Kurdish-majority Aleppo neighborhood sees swift return after clashes

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A Kurdish-majority neighborhood in Aleppo that saw brief but fierce fighting between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces is now filled again with residents returning to shops, streets and daily routines. A month after clashes rocked Sheikh Maqsoud and nearby Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo, many people who fled said they came back quickly, after fears of reprisals that did not materialize, according to the Associated Press.

“Ninety percent of the people have come back,” said Aaliya Jaafar, a Kurdish resident of Sheikh Maqsoud who runs a hair salon. She said her family left only briefly after a government drone strike hit a lot next door where weapons were stored, setting off explosions.

The Associated Press visited Sheikh Maqsoud, which briefly became a focal point of Syria’s fragile transition as a new government tries to assert control and gain minority-group trust. In the neighborhood’s story, the speed of return stood out against a pattern many residents described from past rounds of displacement, where families could be forced to leave for years.

The fighting began Jan. 6 in predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods, including Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid, after the government and the SDF reached an impasse in talks on merging the largest remaining armed group into the national army. The Associated Press reported that security forces captured the neighborhoods after several days of intense fighting that left at least 23 people dead and more than 140,000 people displaced.

Residents said they also noticed how the new government handled civilian movement during the operation. Before entering the contested areas, the Syrian army opened corridors for civilians to flee, and people later said those corridors helped them judge that the government was trying to avoid civilian harm compared with earlier violence in other parts of Syria.

Ali Sheikh Ahmad, who ran a secondhand clothing shop in Sheikh Maqsoud and said he had been part of an SDF-affiliated local police force, was among those who left. He and his family returned a few days after the fighting stopped, and he said at first that residents feared revenge attacks after Kurdish forces withdrew and handed the neighborhood to government forces—but he said those fears did not turn into events.

He said a ceasefire agreement between Damascus and the SDF has held, and he pointed to progress toward integration between the two sides. “We didn’t have any serious problems like what happened on the coast or in Sweida,” Sheikh Ahmad said, adding that the new security forces “treated us well,” and that residents’ fears later eased.

In the weeks after the clashes, the neighborhood’s shops reopened and traffic moved normally, but the entrance checkpoint that had been manned by Kurdish fighters was now staffed by government forces. Along the streets, Kurds and Arabs chatted, including children who played and adults who described returning to a sense of routine.

While security appeared calmer, residents said the economic disruption has persisted. The Associated Press reported that many previously relied on jobs linked to SDF-affiliated local authorities, which are no longer in charge, and that small businesses struggled as customers stayed away and electricity and other services were interrupted.

Jaafar said, “The economic situation has really deteriorated,” adding that for more than a month her community had “barely worked at all.” Sheikh Ahmad said he hopes that if the ceasefire continues and politics stabilizes, he can return to his original home in Afrin near the border with Turkey, where his family fled during a 2018 Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces.

In the broader context of Syria’s post-2011 conflict, Sheikh Ahmad said he has been displaced multiple times, including after protests against then-President Bashar Assad spiraled into a 14-year civil war. Assad was ousted in November 2024, but the country has seen sporadic outbreaks of violence, and the new government has struggled to win trust among religious and ethnic minorities.

Residents said they were watching whether official actions match promises about equal standing. The Associated Press reported that last month interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued a decree strengthening Kurdish minority rights, including recognizing Kurdish as a national language alongside Arabic and adopting Nowruz as an official holiday. The report also said the decree restored citizenship for tens of thousands of Kurds in northeastern al-Hasakeh province after they were stripped of it during the 1962 census.

Sheikh Ahmad said he felt encouraged by what he described as attempts by al-Sharaa to reassure Kurds that they are equal citizens, while he and other residents said they want relationships among communities to move beyond tolerance. “We want something better than that. We want people to love each other. We’ve had enough of wars after 15 years. It’s enough,” he said.