This week’s violence between the PYD (the Syrian branch of the proscribed Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK) and Free Syrian Army in Aleppo has prompted fears that not only will a “new front” in the Syrian conflict be opened up—this one between predominantly Arab rebels and Syrian Kurdish separatists—but that its emergence will severely inhibit the rebels’ ability to wage war on the Assad regime. Although well grounded, these concerns tend to obscure the more complicated and contradictory nature of PYD-FSA relationship up until now. More significantly, they also elide much the greater threat of an impending internal Syrian-Kurdish conflict.
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