Abstract
Since the armed confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, concepts such as “hybrid war,” “hybrid threat,” and “hybrid adversary” have been on the rise. These terms are part of an ongoing debate about the contemporary threat actors who effectively combine conventional and unconventional fighting capabilities, and who possess quasi-state characteristics. The Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, PYD) with its armed wing People’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel-YPG), constitutes one of these hybrid nonstate actors. After the Syrian regime withdrew from the Kurdish areas in northern Syria in 2012, the PYD/YPG seized control of several towns and enclaves in this region and emerged as one of the most influential actors of the Syrian civil war. This chapter provides an analysis of the PYD/YPG’s rise in the Syrian context as well as its policy implications with a special emphasis on the concept of “hybrid actor.”
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Notes
- 1.
The anti-ISIS coalition is composed of 69 countries today. See http://theglobalcoalition.org/en/partners/
- 2.
For a more detailed discussion of the PYD’s administrative structure in northern Syria, see Ünver (2017).
- 3.
In July 2016, Jabhat al-Nusra ended all its ties to al-Qaeda and changed its name to Jabhad Fatah al-Sham.
- 4.
The KNC comprises the following Syrian Kurdish groups: The Kurdish Union Party in Syria (Yekîtî), The Kurdistan Democratic Party-Syria (PDK-S), The Kurdish Reform Movement-Syria, The Kurdish Democratic Equality Party in Syria, The Kurdish Democratic Patriotic Party in Syria, The Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria (el-Partî), The Kurdish Democratic Union Party in Syria (Democratic Yekîtî), The Kurdistan Democratic Union Party, The Kurdish Democratic Left Party in Syria, The Kurdistan Left Party-Syria, and the Kurdish Future Movement in Syria (See http://knc-geneva.org/?page_id=49&lang=en).
- 5.
Here, it must be mentioned that the KNC withdrew from the latest round of Geneva talks, arguing that “the High Negotiations Committee has continuously ignored the Kurdish problem” (Sputnik 2017).
- 6.
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Pusane, Ö.K. (2018). How to Profile PYD/YPG as an Actor in the Syrian Civil War: Policy Implications for the Region and Beyond. In: Oktav, Ö., Parlar Dal, E., Kurşun, A. (eds) Violent Non-state Actors and the Syrian Civil War. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67528-2_4
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