A brief history of Manbij, 2012-2024
A provincial city long at the heart of international intrigue
The city of Manbij is located in eastern Aleppo, sitting on Syria’s key M4 highway approximately 25km west of the Euphrates River. Manbij is the center of the Manbij administrative district, comprised of the Manbij, Abu Kahf, Abu Qilqil, al-Khafsah, and Maskanah subdistricts. According to the Syrian census of 2004 – the last taken before the war – the city had a population of approximately 100,000, making it the twelfth largest city in Syria at the time. This population is majority Arab with Kurdish, Circassian (see here, here for more information), and Turkmen communities, while the countryside is primarily Arab populated outside of a handful of Kurdish and Turkmen towns and villages located in relative proximity to Manbij city.
Opposition factions captured the city from the regime in July 2012. For the next year and a half, a locally formed ‘Revolutionary Council’ governed Manbij via a democratically elected legislature. This council also oversaw the military factions present which, roughly put, were split between Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood-linked factions staffed by the provincial bourgeoisie and supported by Qatar, such as Liwa’ al-Tawhid, and more plebeian and less ideological local groups like Liwa’ Jund al-Haramayn, a recipient of Saudi support. This situation was upended by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, which captured the city in early 2014 the lead up to its declaration of caliphate formation on June 29th, 2014.
[For more on this early period and the effects of the city’s political economy on the makeup of the local opposition check out this excellent New American report.]
The Syrian Democratic Forces captured the city and much of the surrounding countryside from IS over the course of a three-month long Coalition-assisted offensive in the summer of 2016. This US-enabled move by the SDF to cross the Euphrates greatly angered Turkey, due to the PKK connections of the YPG/YPJ, the primary component group of the SDF. By mid-August 2016 the SDF controlled the entire northern border region stretching from the Tigris on the border of Iraq to the Euphrates. West of the Euphrates the SDF now controlled two large pockets of territory: one around Manbij to the east, and another to the west comprising the Kurdish-populated Afrin region along the adjacent Tell Rifa‘at area, seized from Turkish and American-supported rebels in early 2016 with Russian support. Only 45km of Islamic State territory separated these pockets from each other. This was one of the factors prompting Turkey to launch Operation Euphrates Shield, its first large scale direct intervention into Syria, on August 24th, 2016.
Since then Manbij has been controlled by the SDF via its Manbij Military Council (MMC) – the aforementioned Liwa’ Jund al-Haramayn being one of its core components – while administered by a civilian government affiliated with the broader Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES). While Turkey and the regime eventually blocked the SDF from connecting its territories into one contiguous entity, Manbij remained a Turkish target as well as a key grievance it Turkey’s relationship with the US. The Coalition established two military bases in the Manbij region, one located west of the city off the M4 highway and the other to the north, along the SDF’s front lines with Turkish/SNA-controlled Euphrates Shield region. These were vacated in October 2019 as part of President Trump’s aborted withdrawal decision which saw the US concentrate its forces within the far east of SDF controlled territories.
In order to deter a future Turkish offensive targeting the region the SDF reached a deal with Russia which saw small contingents of Russian and regime forces enter the Manbij pocket and parts of SDF territory east of the Euphrates. Here they erected several bases - smaller in scope than the Americans – and manned front-line positions alongside the SDF. In Manbij the Russians took over the US base along the M4 highway and created a headquarters in the town of al-‘Arimah to the west. In the subsequent five years Manbij avoided a Turkish/SNA offensive however the region frequently found itself until the fire of Turkish drone strikes and artillery bombardment.
As elsewhere across the DAANES the drone strike campaign was run by Turkish intelligence (MİT) and served to maintain pressure on the SDF via leadership decapitation, in spite of the US and Russia keeping the front lines static. Meanwhile clashes of varying intensity between the MMC and fellow SDF component group Jabhat al-Akrad on the one hand and the SNA and Turkish military on the other flared up from time to time. Occasionally these would result in civilian casualties on either side, with SNA/Turkish fire striking houses behind the front lines north and northwest of Manbij city and likely SDF rocket attacks targeting Turkish military installations at times landing in residential neighborhoods, killing and injuring civilians.
The DAANES-affiliated civilian administration functioned relative well throughout this period compared to other Arab-populated regions under SDF control. Despite the assumptions of many commentators and Turkish instigation attempts Manbij did not rise up against the SDF in the context of the 2019 American withdrawal. However large protests and organized general strikes (Manbij residents have a particular affinity for such) have been relatively common, with the primary grievances against the DAANES being related to education and to the conscription of locals into SDF-affiliated Self-Defense Forces (HXP). This fall major protests broke out relating to the DAANES implementation of a new curriculum which sparked controversy due to its Apoçi ideological content and the fact that DAANES schools are not internationally accredited, leading many under its administration to prefer sending their kids to schools run by the Damascus.
