Re: DAANES integration, Kurdish movement politics, what people are saying on the ground in Hasakah
"As is often the case when parsing the PKK-aligned political and security ecosystem throughout Kurdish-populated regions of the Middle East, it is less helpful to think of organisational schisms than different wings pursuing distinct strategies and exercising a degree of autonomy with a common goal in mind."
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"The integration process is threatened less by an internal fifth column, and more by the broader structural challenges and shortcomings that attend any such integration after fourteen years of war. On the government side, HTS’s rule is not threatened by Hurras al-Din remnants so much as subject to pressure and the growing resentment of a broader cross-section of demobilised combatants, excluded former loyalists, and economically disenfranchised masses.
Likewise, the “hot-blooded young men” protesting in Hasakah include former and current members of the Revolutionary Youth, as well as many with no relation to the body whatsoever; may be current or former members of SDF and Asayish; likely strongly sympathise with both the PKK and YPG as Kurdish forces; and certainly express doubts over the integration process, like the overwhelming majority of all Kurds I met during a recent month-long visit to northern Syria."