On November 26, Hawas Akid, a member of the Syrian Kurdish National Council (KNC) and the Syrian High Negotiations Committee (HNC) told the Kurdish Rudaw TV that he suggested to Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to increase the number of Syrian Kurds in the different committees of the Syrian opposition during a private meeting.
“We talked for a long time about the situation in the Kurdish areas in the Syrian Kurdistan, and about the structure of the KNC … I presented to the Saudi minister the KNC’s vision for a solution in Syria,” Akid told Rudaw TV.
Akid said that al-Jubier stressed the importance of the KNC and promised that Saudi Arabia will work assisting the Kurds to get their rights.
Saudi Arabia’s relations with the KNC is another threat to the future of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The KNC and SDF have been in a conflict since the SDF arrested dozens of KNC members and leaders during 2016 and accused them of “supporting terrorism” or “corruption”.
The Saudi move towards the KNC also proves that Saudi Arabia is not a direct supporter of the SDF as some Kurdish sources claimed in the past. In fact, some Syrian activists argue that weakening of the SDF is within the interest of Saudi Arabia because it is influential in most of the Arab tribes’ areas in eastern Syria. The Saudis will need this area if they want their allies in the Syrian opposition to win in any future elections in Syria.
The Saudi-backed Syrian opposition has also criticized the SDF on many occasions. On October 29, the head of the Saudi-backed Syrian National Coordination Committee for the Forces of Democratic Change (NCC) Hassan Abdel Azim criticized the SDF and emphasized that the Syrian opposition is against a federal system in Syria.
