Interview: Kurdish fighters aim to eliminate IS threat in northern Syria: YPG spokesman

The aim behind the battles the Kurdish fighters are carrying out in northern Syria is to eliminate the threat of the Islamic State (IS) with the help of the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition, a Kurdish official told Xinhua on Tuesday.

Speaking to Xinhua over the phone from the northeastern province of al-Hasakah, Salah Jamil, the spokesman of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), said the ultimate goal of the Kurdish fighters in northern Syria is to eliminate the threats the IS has been posing in northern Syria, mainly the predominantly Kurdish ones.

He said the Kurds have recently allied with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a new rebel coalition that groups Arab, Kurds and Assyrians, in the battles against the IS in al-Hasakah and elsewhere in northern Syria.

He noted that the new force is going to be the "new core" for forming "a new Syrian army that would function on secularism, far from the religious sectarianism."

Jamil, meanwhile, said the YPG and the SDF are fighting under the air cover of the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition, noting that Washington has been of a great help to the Kurds in the battles against the IS, which has attacked several Kurdish areas and committed atrocities there.

However, he noted that the YPG is not coordinating with the Russian air force, which has been striking the IS since late last September.

"The Russian air force has nothing to do with the battles fought by the YPG and there is no Russian warplanes flying over the areas the Kurds are taking... we don't have any coordination with the Russians," he said.

Jamil also denied any cooperation with the Syrian army, which is still present in the southern parts of al-Hasakah.

The Kurdish spokesman said the YPG has been making progress recently in the battles against the IS in northern Syria, saying that the YPG and allied forces have become in control of the entire 900 km borderline between Syria and Turkey, except the 110 km that are still under the control of several militant groups, including the IS.

The 110 km areas are between the city of Azzaz and Jarablus in Syria's northern province of Aleppo, where the Turkish government has been planning to impose a "safe zone" to stem the flow of refugees into Turkey.

The expanding Kurdish control has been a nightmare to Turkey, which pledged on several occasion that it will do whatever necessary to prevent the growing Kurdish influence near its borders.

"We are now taking hold in several points after dislodging the IS from the towns of Qara, and Karameh and around 80 percent of the town of al-Sad, which is a strategic area we are working to clear," he said.

Several families have started returning to the YPG-controlled areas in northern Syria, he said, placing the number of the families at 500, "which fled the oppression of the IS."

Meanwhile, Jamil said the Kurds have the right to have their own entity.

"There were always pretexts to fight the Kurds and deny them their right to have their own entity and everyone knows that the Kurds have defended their areas since the old wars," he said.

"We are now working to fend off the danger on Kurdish areas and we are in a state of self-defense and we don't want to have destroyed areas where people opt to flee... but still, that doesn't mean that we don't have a form of an autonomous region," the spokesman added.

The Kurds, who pose some 15 percent of Syria's 23 million inhabitants with most living in the north of the embattled country, tried during the conflict to keep their areas immune from military operations and retain the kind of "autonomy."

In mid-2012, Syrian troops withdrew from the majority of the Kurdish areas, and Kurdish militia became responsible for security there.

Later, the fire of the Syrian conflict reached the Kurdish areas and the Kurds found themselves in the face of militant groups, like the IS.

Now the Syrian Kurds are working to consolidate their autonomy, after the Iraqi Kurds became in control of the Kurdistan Region, an autonomous region of Iraq that borders the Kurdish regions of Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, and Syria to the west. Endit