Mounting tensions in eastern Syria boil over in 'tribal' uprising

Mounting tensions boil over

The conflict marks some of the most serious internal strife within the US-backed forces controlling a large area of Arab-majority northern and eastern Syria since the creation of the forces in late 2015. It comes after weeks of tension between Arab forces and their Kurdish-led partners, with smaller clashes having occurred in July.

However, the current crisis had been years in the making.

Read more: Recent flare-up shows why Deir ez-Zor is Syria's next flashpoint city

Ahmed al-Khabil, better known as "Abu Khawla", has long been a controversial figure in Syria's oil-rich eastern Syria and has been frequently accused of abusing his power in various ways.

He had in 2016 been named commander of the Deir ez-Zor Military Council (DMC), which operates in the eastern part of Syria's eastern and oil-rich province Deir ez-Zor and is affiliated with the SDF but has long tried to retain some independence from it.

The province itself was for all practical purposes inhabited only by Arabs prior to the war in Syria, which began in 2011.

Deir ez-Zor is largely cut into an eastern side under SDF control and a western side across the Euphrates River under the control of the Syrian government and affiliated forces, where the regional capital of the same name is located.

Lured into a trap

Abu Khawla and his closest associates were the ones lured into the 27 August trap in Hasakah, a province north of Deir ez-Zor with a mixed Arab and Kurdish population.

In enquiring about him during one reporting trip to the region in 2020, I was told by residents of the area that Abu Khawla was roundly disliked but that – "like all the so-called Arab representatives chosen by the SDF", some claimed – he had been put in that position because the SDF believed they could control him better.

Some of those appointed by the SDF had allegedly previously been affiliated with IS, they added. Locals opined that these men had been appointed to positions of authority as a means to ensure the loyalty of those subordinate to them, as the local community would not accept these "traitors" and thus the men would look to the SDF as guarantors of their safety and report back to them faithfully.

In the case of Abu Khawla, it was also a means to rise from being known for allegedly selling stolen motorcycles and vehicles – as many people said he had been involved in prior to the war – to proclaiming himself 'emir' of the al-Bakir tribe, part of the wider Akaidat confederacy dominant in this part of the Deir ez-Zor region.

SDF-linked media had in previous years provided support to this boosting of his "tribal status".

For example, an article published on the North Press Agency website in July 2019 claimed that "13 Arab tribes, most of them Syrian, have selected Abu Khawla as Amir (prince) upon them as it's known in the tribal custom in recent times, the thing Abu Khawla considered 'a momentum for him,' pointing out that this selection will have a significant impact on their security operations against IS sleeper cells.

Relatives of one former military officer who defected to join the opposition forces and who later travelled to Idlib and then subsequently to his home region to fight IS claimed to me during a reporting trip to the region that they believed that both the SDF and Abu Khawla had been involved in the man's assassination in early 2019 after the former officer had played a significant role in the fight against IS in Hejin, south of his native area.

The former officer had sent me photos of himself near the front during the Hejin operation in late 2018 after I had first met him in 2015 when he was fighting alongside opposition forces in Idlib.

I also interviewed Abu Khawla in December 2020 in eastern Deir ez-Zor in the home of a member of the Deir ez-Zor Civil Council.

Abu Khawla and members of his family and close associates have been accused of major abuses as well as corruption. However, as one man from Deir ez-Zor asked for comment after his late August arrest claimed, "so have the SDF".

Among others arrested by the SDF on 27 August were top-level commanders under Abu Khawla including ones from the Shaitat tribe. The tribe was subjected to a 2014 massacre at the hands of IS. At least 700 hundred mostly men and boys were reportedly brutally slaughtered and buried in mass graves in the province that have not yet been exhumed, though many claim the number is well over 1,000.

Arab tribes fought IS 'for months, alone'

Among those who have protested for years against the SDF – and now against its ongoing "security operation" - are inhabitants of the Shaitat tribal area located near a major oil field.

