Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday called US-backed Kurdish fighters "traitors", sparking an exchange of insults with a force that controls more than a quarter of the country. "When we talk about those referred to as 'the Kurds', they are in fact not just Kurds," Assad said. "All those who work for a foreign country, mainly those under American command... are traitors".
"This is how we see these groups working for the Americans," he said in remarks released by the presidency on social media. Assad had criticised the semi-autonomous Kurds in the past, but his latest comments were harsher than usual.
They prompted an angry response from the US-backed, Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces. "Bashar al-Assad and what's left of his regime are the last people with the right to talk of treachery," it said in a statement.
"It was the regime that flung the country's doors wide open to hordes of foreign terrorists from across the world." The SDF also accused the regime of freeing "terrorists" from its prisons so they could "shed the blood of Syrians of all stripes".
The Syrian opposition has long accused Damascus of releasing extremists in the early months of a largely peaceful uprising to turn it into an armed conflict that has since killed more than 340,000 people and displaced millions. The Kurdish minority accounts for an estimated 15 percent of Syria's population and the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which form the backbone of the SDF, control swathes of the country's north and east.
Both Damascus, backed by Russia, and the Kurds, backed by a US-led coalition, have fought the Islamic State group in recent months. But their common enemy has now been defeated across much of the country, leaving the SDF and regime forces in an uneasy face-off.
Some senior regime officials had in the past made overtures to the Kurds, suggesting some level of autonomy could be eventually be discussed, but Assad's latest comments augur poorly for any future talks.
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