For friends and allies of the Kurdish people, their worst fears are being manifested. Kurdish, Christian, and Yazidi communities are at grave risk in Syria. The trauma of 2014 resonates as many Yazidi people fear the genocide could be repeated. This morning the iconic city of Kobani – symbolising the extraordinary sacrifice of Kurdish troops against ISIS – is under siege surrounded by Al Sharara’s Islamist extremist troops, poised to face genocide on the scale of a new Srebrenica.

The United States must defend the religious freedom of Syria’s most vulnerable and hold Ahmed Al Sharaa – and Turkey – fully accountable to safeguard the region if a new genocide is to be averted.

Despite a US-sponsored ceasefire agreement between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (securing Northeast Syria home to numerous minorities) and the Transitional Syrian Government, plus the recent US retaliatory strike in Northeast Syria killing al Qaeda-affiliated leader Bial Hasar al Jasim, it seems the US policy has been subjugated by Turkish policies.

US policies are now dominated by Turkey’s perceived border insecurities with Syria, and Ahmed Al Sharaa’s ambitions to centralise power both exploiting the fragile new Syria by occupying Kurdish towns of Afrin and Aleppo, continually waging war on Kurds. The military offensive, which launched from the westernmost area (closest to Turkey) of the Northeast Syria area – Rojava – has been underway since January 6.

One Syrian resident of Al Hasakah confirmed a Turkish drone targeted the SDF-held Aqtan Prison in which houses ISIS members in Raqqa. US Envoy Tom Barrack is yet to issue any condemnation or restraint. Instead, in an extraordinarily callous statement last weekend, Tom Barrack, US Special Envoy to Syria, wrote the SDF’s utility as an anti-ISIS force ‘had expired’.

Over 5,000 people from 1,200 Yazidi families have been displaced since the January 6 assault on Aleppo and fear they are on the precipice of genocide. The two million Kurdish people, our devoted allies in the war against ISIS, are once again suffering massacres, abduction of their women and genocidal risk. The tiny Assyrian, Armenian, and Syriac Christian community is gravely imperiled, facing eradication.

Thousands of ISIS fighters have reportedly been released from Shaddadi Prison by Al Sharaa’s forces. Other ISIS fighters are openly threatening Kurds and non-Muslim minorities, and especially the Yazidis. Some of the ISIS extremists have been recaptured and the United States has made the decision to relocate 6,000 ISIS extremists to Iraq – their original nationality.

Even so, Damascus continues attacks in blatant violation of the fragile ceasefire agreed between the SDF and Al Sharaa’s Syrian National Army on January 20, 2026. Also in Northeast Syria, at the iconic turning point in the 2014 war against ISIS (when Kurds in Kobani thwarted the advance of ISIS into a key Turkish border crossing), today Southern Kobani is now subject to intensive heavy weapons and artillery shelling bombardment and intense clashes are ongoing at the hour of writing. Inexplicably, the Aqtan prison in Raqqah – site of ISIS extremist prisoners – is still subject to Syrian state-sponsored attacks and bombardment. The motive can only be the release of more ISIS extremists.

Shaddadi prison has reportedly released between 2,000 and 5,000 fighters; another in Raqqa is being targeted by Turkish drones in an effort to release the ISIS members held there – at the Al Hol camp, fears are mounting by the hour of a breach.

Kurdish residents in Hasakah (where thousands more ISIS fighters are based) have told me they have fled to Qamishli, anticipating more ISIS fighter releases.

Throughout the Rojava region, Kurdish people, secular Arab, Yazidi, and Christian minorities are sheltering in hospitals and schools, some even in the open in public parks without shelter in cold winter temperatures. All are desperate to protect their children while ISIS fighters roam the region.

‘It is 2014 all over again,’ said Professor Jan Kizilhan, Dean at the Institute of Psychotherapy and Psychotraumatology at the University of Duhok and Director of the Institute for Transcultural Health Science, State University Baden-Württemberg. Kizilhan is a world authority on the Yazidi genocide, and was instrumental in saving Yazidi genocide survivors both in Iraq and Germany.

In a phone call with me he explained that Yazidi families are seeking escape from North Syria into Iraq, hoping to reach Sinjar, site of the original ISIS genocide that launched the three-year war against ISIS. Sinjar is still not fully rebuilt and lacks humanitarian capacities for such a migration. He also explained witnesses in the Afrin region report Islamist jihadists are intimidating minorities by exacting a $2,000 jizya poll tax per capita. All is in full view of Turkish State occupation and the United States.

