ANHA reports that South Kurdistan’s ruling KDP government, which collaborates closely with Turkey, has begun to station heavy weapons on the slopes at Peşxabûr across the Sêmalka border crossing to Rojava/Northern Syria and is setting up new control and support bases. The KDP’s military deployment at the border raises concerns about a possible joint attack by Turkey and the KDP on Rojava. At the moment, however, it appears that the militarization of the border region serves primarily to place the region again under an embargo in coordination with Turkey.

As early as 2014, the KDP had deep trenches dug on the inner-Kurdish border between Syria and Iraq and imposed a sharp embargo on the self-governing areas. In this way the KDP, together with Turkey, provided de facto support to ISIS. At the time, the population protested vehemently against the embargo and thousands fought in actions of civil disobedience to fill in the trenches again. The KDP’s Peshmerga forces then opened fire on the people and shot 32-year-old Mevlit Hadji Yunis in the night of April 14-15 when he tried to cross the border at Sêmalka to South Kurdistan. Many people were injured by shots during the protests at that time.

The cordoning off by the KDP was coordinated with Turkey, which also dug trenches on the border to Northern Kurdistan. Afterwards, a meter-high wall, hundreds of kilometers long, was built to separate Northern Kurdistan from Rojava. The armament of the border from Rojava to South Kurdistan reminds many of the coordinated action between KDP and Turkey in 2014 and raises the question of a new invasion.