u/flintsparc

Criticism of the announcement of "QSD" printing its curricula in preparation for the new academic year.

The so-called "self-administration" of the "QSD" militia announced the printing of its updated curricula in preparation for the 2026–2027 academic year.

The announcement sparked a wave of criticism, amid widespread rejection of continuing to impose curricula that do not have official recognition from the Syrian Ministry of Education, which raises concerns among parents about the future of students and the certificates they receive.

Critics argue that insisting on adopting these curricula exacerbates division in the education sector, putting thousands of students in a state of uncertainty, demanding a return to recognized curricula that preserve students' right to follow their education and academic future.

https://x.com/HasakahMC/status/2079896043970249014

"In 2023, the two groups clashes several times in 'Azaz.
After the fall of the Assad regime, the leaders of the Northern Storm and the Levant Front (especially from the Danoun family, and Abu Ali Shejo) used the funds they amassed through cross-border smuggling & drug running in/from Turkey to open businesses and engage in trade, while a few of the former fighters joined the General Security Service. The Amshat, however, are much more powerful within the new Syrian state and joined the MoI and MoD in large numbers & assumed the command position of the GSS in 'Azaz and are unhappy about the growing economic clout of the Northern Storm commanders.

"This is the background to the clashes that erupted following a small spat involving members of the Danoun family. During these clashes, members of the Danoun family within the GSS, alongside armed civilians, clashed with the Amshat within GSS and GSS personnel rushed to the area. Quiet has been restored for now.

"The bottom line: Syria remains a highly fragile state and it's a major challenge to convert militia fighters into soldiers and internal security servicemen who obey orders of their commanders. The Ministry of Interior has made significant progress in this regard, but challenges and abuses of civilians remain. We witnessed this in the massacres against the Alawis and Druze, and even in the campaign against the SDF in northeast Syria - GSS and Army personnel participated in the looting of Kurdish properties in Raqqa city and Sarrin near Kobani (after all the Kurdish population fled). However, once order was restored, the same GSS personnel protected the returning Kurdish IDPs and even kicked out Arab families squatting in the Kurdish homes. An additional challenge is that much of the Syrian population, especially in rural areas, is armed. The Syrian government worked to disarm the Alawis & attempted to do the same with the Druze, but no similar campaigns were launched to register or collect weapons of Sunnis."

https://x.com/LizHurra/status/2078793037937864889

https://x.com/NPA_English/status/2077327326388355228

https://x.com/_____mjb/status/2076380182311575649

Aliza Marcus presents "Resurgence and Revolution: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight in Turkey and Syria" + Panel: The PKK and the Peace Process

A Panel Discussion on the 50 years of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) and the current peace process with the Republic of Turkey

Many on the radical left have drawn inspiration from Rojava without ever having occasion to seriously engage the political organization that built it. This panel offers that engagement: fifty years of the PKK, the current peace process with the Republic of Turkey, and what the campaign for Öcalan's freedom looks like in 2026. The democratic confederalism practiced in Northern Syria did not emerge in a vacuum: it was forged through the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its decades-long resistance against what Kurdish writers including panelist Rebwar Rashed have characterized as Turkey's recurrent slide into fascism.

The panel deliberately combines three perspectives: rigorous historical documentation from Aliza Marcus, active political analysis from the Kurdish National Congress through Rêbwar Reşîd, and a firsthand encounter with the PKK from an earlier era from Colin Patrick Starger. Together they will examine the PKK's organizational and ideological transformation, the campaign for Abdullah Öcalan's freedom, and the contradictions of the current peace process.

