BFF-35 Syria regime steps in to halt Turkish assault on Kurds

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SYRIA-CONFLICT-TURKEY-KURDS

Syria regime steps in to halt Turkish assault on Kurds

TALL TAMR, Syria, Oct 14, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The Syrian regime sent troops
towards the Turkish border on Monday to contain Ankara’s deadly offensive
against the Kurds, stepping in for US forces due to begin a controversial
withdrawal.

Outgunned and without US protection, the autonomous Kurds in northeastern
Syria had few other options to stop the rapid advance of Turkish troops and
their Syrian proxies.

Turkey wants to create a roughly 30-kilometre (20-mile) buffer zone along
its border to keep Kurdish forces at bay and also to send back some of the
3.6 million Syrian refugees it hosts.

The United States and its partners, who spent years fighting alongside the
Kurds against the Islamic State group in Syria before deserting them, have
condemned the Turkish invasion, but their threats of sanctions have failed to
stop it.

Washington says that it is planning to pull out 1,000 troops — almost the
entire ground force — from Syria’s north, in a move welcomed Monday by
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as “a positive approach.”

The chaos in the areas targeted in the six-day-old Turkish assault has
already led to the escape of around 800 foreign women and children linked to
IS from a Kurdish-run camp, Kurdish authorities said.

The Kurds had repeatedly warned of that scenario when Western countries
refused to repatriate their IS-linked nationals and when US President Donald
Trump made it clear he wanted to end the US military presence.

But Trump on Monday said the Kurds “may be releasing” IS prisoners to keep
the US involved in Syria.

Wasting no time to fill the void, Moscow — already the top broker in
Syria — clinched a deal between the Kurds and Damascus, whose ties had been
icy since the minority threw its lot with Washington and unilaterally
declared self-rule.

“In order to prevent and confront this aggression, an agreement has been
reached with the Syrian government,” the Kurdish administration said in a
statement late Sunday.

– Averting ‘genocide’ –

In an editorial published in Foreign Policy magazine, the head of the main
Kurdish force wrote: “If we have to choose between compromises and the
genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people.”

By Monday morning, Syrian government forces were already moving to within
several kilometres (miles) of the border, AFP correspondents on the ground
said.

Residents around the town of Tall Tamr welcomed regime forces with cheers
and Syrian state television showed some of them waving national flags and
portraits of President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian troops also deployed in the areas of Tabqa and Ain Issa in the
northern province of Raqa, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a
Britain-based war monitor.

According to a newspaper close to the Damascus regime, Syrian forces were
also expected to deploy in the areas of Manbij and the border town of Kobane.

The main remaining flashpoint along the border was the town of Ras al-Ain,
where Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have put up stiff resistance
against Turkish air strikes and shelling for almost a week.

“There is a large tunnel network under the town” said Abou Bassam, a
Syrian rebel commander fighting with Ankara’s forces.

The SDF “are moving swiftly, mostly underground, and all buildings in Ras
al Ain have trenches” he told AFP.

According to Observatory, the Turkish attack — which uses Syrian proxies
on the ground — has already left 128 SDF fighters and 69 civilians dead.

The United Nations says 130,000 people have been displaced.

– Rising toll –

On the Turkish side, four soldiers and 18 civilians have been confirmed
killed in six days, either in fighting or from Kurdish cross-border fire,
according to Turkish sources.

The Observatory put the number of pro-Turkish Syrian forces killed in the
offensive at 94.

An internal document circulated by the Kurdish administration on Monday, a
copy of which was obtained by AFP, stressed the deal with Damascus was purely
of a military nature and did not affect the work of the semi-autonomous
institutions.

But the de-facto statelet the Kurdish administration had set up in
northeastern Syria has fast unravelled in recent days, with its forces losing
control of a 120-kilometre-long segment of the border.

The area that is now under the control of Turkey and its proxies is
ethnically Arab-dominated and some residents welcomed Turkish-backed forces.

– Betrayal –

Kurdish officials and residents alike in northeastern Syria have expressed
outrage at what they call a US betrayal that shortchanges the sacrifices made
in the fight against IS.

Since 2014, the SDF have been the US-led anti-IS coalition’s main partner
on the ground in Syria, spearheading some key battles on the way to
eliminating the jihadists’ self-proclaimed “caliphate” earlier this year.

“The United States has lost its defeat mechanism against the Islamic
State,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in a brief.

“It took years for the US to realise that the SDF were the only capable
partners. They will not partner with us again,” it said.

BSS/AFP/BZC/2014HRS