The August 2014 Shaitat massacre received relatively little media attention compared with the Yezidi massacre that occurred in the same month but across the border in Iraq.

Both, however, were committed by IS against local populations: in the Shaitat case, it was against an Arab tribe that had risen up against the international terrorist group.

An article by Haian Dukhan published in October 2021 in the Journal of Genocide Research noted that IS "committed a large-scale massacre against members of the Sheitat [Shaitat] tribe, killing more than a thousand disarmed fighters or unarmed civilians".

It added that IS had committed the massacre "despite having achieved a decisive victory against them in a battle that lasted for sixteen days".

Previously, the local fighters in the eastern Deir ez-Zor region had also held out for months against an IS siege.

It was only after IS took the Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014 that the international terrorist group saw a massive increase in weapons, vehicles and funding, spurring worn-down and besieged local armed groups to agree to leave to other opposition-held parts of the country in exchange for an agreement by IS to leave the civilians alone and not to enter the inhabited areas, commanders and fighters involved in the negotiations later told me.

IS did not honour this agreement and thus members of the tribe rose up against them and were killed in mass, locals say.

During multiple trips to the Shaitat tribal area between 2019 and 2020, members of the tribe often pointed out to me places where the decapitated heads of their relatives had been placed as a warning not to disobey their IS rulers.

Many have left for Turkey or other areas of the country, while those that remain continue to live with the memory of the massacre.

DMC's 'new commander' speaks to Al Majalla

The man appointed DMC commander after Abu Khawla's arrest, Abu Laith Khasham, spoke to Al Majalla in a Sept. 5 video call and subsequent follow-up questions the next day.

He said that he was in a "safe area" in Deir ez-Zor but that he was concerned about his safety.

"My home was raided and my wife and eight-month-old daughter were there at the time," he said, noting that the SDF forces had broken the door of his home to get in.

While chatting with him, he received news that his teenage nephew had apparently been targeted by an "SDF sniper". He sent a photo to Al Majalla of the young boy's leg, bleeding profusely.

He told Al Majalla that he had defected from the Syrian Air Force in 2012 and had subsequently served in the "Free Syrian Army fighting the regime and the Iranian militias" and that he had been injured fighting IS several times.

He said that the "rebellion against the SDF" was not because of Abu Khawla but because the "leaders from the mountain" — a reference to the Qandil mountains in Iraq, which have served as a training ground and hideout for the PKK for decades — "did not allow any role in the leadership, administration, or decisions" of their own province to Deir ez-Zor natives.

Abu Laith also told Al Majalla that he had received news that "doctors and nurses have been arrested in al-Busayrah", a town in Deir ez-Zor that was among those that rose up against the SDF but was later retaken by it, and that they had been taken to "an unknown location".

Request for direct communication with coalition not new

A statement appearing online attributed to the Akaidat's Sheikh Ibrahim al-Hifl – who as of 6 September was still holding out in his tribal diwan in the town of Dhiban, surrounded by SDF forces that some locals claim are trying to push him to cross the Euphrates to central government-held territory – noted that one of the demands of those rising up against the SDF was to have direct contact with the US-led international coalition.

Local residents of Deir ez-Zor have over the years told me that this has long been one of their major demands, as I reported starting in 2019 from the ground in Deir ez-Zor.

The local inhabitants are this region almost always call and consider the SDF – or at least the 'cadres', or leaders - the 'PKK'. They believe that false information is being relayed about them to the international coalition through these leaders and those beholden to them.

The PKK, or the Kurdistan Workers Party, is considered a terrorist organisation by the US, the EU, and Turkey, which has been battling the group for decades.

Many of the leaders of the Kurdish-led administration spent years or decades prior to fighting in northeastern Syria, including current SDF chief Mazloum Abdi.

Many of the terrorist attacks that have occurred in Turkey in recent years were allegedly planned and organised in northern Iraq and Syria, where the group maintains training camps, weapons depots, and hideouts, officials have told me in previous years.