Panelists:

• Aliza Marcus, Author of Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence and the newly released Resurgence and Revolution: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight in Turkey and Syria (NYU Press, May 2026). Formerly an international correspondent for The Boston Globe, Marcus covered the PKK for more than eight years as a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and Reuters, receiving a National Press Club Award and a MacArthur Foundation grant for her work.
• Rêbwar Reşîd, has been Co-Chair of the Kurdish National Congress (KNK, transnational political body representing Kurdish movements across all parts of Kurdistan) between 2014-2018. He is a Public Relations Specialist and has translated several books into Kurdish and written extensively on the Kurdistan National Liberation Movement, human rights, Women's Rights Movements and democratic struggle. He is the president of the KCA, Kurdistan Communities Assembly.
• Colin Patrick Starger, Professor of Law & Director of the Legal Data & Design Clinic at the University of Baltimore. Notably for tonight's discussion, he is the only U.S. citizen to have ever been abducted by the PKK. A graduate of Columbia Law School, Starger has a distinguished career rooted in justice; as a former Staff Attorney at the Innocence Project, he was lead counsel on four DNA exonerations, including saving a man from Oklahoma's death row. A recognized innovator in the legal field, he leads the software-driven SCOTUS Mapping Project and was named a 2020 American Bar Association “Legal Rebel.”

Facilitator: Stephen Flint Arthur, Solidarity activist with Kurdistan, active with the U.S. Mission of the Syrian Democratic Council, with which he traveled to Rojava in 2019. Claimant in Kurd v. Republic of Turkey following his 2017 assault by Turkish security personnel attached to President Erdoğan's delegation in Washington, D.C. Senior moderator of r/Kurdistan (56k members) and previously facilitator of several Kurdish-related events at Red Emma's.

This discussion will also be the Baltimore book launch for Aliza Marcus's new book Resurgence and Revolution: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight in Turkey and Syria published May 2026 with NYU Press.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1693322275383346

https://redemmas.org/events/aliza-marcus-presents-resurgence-and-revolution-the-pkk-and-the-kurdish-fight-in-turkey-and-syria-panel-the-pkk-and-the-peace-process/

https://withfriends.co/event/28407519/aliza_marcus_presents_resurgence_and_revolution_the_pkk_and_the_kurdish_fight_in_turkey_and_syria_and_panel_the_pkk_and_the_peace_process

HKN Energy has begun operating seven oil fields under a 25-year agreement with Damascus, marking the first major production-sharing deal between Syria's new government and an international oil company.

A Texas-based oil and gas company, HKN Energy, formally took over production at seven oil fields in Kurdish-administered northeastern Syria on Sunday, a top executive has confirmed.

The executive, who spoke exclusively to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, provided extensive details of the 25-year agreement that was concluded in April between HKN Energy and Syria’s state-run Syrian Petroleum Company. It is the first international oil company to have signed a production-sharing agreement with Syria’s new government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa. 

The oil will be trucked to refineries and export terminals in Baniyas on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, another person familiar with the details of the agreement said.

HKN is partnered with Qatar’s UCC Holding but will be the sole operator. UCC Holding signed a memorandum of understanding with the Syrian government in February together with US major Chevron to evaluate oil and gas exploration in Syrian waters.

HKN was founded in 2007 and is majority owned by Ross Perot Jr., the son of the eponymous former presidential candidate who ran as an independent in 1992. 

The production-sharing deal covers oil fields that were run until now by the Jazira Oil Company, or JOC, a subsidiary of the SPC. It was taken over by the Kurds when the Assad regime pulled out of the Kurdish-majority northeast in 2012 to fight a Sunni insurgency in the remainder of the country.

The fields are Sazaba, Alyan, Layla, Karatchok, Rmeilan, Hamza and Sweidah. 

In a recent interview with Al-Monitor, Mazlum Kobane, the senior-most figure in the Kurdish-led administration, acknowledged that the oil fields in the Rmeilan region that skirts the Turkish and Iraqi borders were the property of the Syrian state. The SPC controls two more fields in the Kurdish-run region, Khurbet and Oudeh. The UK firm Gulfsands used to operate the Youssefieh and eastern Khurbet fields until the start of the civil war in 2011. It is lobbying Damascus to get them back.

'Disinformation' campaign

Contrary to "disinformation" being circulated on social media, JOC is not a party to the contract, the executive who briefed Al-Monitor said. Rather, it will work as a service provider. “Any agreements for domestic consumption and refining allocation are between the JOC and the SPC. They have reached an agreement, but we aren't part of that," the executive said. 