The events since the January 6 assault on Aleppo amount to a complete disavowal of the extraordinary allegiance the Syrian Democratic Forces have had to both the United States and the global coalition against ISIS. This is not only about their valiant military allegiance to the United States it is also a complete abandonment of a people who believe like Americans in gender equality, freedom of religion, human rights, and dignity of self-determination.

The SDF, a mosaic of Yazidis, Christians, and Kurdish minorities, have sacrificed 11,000 lives and 33,000 casualties in the war against ISIS.

Under the guise of ‘unifying’ Syria, Al Sharaa’s army has openly repositioned deep into Northeast Syria with heavy armaments after conducting genocide and forcible displacement of the Kurds of Aleppo in a clear effort to erase Kurds and again persecute and eradicate a minority. They are poised to conduct more ethnic cleansing on Kobani at this hour. At the moment, there is no electricity or water supply for the population. A major assault is feared to unfold on Friday. A Kurdish stronghold this is clearly an attempt to erase a Kurdish population.

At the time of writing the SDF has been compelled to give up control of the Al Hol Camp to Ahmed Al Sharaa’s Islamist troops. While the media reports a negotiation, in fact the SDF have been completely abandoned by US policy and the Global Coalition.

The Al Hol Camp, site of 25,000 ISIS wives and children is thus at great risk of breach. I visited this camp in October 2025 finding extreme radicalisation widespread. It now is poised to become an ‘ISIS education centre’ as one Norwegian humanitarian working the region observed to me this week.

Northeast Syria in the Al Hasakah Province, which I also visited last fall, was secured by the pluralistic Syrian Democratic Forces. They are a diverse community of Kurdish, Christian, secular, Arab, and Yazidi troops and other minorities. In my observation, they are committed to gender equality, a deep value in the Kurdish culture, with one full battalion of women fighters, the YPG (Women’s Protection Units). Some of these women have already been decapitated by the Syrian Army as gruesome videos reveal; dozens of SDF troops have been killed under assault by Al Sharaa’s forces.

The United States and the West are callously impassive. As the January 6 assault of Al Sharaa’s forces was launching on Aleppo, days later, the European Union released $721 million funding the same day to the new interim president even as he was consolidating centralised power at the expense of Syria’s rich minorities.

The world has stood by passively, witnessing the July 2025 genocide of the Druze in the Southwest Syria and the March 2025 genocide of the Alawites in Latakia on the Mediterranean.

As they perpetrated genocide, the Islamist jihadist ranks of the units in Ahmad Al Sharaa’s army pledged on video, ‘The Kurds would be next.’ Indeed, that day is here.

One of the most important responsibilities the Syrian Democratic Forces held was not only to combat ISIS but to secure the strongholds of the ISIS population remnants. These ISIS members had been in the displaced persons camps and three prisons holding a total of 10,000 hardened ISIS jihadists. One international operative wrote to me cynically of the US policy, ‘We don’t need the SDF as partner against ISIS; our new partner against ISIS is … ISIS.’

While his motive to disempower the Kurds is clear, Ahmed Al Sharra’s motivations concerning these ISIS populations is murky. Certainly, it appears he wants to dominate and dismantle regional pluralist power basis, particularly the SDF.

But as he is forcing the hands of SDF, including relinquishing their security control of these hugely radicalised and violent populations, he is likely seeking to centralise control over both the Al Hol Camp and the ISIS prisons. And this is terrorising the populations of minorities.

Critics of the SDF allege they strengthen the rhetoric concerning these camps to remain legitimate in the eyes of an international community, even as much of the world- including the United States ignores them despite their sacrifices. Sceptics also accuse the SDF of elevating their value in the event of a resurgent ISIS. This would give the SDF leverage over Damascus, a legitimacy Al Sharaa wants to shore up for himself. These criticisms are unfair and naïve.

Rather, Al Sharaa seeks to exploit this dangerous population for his own benefit: the atrocities conducted in Aleppo were commanded by sanctioned HTS terrorists once formerly ISIS themselves.

Perhaps Al Sharaa seeks release of those ISIS fighters – many of them foreign jihadists – to absorb them into his own troops or – more likely – he wants to release them into the surrounding areas to gain further leverage over the international community and cleanse Syria of its minorities.

Likely to applause and acclaim, he would state he is waging the war against ISIS with the global coalition for political expediency. Until then, more innocents will perish.

Qanta A. Ahmed MD, Senior Fellow Independent Women’s Forum; Life Member Council on Foreign Relations @MissDiagnosis