Ceasefire in northern Syria key to countering ISIS resurgence: Analyst

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - An American analyst on Tuesday stressed the importance of a ceasefire in Syria, citing US interests in ensuring that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) can focus on guarding prisons holding Islamic State (ISIS) members and preventing the extremist group from regaining strength.

“I think there will be a new ceasefire,” Douglas A. Ollivant, a Senior National Security Fellow at the New America Foundation, told Rudaw’s Shahyan Tahseen on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, the United States brokered a ceasefire between the SDF and Turkey, though Ankara denied agreeing to the arrangement. The truce has expired.

The Syrian National Army (SNA), a coalition of militia groups supported by Ankara, has launched expanded attacks on the SDF, particularly near the strategic Tishreen Dam on the Euphrates River. The symbolic Kurdish city of Kobane on the Turkish border is now also under threat.

“The United States has one overriding interest here and that is to ensure that the YPG and the SDF are not sufficiently distracted so that they can't guard al-Hol and other camps holding ISIS prisoners and ISIS families in northeast Syria,” Ollivant said.

The People’s Protection Units (YPG) is the backbone of the SDF.

These developments come weeks after the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime, with ISIS seeking to exploit security vacuums. The US continuously conducts airstrikes on ISIS positions in eastern Syria to prevent them from regaining a foothold.

“The threat of the Turkish government itself using its forces against the YPG forces, that it sees, rightly or wrongly, as nothing more than the Syrian branch of the PKK,” Ollivant said.

Turkey regards the YPG as the Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara has designated as a terrorist organization. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently reiterated his country’s determination to "remove" the PKK and its alleged offshoots from the region.

Douglas said that compromising control over ISIS prisoners could allow the extremist group to regain strength by putting them in a “regenerated place” with bolstered numbers that could threaten Syria and Iraq.

The group controlled swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014.

He emphasized that it is in the US' interest “to have a cease-fire so that the YPG can primarily focus on the prisons rather than having to primarily focus on fighting all these groups on its borders.”