The post-October 2019 status quo was upended in later November 2024 with the HTS-led offensive in western Aleppo and ensuing collapse of the regime’s military across the province. On November 30th the SNA took advantage of this situation by launching its ongoing Fajr al-Hurriyah operation. This initially focused on the regime-controlled areas to south of the Euphrates Shield region but discursively SNA statements throughout painted the regime and SDF as one in the same. As the regime’s military vanished SNA attention was quickly turned to the SDF-controlled regions of Tell Rifa‘at and Manbij, in addition to the former regime areas between Aleppo city and Manbij the SDF spread out into, filling the vacuum. Tell Rifa‘at, completely surrounded and lacking much in the way of defensibly advantageous terrain, fell to the SNA the next day.
The SNA did not begin a concerted push into the Manbij region until a week later. By this point regime soldiers stationed in the pocket had taken off their fatigues, dissipating into the civilian population. The Russians present also appear to have left by this point. Given the disappearance of this cover and the Turkish drone and artillery support the SNA operate under, at a certain point the SDF appears to have chosen not to defend Manbij as a conventional force. Instead, it relied on the extensive tunnel network (see below) it dug over the preceding years and a fleet of armed drones to harass SNA forces during their advance.
By the afternoon of December 8th, 2024, the day Bashar al-Asad fled Syria, SNA forces had entered Manbij via various directions. Geolocated photos and video show fighters at various roundabouts throughout the city. However, continued SDF infiltration prevented the SNA from fully exerting control over the city until the following day. Since then the fighting has shifted to the two bridges connecting the Manbij region to SDF territory east of the Euphrates: the Qaraqozak bridge to the north, and the Tishrin dam to the south. Clashes at these two hotspots have continued the last several days, despite the announcement by both the SNA and SDF that some ceasefire agreement had been reached involving the Americans and Turks.
The details regarding this supposed deal are opaque, confusing, and still developing so I plan on addressing them in a future post. It does seem to involve the tomb of twelfth century pre-Ottoman Bey Suleyman Shah. The tomb was originally located near Qal‘at Ja‘bar, a castle in Raqqah, with under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne was placed under Turkish possession and guarded by Turkish soldiers. This location was flooded in 1973 with the building of the Tabqah Dam and the tomb was moved to a site adjacent to the Qaraqozak bridge on the east bank of the Euphrates. In 2015 Turkey carried out its first actual military intervention into Syria to move the tomb through Islamic State territory to a patch of Syrian territory near Kobani around which Turkey extended its border wall. It appears Turkey would like to move it back to the second location.
Manbij’s fall to the SNA was preceded the same day by demonstrations celebrating the fall of Bashar al-Asad, components of which voiced support for the ‘FSA’ in opposition to the SDF. Many of these same people were likely the ones seen later, welcoming the SNA into the city. More significantly to the city’s rapid capture was the defection of Liwa’ Jund al-Haramayn commander Ibrahim al-Banawi from the SDF’s Manbij Military Council to the SNA. Several days later SNA coalition al-Quwwah al-Mushtarikah - whose commanders Seyf Polat and Muhammad al-Jasim were seen on the city’s outskirts December 8th - announced that the long time Manbij faction was joining its ranks. It’s worth noting al-Quwwah al-Mushtarikah is one of the SNA factions most closely aligned to Turkey, another being Furqat al-Sultan Murad, whose commander Fahim ‘Isa was seen (image #2 here) in Manbij on December 9th.
SNA fighters reportedly looted civilian properties and conducted arrest campaigns following their capture of the city: continuing the Turkish-backed alliance’s long-established pattern of behavior. Manbij residents have characteristically responded by protesting, with some figures calling for HTS leader Ahmad al-Shar‘/Abu Muhammad al-Julani to investigate the abuses - a bid to bypass the SNA all together. In addition to the looting two videos of extrajudicial killings were published on December 8th and 9th in alleged connection to the SNA offensive: one showing the streetside execution of two men in plain clothes accused of being regime officers, and the other the murder of two incapacitated hospital patients after questioning, one appearing to identifying himself as part of the SDF’s conscripted Self-Defense Forces. The location of these videos has not been confirmed.
Currently Manbij is under the control of a ‘military administration’ established on December 11th, while the SNA Military Police has replaced SNA factions on the streets. Who will be administering it by next month is completely unclear, given broader questions regarding the new government in Damascus and the SNA/HTS rivalry.
Excellent work. Thanks!
Thank you for this