QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – August 15, marks the day on which the city of Manbij in the eastern countryside of Aleppo was announced liberated from the Islamic State (ISIS) by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) with air support of the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS after violent battles that lasted for months.
In January 2014, Manbij fell under the rule of the then expanding ISIS which straddled large swathes of lands in Syria and Iraq.
Manijb is a multiethnic Syrian city where Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Circassians, and Chechens live together. However, that social fabric was to tear apart for a while.
Known in antiquity as Hierapolis, the city was of one of the profoundly richest historical and archeological sites in the region and elsewhere. However, it was systematically looted by ISIS. Manbij had its share of the calamities perpetrated by ISIS.
Following liberation, the Democratic Civil Administration of Manbij and its Countryside was founded in Manbij to run the city which joined the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
After liberation, life returned day after another to the city which was run by its locals. Manbij flourished under the AANES. The city which witnessed beheadings at its public squares became a commercial hub in the years that followed liberation.
However, it has always been wanted by all local, regional and global powers involved in the Syrian affair.
The AANES unsparingly is adamant to keep it for commercial, humanitarian and political reasons, the Syrian government, however, wants to regain it to push further east, while for Erdogan it means another blow to the AANES.
In 2016 Turkish forces crossed into Syria in Jarablus, to push, allegedly, the threats posed by ISIS to its southern border, however, since then up to date, Manbij remains the focal point top on the Turkish agenda. Ankara seeks to dislodge the Kurdish fighters to include Manbij in its “safe zone” 30 kilometers into Syria which it started shaping long years ago.
Lying on the Hasakah-Aleppo strategically important highway known as the M4, not very far from the Turkish border, the city connects eastern Euphrates with its west. It is a trade hub for the AANES for transporting goods.
In June 2018, a road map to exit the Kurdish-led Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) from the city was reached between Ankara and Washington.
In May, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan named the city, alongside the town of Tel Rifaat in north of Aleppo as the two alleged targets of his much-wanted operation to drive the Kurdish fighters away from both cities.
Erdogan’s ambitions to carry out a new Turkish ground invasion into the city up to now fall on the rocks. Neither the US, Russia nor Iran seem to grant Erdogan green light to make his ambitions a concrete one.
The reality on the ground remains unchanged; life in Manbij goes normally, however, not very smoothly as Turkish spearheads remain unsheathed for a long-desired attack against northeast Syria.