Telegraph
Syrian groups backed by the West have been accused of driving people into the arms of Isil, executing prisoners and killing hundreds of people in recent inter-factional fighting.
The YPG, the Kurdish group being backed both by the United States to fight Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and by the Russians to fight US-supported anti-Assad rebels, is sending civilians into flight with its behaviour, according to a former US ambassador to the country, Robert Ford.
“In some cases, Syrian refugees flee it and don't go towards the Kurdish areas - they run away from them and into Islamic State territory,” Mr Ford told a Senate committee hearing.
He made the accusation at a time when both pro- and anti-regime forces in Syria are fragmenting under the pressure of the seemingly endless conflict.
While the atrocities of the regime and its allies have been well-documented, and some opposition groups have committed abuses from the early days of the fighting, the recent surge of accusations is particularly embarrassing for the United States and its allies.
They have been trying to co-ordinate military support for selected groups with a drive for peace talks in Geneva.
Yet in the past few weeks alone, an Islamist group which has received high-end American weapons has fought with the main Saudi-backed group in the south of the country, in a mini-war estimated to have killed 500 people.
There are no perfect angels in this war, but there are some that are worse than others
A leader of Jaish al-Islam, the Saudi-backed group, is one of the three main negotiators for the opposition in the Geneva talks. Yet the group has been accused of making sectarian threats and of not tolerating dissent in the areas it controls, like much of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus.
It is now being fought by another group that is parts of the talks, the Failaq al-Rahman Brigade. It is seen as linked to the “moderate” Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, but has joined forces with elements of the local branch of al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, to challenge Jaish al-Islam's dominance.
Among the dead are Nabil al-Daas, the last gynaecologist working in the enclave, who was hit in cross-fire.
In the north, the fighting north of Aleppo between anti-Assad rebel groups, some of them supported by the United States, and the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces has continued despite the ceasefire that has held in some other parts of the country.
The role of the SDF has become the most complex of all the international dilemmas facing the international community.
It was forged with western help to fight Isil. It is led by the YPG, but also contains some smaller Sunni Arab rebel groups and a Christian Syrian militia, and after recent gains has reached 20 miles from Raqqa, Isil’s capital.
However, the YPG has also been accused of human rights abuses. Amnesty International accused it in October of forcibly evicting Arabs and Turkmens from liberated areas and demolishing the houses, or even villages - claims it strongly denied.
Meanwhile, the YPG’s parent organisation, the PKK, which operates north of the border, has resumed its war against the Turkish state - a Nato ally of the US - and filmed itself shooting down a Turkish military helicopter last week.
In the north-west of Syria, the SDF and YPG are not getting support from the Americans but from the Russians, who see them as a useful ally in the fight against the non-Isil rebels, including Jabhat al-Nusra.
In one particularly gruesome consequence of the fighting, the YPG paraded a flat-bed lorry carrying 50 bodies of rebels killed in fighting through the streets of the Kurdish city of Afrin last month.
In presumed retaliation, another rebel group affiliated to the Free Syrian Army this week filmed itself executing a man and a woman it said were YPG officials. The YPG denied the connection but the incident raised further questions about the intensifying violence despite ceasefire talks.
Mr. Ford, who left the Obama administration out of disagreements over Syria policy and has long supported military backing for “moderate” rebel groups, questioned the backing for the YPG in the Syrian war.
However, he also said the US-led coalition was facing an increasing dilemma as Isil were pushed back, as it was not clear who had the capabilities to run the liberated areas.
He said there was a risk that Sunni Arab groups, fragmenting among themselves, would “start killing each other” without a political process to bring peace.
“There are no perfect angels in this war, but there are some that are worse than others,” he said.