Dec 8, 2016

As the people filling the large hall of the European Parliament building for a conference on the Middle East listened to responses by the panel featuring British writers Jonathan Steele and Carne Ross, I thought about what their co-panelist, Salih Muslim, the leader of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), would say.

It had been only a few weeks before that I had met Muslim, whose party administers swaths of territory in northern Syria and two Kurdish-inhabited neighborhoods in Aleppo, Sheikh Maksoud and Ashrafieh. Since our meeting, there had been two significant developments involving him and actors involved in the Syrian conflict: Turkish authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Muslim, and Syrian regime forces had defeated Turkish-backed opposition groups in eastern Aleppo.

The military success of the regime in Aleppo, aided by Russian air power and Iranian ground forces, will undoubtedly have decisive consequences on the trajectory of the war. Also going forward, the military and political role of Russia in the region will not only affect Syria, but probably neighboring Iraq as well. Yet another major factor in the future of the Middle East is the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in this year's US presidential elections.

Against this backdrop, one might think that whatever Muslim might have had to say at the European conference would be of potential significance. Instead, he was as vague as he could be. His one recurring theme was the importance of the Kurdish self-rule model in northern Syria. The (involuntary) absence of the PYD at the peace talks in Geneva, he claimed, was the main reason for their failure. If the Kurds had been properly represented at Geneva I and Geneva II, then everything would be much different today. Thus, in Muslim’s eyes, acknowledgment of Kurdish self-rule is essential for a peaceful resolution of the Syrian conflict.

When it came to Russia and the incoming US administration, Muslim’s message was quite clear: Syrian Kurds should not be sacrificed on the altar of realpolitik. Muslim appeared to be preoccupied with two issues: whether Trump’s United States will stand with the Syrian Kurds or tilt more toward Turkey, and how Russia will reconcile having Syrian Kurdish allies and relations with Turkey in light of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's increasing flirtation with President Vladimir Putin.