Furthermore, HKN will not take a 32% share of the proceeds as is being claimed. Under the terms of the contract, any oil extracted on top of the current estimated baseline production will go to HKN. "The contract requires the baseline to be established over the first 60 days," the executive said. The initial baseline agreed upon was 50,000 barrels per day. 

The real figure is likely closer to 80,000 barrels per day. 

The details of the agreement between the Kurds and Damascus have yet to be disclosed. The person familiar with the deal said no written agreement had been reached between the JOC and the SPC. "Nothing has been put in writing," the person said.

Al-Monitor was unable to reach JOC and SPC officials for comment. One Kurdish source with close ties to the Kurdish-led administration said the SPC had agreed to give the JOC a 10% stake in its own share of production from the seven fields. 

The executive declined to comment on the claim.

"The first priority for HKN is to address the produced oil/water that is disposed of in the environment and to implement international standards that will eliminate this environmental pollution, which HKN began addressing on their first day of operations," the executive explained, calling it a "huge win for the Kurds." 

Typically, water produced from the oil wells during extraction in northeast Syria is dumped on the ground, polluting rivers and agricultural land. The water is mixed with oil, transforming it into a deadly black sludge that blights the landscape and is thought to contribute to the alarming rise in cancer and other diseases.

In most oil operations, the water is either treated or re-injected into the well. 

Once the pollution issue is fully addressed, production at the fields is expected to rise to an average of 200,000 barrels per day.

Some 6,000 JOC employees will be on HKN’s payroll for a transitional period of three months. “Syria is going to get more than 75% of the economic value of this project,” the executive said.  

HKN did not announce the deal in April out of concern that its fields might be targeted by Iran-backed Shiite militias in neighboring Iraq. The company’s fields in Iraqi Kurdistan have been hit twice by the militias since the start of the Iran war in February, part of a broader Iranian-backed campaign targeting US bases and US-linked oil companies. SPC CEO Youssef Qiblawy was first to announce the news during an Atlantic Council energy forum on June 9 in Washington.

Shifting fortunes

The Kurds’ lesser role in the scheme is a further manifestation of their shifting fortunes since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. Until then, Kobane and his Syrian Democratic Forces were the top allies of successive US administrations in the fight against the Islamic State.

Around 2,000 US forces deployed in the Kurdish zone provided a critical security shield against Assad and the Turkish military.

Al-Monitor was first to report on a deal struck in July 2020 between the Kurdish-led administration and an obscure Delaware-based oil company called Delta Crescent to develop the fields that HKN is now operating. The deal collapsed amid pressure from Ankara. Turkey was fiercely opposed to any form of cooperation with the SDF because of its close links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, which was fighting an armed insurgency against the Turkish army at the time. 

The fall of the Assad regime in 2024 proved a watershed moment as Western governments, led by the United States, embraced Syria’s new leader, Sharaa. Last year, HKN met with Syrian officials in Damascus to explore the possibility of taking over production at the Rmeilan fields and, according to sources familiar with the exchanges, were told by their Syrian interlocutors that they would need to meet with the Kurdish-led administration as well. They duly met with Kobane and the commander-in-chief of the Women’s Protection Units, Rohelat Afrin. A three-party deal was potentially in play. However, all that changed in January this year. 

The Pentagon did not intervene as Sharaa’s forces mounted a major offensive against the SDF, seizing more than 80% of the territories that it controlled. These included the eastern part of the majority-Arab Deir Ezzor province, which is home to major oil and gas fields. The US only intervened — diplomatically — after Sharaa’s forces made a play for the Kurdish-majority areas. A ceasefire agreement that laid out new terms for the SDF to be folded into the Syrian army was signed at the end of January. For Kurds worldwide, it was seen as a crushing defeat and the end of their hopes of achieving federal status like their brothers in Iraq. By May, the Pentagon had withdrawn all its forces from Syria — a final act of betrayal, as the Kurds saw things.

A big question mark hangs over the future of JOC, whose operations were shrouded in secrecy. Will it be folded into the government like other state structures the Kurds inherited from the Assad regime? Oil was the biggest source of income for their autonomous administration. “How will civil servants' salaries get paid in Qamishli and Kobani if the money is no longer coming in,” the second person briefing Al-Monitor asked. In any case, no foreign energy company can operate in Syria without going through Damascus first.

