On January 23, hundreds of civilians took at streets in the town of al-Mansoura in the western Raqqa countryside to protest against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) after the murder of a local by the group’s security forces.
Local sources said that the victim – Ahmad al-Zaban, a member of the prominent al-Bukhamis tribe, was killed because he had rejected to join the SDF’s ranks. Last year, the US-backed group began imposing its forced conscription law in the Arab areas under its control.
During the protests in al-Mansoura, the locals and members of the al-Bukhamis tribe clashed with the SDF’s security forces and burned their center. This forced the group to withdraw from the town.
Currently, the locals are demanding the SDF to handover security forces personnel who had killed al-Zaban. However, the group is yet to comply with the demand or comment on the incident.
The forced conscription law led to several similar incidents in the last few months. Usually, the Kurdish-dominated group resolves such conflicts with help from the US-led coalition. However, this time the coalition may choose to stay away from the conflict beucase it is in the process of withdrawing from northeastern Syria.
