings address antisemitism.
“This first of its kind empirical study sought to understand antisemitism experienced by Jewish educators in K-12 education. Over 60 percent of respondents reporting that they personally experienced or witnessed antisemitism in their profession is an astounding number,” StandWithUs data and analytics director Dr. Alexandra Fishman said in a statement. “StandWithUs is deeply committed to rigorous research that serves both academic and lay audiences.”
Civil rights groups have argued that pushing anti-Zionism in the classroom can have a profound impact on students, who in many cases perpetrate antisemitic incidents. On Thursday, for example, local media reported that two 15-year-olds were arrested on suspicion of having graffitied 60 swastikas all over a playground in Brooklyn, New York.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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City of Austin Enshrines ‘CAIR Day’ After Texas Designates Islamic Group as Terror Organization
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The city of Austin, Texas has declared Jan. 22 as “CAIR-Austin Day,” honoring a controversial organization that has been designated by multiple US states as a terrorist group and scrutinized by federal authorities over alleged ties to Hamas.
On Thursday morning, the local holiday was announced with a proclamation at city hall acknowledging the efforts of civic and community engagement by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of Muslim Americans.
Representatives of the group praised the decision.
“Our proclamation today, declaring Jan. 22 as CAIR-Austin Day, means a lot, not only to the CAIR-Austin staff and board members, but for the whole Muslim community in our city statewide,” CAIR said in a statement.
The proclamation came about two months after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott formally designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations under state law, citing in part what officials described as longstanding ideological and operational ties with Islamist movements hostile to the US and its allies.
Abbott’s proclamation described CAIR as a “successor organization” to the Muslim Brotherhood and noted the FBI called it a “front group” for “Hamas and its support network.” The document also outlined the history of the organizations and their historical associations with figures and networks tied to Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a statement while announcing the designations last month. “These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”
In response, the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters of CAIR sued Abbott and the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, arguing the proclamation “chills” their freedom of speech and association under the First Amendment of the US Constitution and “retaliates against” them for exercising such rights. The CAIR chapters asked the court to stop the state from enforcing the designations and requested “compensatory damages,” according to the complaint.
Paxton responded by filing an affidavit defending the Texas proclamation, arguing in part that the terrorist designation is a lawful national-security measure aimed at protecting Texans from extremist influence, not a violation of free speech.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller lambasted Austin’s decision to honor CAIR.
“Austin’s proclamation of Jan. 22 as ‘CAIR-Austin Day’ is an outrageous disgrace and a blatant surrender to radical ideology that’s hijacked city hall. This is pure political theater, shoving left-wing activists ahead of hard-working Texas families,” he said in a statement. “CAIR isn’t some harmless community group. Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Paxton have branded it a foreign terrorist organization under Texas law, citing ironclad ties that endanger America and our allies.”
CAIR has drawn scrutiny over its alleged history of lending material support for foreign terrorist groups. In the 2000s, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) has called on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate CAIR’s status as a nonprofit organization, arguing the group has ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, two internationally designated terrorist groups.
CAIR has denied any ties to Hamas or other terrorist organizations, portraying itself as a civil rights group defending Muslim Americans.
Additionally, CAIR leaders have also found themselves embroiled in further controversy since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities in southern Israel.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.