Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army, FSA, fighters in the Syrian town of Azez near the border with Turkey. Picture by: Depo Photos/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved. More than six months after it was first touted, Turkey has declared the start of an offensive on Afrin, a Kurdish ‘canton’ held by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main component of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Turkish president Erdogan has announced that the offensive will be an extension of ‘Operation Euphrates Shield’, a major Turkish backed military campaign launched in 2016 by a broad coalition of Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions, aimed at taking territories from ISIS and the YPG/SDF in the province of Aleppo. Erdogan has also declared that the operation would extend to the major Arab-majority centre of Manbij, held by the SDF since 2016 with US and Russian protection, and the site of brief clashes between the FSA and US Special Forces.
However, it is still yet unclear whether the offensive will extend to the city of and not merely parts of the canton, and if so, which rebel factions will join in. Many rebel factions may baulk at the notion of attacking the city, a heavily-populated Kurdish stronghold, and seek to limit their advances to Arab-majority towns and villages in the city’s eastern environs, such as Mennagh and Tel Rifaat, captured by the SDF from rebels in 2016 under Russian air cover. The taking of a corridor alongside Tel Rifaat would also link the Euphrates Shield areas to rebels currently cut off in the western countryside of Aleppo and Idlib.
Much less is known about the nature of the FSA-SDF conflict in recent years
