Kurd Opposition Offers Base In Fight Against IS

The international coalition against so-called Islamic State should use Kurd-held northeastern Syria as a base of operations, the leader of Syria's Kurds has told Sky News.

In an exclusive interview in the Belgian capital, Saleh Muslim, leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), also scorned Turkey's claims of fighting the jihadist extremists as "not genuine".

The armed wing of the PYD, the People's Protection Units (YPG), have been a magnet for foreign volunteers in the fight against the so-called Caliphate.

They are also the only effective ally of the US-led coalition in Syria.

"We would welcome the coalition to operate from Rojava [the name used by Kurds for their liberated areas] and we would welcome the Free Syrian Army to train there too," said Mr Muslim.

A chemist by training, Mr Muslim was frequently detained by the Damascus regime of Bashar al Assad.

Now he leads an organisation that has freed a swathe of territory running along the border with Turkey for almost 600 miles - of both regime forces and IS fighters - with the help of coalition airstrikes.

The offer of the use of this territory as a base for foreign operations is clearly aimed at not only reinforcing the Kurd position militarily, but entrenching its place as a semi-autonomous part of Syria.

"We favour a democratic decentralised Syria," said Mr Muslim. "Our structures are the example of what the whole country should have," he said.

A federal Syria in which different ethnic groups and faiths may concentrate in semi-autonomous areas is a concept that is gaining traction even among some supporters of the regime, which is now under pressure even in the Alawite-dominated west of the country, the home areas of the Assad clan.

But Turkey would inevitably be aghast at a high degree of Kurdish autonomy as it battles a renewed insurgency at home driven by the Kurdish Workers Party - allies of the Syrian Kurds - which is demanding autonomy too.

Mr Muslim has offered to mediate a return to a ceasefire in Turkey because the return to conflict has made his eastern flank vulnerable and created deep bitterness among all Kurds towards Ankara.

Washington has insisted that Syrian Kurd forces with the YPG should not be targeted by Turkish airstrikes because the coalition relies so heavily on the Kurds to take territory on the ground.

Attempts to forge a new army of moderate Syrian Arabs have collapsed into bloody farce. Only 54 people graduated from a programme supposed to generate 5,000 a year and more than half of them were kidnapped by the al Qaeda-allied al Nusra Front the day they entered Syria.

"We can help them, we can train them," said Mr Muslim. "But we are not going to fight their war for them. We will support them all we can but we are not mercenaries for them."