Mar 21, 2017

It sounded dramatic: The leaders of 50 Syrian Arab tribes met in Sanliurfa, Turkey, and announced they would set up the Army of Al-Jazirah and Euphrates Tribes to end Russian and Iranian occupation of Syria and cleanse the Euphrates and Al Jazeera areas of the Islamic State (IS), the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party/Kurdistan Workers Party (PYD/PKK), Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Sheikh Rafi al Raco Ukla represented the Shaitat tribe. In his opening speech at the March 14 meeting, he thanked Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia for their assistance and added, “The US supports the PYD. The PYD is not different from [IS]. They deported many families from their homes in more than 50 villages.”

It's not clear which tribes actually attended the meeting and who some of those 50 representatives really represented. Some of the tribes at Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor have already sent troops to fight with the mainly Kurdish, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as the United States is preparing for an operation in Syria to take Raqqa from IS. On Jan. 17, representatives of 28 tribes around Raqqa had organized a press conference at Haci Ali village to declare their support for the SDF.

Ahmad al-Jarba, the former head of the Syrian National Coalition, has announced he will be participating in the Raqqa operation with 3,000 of his men under the SDF banner. Jarba, who hails from the Shimir tribe, has set up a group he calls Syrian Elite Forces. Several tribes including Shaitats have sent fighters to join this force.

From the outset of the Syrian crisis in 2011, such reports have frequently popped up in headlines along with scenarios predicting Assad would not survive more than two months. Such wishful thinking evaporated. So what is this report of a new army under Turkey’s sponsorship all about?