Manbij – along with several other major population centers in Rojava, or Syrian Kurdistan – have been under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) since the fall of the Islamic State “caliphate” in the country in 2017. The SDF is a U.S. ally that did much of the fighting against ISIS in Raqqa and is primarily composed of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
The Kurdish control of Deir ez-Zor (or Deir Ezzor) was much shorter – the SDF essentially filled the vacuum there left by the collapsing regime of former dictator Bashar Assad for some days. Assad fled the country on Saturday after fighters associated with HTS, an al-Qaeda offshoot, arrived in Damascus. (Read More)
