A video began circulating on social media on Wednesday, published by the Kurdish news organization Rudaw, of a man identified as a “Damascus-affiliated armed group” member holding hair allegedly cut off the dead body of a Kurdish soldier.
The man in the video claims that he found the soldier, presumably a member of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), already dead and took the hair as a trophy.
The context of the harrowing image is a brewing conflict between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — the Kurdish-led armed forces that led the effort to destroy the Islamic State “caliphate” in 2017 — and the government of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the al-Qaeda offshoot jihadist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). HTS took over the country after seizing control of the city of Aleppo in November 2024 and ousting longtime dictator Bashar Assad a month later. Since then, the Sharaa regime has struggled, with support from President Donald Trump, to end Kurdish autonomy in the nation’s north and bring the SDF under his control.
This weekend, Sharaa and the head of the SDF, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, signed an agreement that would nearly completely end the autonomy of the SDF and its associated political arms. The agreement included massive concessions from the Kurds, including handing over pivotal oil fields and their weapons. In exchange, Sharaa’s regime promised to respect Kurdish identity and allow the teaching of Kurdish as an official language in schools in Syrian Kurdistan, or Rojava.
An outpouring of violence followed the signing of the agreement. Kurds on the ground have reported evidence of beheadings by jihadists associated with the Sharaa government, abductions of Kurdish women apparently for sexual abuses, and mass killings in Kurdish communities. Those reports continued after President Trump held phone calls with Sharaa and Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a longtime supporter of HTS, in the first half of the week.
Rudaw reported on Wednesday that the video (available here) of the man holding what appeared to be a “strand of hair belonging to a Kurdish female fighter from the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ)” emerged this week. The man, identified as a “militant,” claims he got the hair from Raqqa, but clarifies that the woman “was already dead” when he stole her hair. The man recording and the “militant” refer to the owner of the hair as a haval, a term used for Kurdish fighters.
Multiple reports from Kurdish areas on Thursday detailed protests among Kurdish women in Syria in outraged response to the video. In Amuda, Syria, Kurdish women organized to protest waving the Kurdish flag and braiding each other’s hair to resemble that held by the man in the offending footage.
The protest occurred alongside reported conflicts continuing between HTS-affiliated jihadis and Kurdish forces. In a letter to the U.N. Security Council shared with Breitbart News, Ilham Ahmed, Minister of Foreign Relations of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), warned that Sharaa’s fighters were not respecting the ceasefire signed this weekend. DAANES is the Kurdish political authority in the Kurdish territory.
“The immediate situation — on 21 January, today — is that the military forces of the Syrian Transitional Government (STG) of President Ahmed Al-Sharaa continue to attack towns and villages in the North East region despite the announcement of a ‘ceasefire’ by the transitional president on 20 January,” Ahmed wrote. “It’s important for Council members to note that only the government currently is engaged in aggressive hostilities. We are not.”
Ahmed noted that Sharaa’s official government forces “have been accompanied by other armed groups, including remnants of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Syrian National Army (SNA), and assorted jihadists, including former members of Al Qaeda and ISIS.” All mentioned groups, he accused, were guilty of “atrocities both against civilians and SDF soldiers, both men and women.”
“SDF soldiers have been tortured and summarily executed, their corpses desecrated or thrown off buildings,” the letter continued. “Videos of these criminal acts are then gleefully shared online by the jihadists, accompanied by religious chanting celebrating the murder of non-believers (i.e. Kurds), acts which are reminiscent of ISIS terrorism in years past.”
In addition to the violence against Kurdish people, the clashes have resulted in multiple prison breaks at facilities housing dangerous Islamic State terrorists captured during the liberation of the “caliphate.” As of Wednesday, American authorities estimated as many as 200 Islamic State terrorists had escaped. The Sharaa government has confirmed some inmates have escaped, but blamed the SDF for insufficiently protecting the prisons while being attacked by regime-affiliated jihadists.
The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) — formerly the main propaganda outlet of the Assad regime, now in Sharaa’s hands — once again blamed the SDF for breaching the attempted ceasefire in reports on Thursday. A change in tone came from SANA on Thursday, however, as it reported that Sharaa’s military authorities had now identified “military personnel” engaging in “breaches affecting military discipline.”
“The Command said in a statement that the military police identified several violations during military operations in northeastern Syria,” SANA reported, “despite clear directives that had been issued to all relevant units. The statement added that the ministry is pursuing legal measures in accordance with applicable regulations to hold offenders accountable, maintain discipline, and prevent similar incidents in the future.”
The report did not identify any of the alleged “violations,” though it appeared to be referring to the various beheadings and other atrocities the SDF and DAANES have documented.
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