The SDF denies being part of the PKK but admits to sharing the same ideology.

The 5 September statement outlining demands, signed "Sheikh Ibrahim al-Hafel", included calls for an "immediate ceasefire" as well as "negotiating directly between the tribes leaders and the American representatives" and the restructuring of the DMC "by local officers from the region".

The last demand would seem to imply that the tribal leader would like men with military experience to be in charge of security in the region instead of those who, like Abu Khawla, had neither local support nor a military background.

View of Deir ez-Zor natives

One man originally from Deir ez-Zor but now living abroad said the day after the arrest that he was "happy" about it, since "now maybe they will bring in good people" for the positions at the head of the DMC.

Less than 48 hours later, he had instead changed his stance and said that he "would stand alongside" his family and tribe and that he was very concerned about what would happen to local Arabs in the area now.

The Deir ez-Zor native stressed that "the SDF is deceiving the international community".

SDF leaders and media close to them have over the years become known for propaganda and restricting media access to areas under their control, making it difficult if not often impossible to independently report from those areas.

Notably, one woman repeatedly put forward by the SDF as being "a DMC commander" – with her apparently claiming in one interview published on the website of a DC-based think tank claiming she is the "co-chair" of it – is not in fact among the commanders nor even part of the council, according to Abu Khawla, Abu Laith and others questioned about this over the years.

There are, they note, no women on the council at all; nor have there ever been any.

"She is part of the YPG," Abu Laith stressed to Al Majalla on 6 September, in reference to one component of the Kurdish-led SDF closely linked to the PKK.

Talking to Iran?

Only days before the arrests and the 'security operation', Iran's semi-official news agency Mehr on 27 August quoted the SDF's media chief Farhad Shami as saying that the SDF would not be involved in any "military operation against Iran in Syria".

The PKK maintains links with Iran - as multiple military, security and other sources across the Middle East have told me over a decade of reporting from the region – while Syrian opposition fighters are mostly wanted by the Syrian government authorities.

Many former opposition fighters who have gone through reconciliation schemes in other parts of the country in recent years were later arrested or killed in mysterious circumstances. Some of their relatives have over the years been arrested in government-held areas simply for communicating with them.

The SDF and the PKK have instead long had relatively close relations with the Syrian government in Damascus and have enjoyed implicit and explicit support from it at times since the beginning of the 2011 uprising and subsequent, ongoing war.

The line espoused by some SDF representatives that those involved in the uprising are collaborating with Iran and/or with the Syrian government forces – or that this is the reason behind Abu Khawla's arrest – thus seems unlikely.

However, Abu Laith claimed that if it were proven that Abu Khawla had been communicating with "the regime and the Iranians", then the DMC and natives of the province would be the first to stand against him since "they are our real enemies".

Concerns about the future

Many now fear that what little trust had been built between the communities in this part of the country has been crushed and that negative repercussions will result.

The international community has documented numerous abuses by the SDF but the US-led coalition does not seem to be able to envision – or be in a position to implement or apply the necessary pressure for - any substantive changes to it.

According to the website of the European Union Agency for Asylum, with the latest update being February 2023, "During the reference period, the SDF engaged in extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and unlawful detention of civilians. Torture, which led to death, was reported to continue to take place in SDF detention facilities".

The EUAA added that: "Forced recruitment of children continued into late 2021/early 2022, including through kidnappings."

Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted in a 4 September situation report that dozens had been reported killed in the fighting that broke out in late August and that there had been displacement of civilians in the areas affected. It could not, however, cite any figures due to "numbers still being confirmed".

It added: "Critical public infrastructure has been reported "damaged or destroyed, or vandalised/looted, resulting in heightened risks for civilian access to food, electricity and health services. This reportedly includes at least two area hospitals. Three water treatment facilities (Thiban, Darnaj and Al-Jardhi stations) serving 15,000 people have been damaged and are non-operational."