Nov 11, 2019

Following Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring, northeastern Syria has been effectively divided into five sectors from the Euphrates east to the Iraqi border. All of these sectors are controlled by actors mostly hostile to each other due to their diverging interests.

At the northwestern end of this picture, there is Kobani, which is under the control of Syrian government forces and Russian troops. The airspace is controlled by Russia. Despite sporadic clashes in the countryside between Syrian government forces and Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions seeking to expand their control over southeastern Kobani, the town center is relatively stable and calm.

The second sector is the Tell Abyad/Ras al-Ain/M4 highway pocket, which Turkish forces and its allies seized control of during Operation Peace Spring. The region is mostly calm in terms of direct military conflict except for Tel Tamr, where clashes are ongoing between some FSA factions [aka the Syrian National Army] and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) backed by pro-Assad militias. Turkish fighter jets are still using the airspace over the pocket as Turkish airstrikes around the strategic M4 highway are still continuing. In Tell Abyad, one car bomb killed 13 people on Nov. 2 and another killed at least eight civilians Nov. 10. The attacks are a sign that conventional clashes will gradually shift to guerrilla warfare in this pocket.

The third sector stretches from Ras al-Ain to the Iraqi border. This sector covers the 10-kilometer (6-mile) buffer zone where the Turkish and Russian armies conducted joint patrols under the Oct. 22 Sochi deal between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Military cooperation between the sides kicked off when a Russian soldier of Azerbaijani origin on the Syrian side of the border hailed Turkish commandos and said in Turkish, “Come here brother! Everything is safe.” Joint reconnaissance patrols began Nov. 1.