Side benefits

The new Americans and other Westerners in Syrian Kurdistan are the oil men who have taken up residence at Qamishli’s newly opened shiny Palace hotel. They are building a base camp near the oil wells. The HKN executive said the company will introduce numerous social responsibility projects to help local communities and empower women in particular. Its operations in Iraqi Kurdistan give it an edge, he said.

Amberin Zaman

June 15, 2026

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/06/us-firm-hkn-energy-takes-over-7-oil-fields-syrias-kurds

Syria is facing a severe food crisis, as rising living costs mean an increasing number of households cannot meet their basic needs. The World Food Programme assesses that only 18% of the population are “food secure”, as high inflation and currency depreciation between January and March 2026 have hit families hard.

In a new report, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) classifies the acute food insecurity situation in 9 of Syria’s 14 provinces as at “crisis” level. This covers Hasakah, Raqqa, Aleppo, Deir-ez-Zor, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Latakia and Tartous. Syria’s other five provinces are classified as ‘stressed’. FEWS NET, funded by USAID, was set up to provide early warning information and analysis of food insecurity and famine worldwide.

The report highlights that households are struggling with the impact of increased fuel prices, which has had knock-on effects on wider food systems. Fuel costs are up 17.33%, which has driven up prices across the board.

In the northeast of the country, while above-average rainfall last winter has provided some relief to farmers after years of drought, harvesting occurred relatively late and “worsening economic constraints continue to erode household purchasing power and food access,” stated FEWS NET.

“Everything has become more expensive. We cannot afford to electricity like before either – luckily, we have some solar panels we can use, but most families do not,” says Gulistan Shefa, whose family rely on their agricultural land near Derik for part of their income. Farming production costs are heavily impacted by the rise in fuel costs. Habib al-Abdullah, a farmer from Raqqa province, told The Amargi, “These expenses leave us without any profit at the end of the harvest season, and our main concern has shifted to simply paying off accumulated debts.”

Cuts to humanitarian assistance have most severely impacted food security in Syria’s northwest, which is home to over two million internally displaced people, as World Food Programme (WFP) aid has been slashed by 50%. There are few options for these IDPs to secure their livelihoods, with access to formal employment limited. Swathes of agricultural land remains contaminated or littered with unexploded ordnance, while recent flooding damaged 800 hectares of crops and fruit trees in the province.

In Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor provinces, cultivation had been increasingly concentrated in riverbed areas in recent years, due to severe drought and receding river water levels. This meant they were particularly vulnerable to the unexpected flash flooding in late May, triggered by Turkey’s decision to open dam gates upstream.

In the country’s coastal regions, while agricultural output has benefitted from the heavy winter rains, a wider range of formal employment opportunities remain limited. At the same time, along Syria’s southern border with Israel, incursions by the IDF have blocked pasture access for civilians and disrupted agriculture, meaning many there cannot reap benefits from this year’s rains.

Access to food and income in Damascus and Aleppo – Syria’s key urban centres – is better compared to that in rural areas. Yet even there, household purchasing power has significantly decline. Public transport costs are up 15-20%, cooking gas cylinders 19%, and the Syrian pound continues to depreciate. The increase in public sector salaries in 2026 has only marginally offset the effects of price hikes. “Real purchasing power gains are expected to remain limited in the context of sustained inflationary pressures,” FEWS NET has assessed.

“Urgent funding is needed to safeguard fragile gains and prevent further humanitarian, economic, and social deterioration,” the WFP warned. “Sustained investment in livelihoods, agriculture, markets, and social protection is critical to rebuilding dignity, reducing dependency, and supporting long-term stability.” Yet without at least $100 million in extra funding, the WFP predicts oncoming crises as the gap between needs and assistance available in Syria will continue to widen.

Eve Morris-Gray is a freelance writer whose work focuses on civil society movements and democracy.

https://www.theamargi.com/posts/food-shortage-crisis-syria