Death of Syrian a blow to peace talks

BEIRUT — The death of a Syrian opposition leader who was wounded in a hitand-run outside his Damascus home has left his allies shaken and appears to have poisoned an already fractious peace process.

Mounir Darwish, 80, was a leading member of Syria’s internationally backed opposition movement and a familiar figure at peace talks brokered by the United Nations. He was struck by a car Thursday and died Friday night after surgery on his ankle. Friends who visited him after the operation said he appeared to be recovering well and was looking forward to going

home the next day.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, called for “those involved to be identified and brought to justice,” apparently referring to the hit-and-run, and not Darwish’s treatment afterward. No official cause of death has been offered.

De Mistura said late Saturday that Darwish had stayed in Damascus, rather than seek exile, “as he sought peace and a better future for his country.”

The death did not appear to have been mentioned in pro-government media, and a representative of the Information Ministry could not be reached for comment.

Colleagues said friends and family members who had visited the dissident in the hospital on Friday reported that he had been in good spirits and had been awaiting discharge.

“He even called me to tell me that he’d need to stay in bed for a month but that he was ready to receive any documents I needed him to read,” said Firas al-Khalidi, who heads the Cairo section of Syria’s political opposition, of which Darwish was a part.

The Cairo bloc is one of three that has signed on to an opposition platform as a way to present a united front at the U.N.-brokered talks in Geneva. The delegates have dropped all preconditions to the peace negotiations, backing down from a demand that President Bashar al-Assad step down.

Darwish had been concerned that the Syrian government was growing increasingly hostile to his activities, according to Khalidi.

“When I called recently to ask about a meeting in Riyadh, he said he didn’t want to leave because he was worried,” Khalidi said. “He would tell me, ‘Be careful, Firas.’”

Six years into Syria’s war,

a coalition of pro-Assad forces has re-established control over most of the country, with rebel forces hemmed into pockets of the north and south.

Although hopes for an opposition breakthrough at the negotiating table are low — the two sides do not sit in the same room — Western officials say efforts to unify Syria’s opposition would increase pressure on Assad’s government.

“It is about removing the argument that the regime kept on making that it had no opposition to negotiate with,” one diplomat said.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country will launch a military assault on a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria “in the coming days” and urged the U.S. to support its efforts.

Erdogan said Sunday that the operation against the Afrin enclave aims to “purge terror” from his country’s southern border.

Afrin is controlled by the People’s Protection Units, a Syrian Kurdish militia. Turkey considers the militia to be a terrorist group linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party that has waged a bloody insurgency within its borders.

A militia spokesman in Afrin said clashes broke out after midnight between his unit and Turkish troops near the border with Turkey. Rojhat Roj said the shelling of areas in Afrin district, in Aleppo province, killed one People’s Protection Unit fighter and injured a couple of civilians on Sunday.

Turkey and its Western allies, including the United States, consider the Workers’ Party a terrorist organization. But the U.S. has been arming some of Syria’s Kurds to defeat the Islamic State group in Syria — a sore point in already tense U.S.-Turkish relations.

The Turkish president said “despite it all” he wants to work with the U.S. in the region and hopes it will not

side with the People’s Protection Units during the upcoming Afrin operation.

“We expect [the U.S.] to support Turkey in its legitimate efforts” to combat terror, said Erdogan.

Also Sunday, Erdogan’s spokesman responded to reports the U.S.-led coalition would establish a 30,000-strong border security force in Syria involving the Kurdish militia as “worrying.”

In December, The Associated Press reported that the U.S. was developing an expanded training program for Kurdish and Arab border guards in Syria to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State.

Ibrahim Kalin, the presidential spokesman, said the U.S. was taking steps to legitimize and solidify the Syrian Kurdish militia. “It’s absolutely not possible to accept this,” Kalin said and repeated that Turkey would defend itself.

Erdogan said the new operation into Afrin would be an extension of Turkey’s 2016 incursion into northern Syria, which aimed to combat the Islamic State and stem the advance of U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. Turkish troops are stationed in rebel-held territory on both sides of Afrin.

Roj said the Kurdish militia will fight to “defend our gains, our territories.” Senior Kurdish official Hediye Yusuf wrote on Twitter that the Turkish operation against Afrin is a “violation” of the Syrian people and undermines international efforts to reach a political solution in Syria.

The conflict between Turkey and the Workers’ Party has killed an estimated 40,000 people since 1984 and the resumption of hostilities in July 2015 killed more than 3,300 people, including state security forces, militants and civilians.