Thread by @vvanwilgenburg

Important point in this new report: "Administration to develop an imposing bureaucratic apparatus with more than 250,000 employees, including 70,000 soldiers, 30,000 police and 150,000 civil servants." (1)

"Among the latter, 40,000 are teachers receiving a monthly salary of 120-200 US dollars, double the amount paid in the territory controlled by the regime." (2)

"The military are also better remunerated in comparison with the regimeheld areas: while a Syrian army officer of intermediate rank sent to the north-eastern front with Turkey earns 43,000 Syrian pounds a month (the equivalent of 50 US dollars)" (3)

"a recruit of the same rank in the SDF may earn double or even triple that amount, depending on his seniority" (4)

While in past civil servants avoided joining administration, now a "a significant proportion of civil servants formerly paid by Damascus have therefore
joined the ranks of the Autonomous Administration, risking the loss of their central state salaries." (5)

So, my comment: so basically the non-state set up local administration is winning the competition with the Syrian government over civil servants (6)

Read the report by Patrick Haenni and Arthur Quesnay
here:
cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/hand…

So, I don't get this idea that there is no 'governance' in SDF-held areas (7)

Or that the SDF should move beyond military ops, and move towards governance.

There have been a lot of (succesful) efforts to set up local governance since creation of local administration from 2014 until now (8)

Biggest challenge to future of SDF/self-admin are external actors: possible new Turkish attacks + no long-term US project for local governance project after ISIS, in future harder attempts by regime to get back to northeast (if regime attains goals in other areas of Syria) (9)