Escalating violence
Kurds ally with Syrian troops to fend off Turkish attacks
Syrian troops have advanced into northeastern Syria to counter attacks from Turkey, a day after the government forces and Syrian Kurdish fighters agreed to an alliance to fend off the Turkish invasion.
The Syrian army marched into Tall Tamr in the countryside of Hasakah province where the Syrian flag has been hoisted in several areas, said Syrian state news agency SANA.
A top Syrian Kurdish official said a “preliminary military” deal on Sunday with Damascus had been reached for government forces to enter border areas starting from the town of Manbij in the west and extending to Derik, 400 kilometers away in the northeast, according to Reuters.
The Kurdish administration in northern Syria said in a statement that the agreement reached with the government allows Syrian forces to deploy along the Syrian-Turkish border to “assist the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in order to prevent and confront this aggression” with the objective of “recapturing areas that fell to the Turkish forces”.
In an editorial published in Foreign Policy magazine on Sunday, SDF chief General Mazlum Abdi wrote: “If we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people.”
Historically, relations between Syrian Kurds and the government have been prickly. Syrian government forces withdrew from Kurdish-dominated areas of the country in 2012, but the SDF forces haven’t fought the government army during the seven-year civil war.
The Syrian troops will confront the ongoing Turkish aggression in towns and areas in the north of Hasaka and Raqqa provinces in the north of the country. Turkish forces have occupied some of this area and destroyed infrastructure there, SANA said.
Turkey has been in the sixth day of its offensive against Kurdish forces and seized control of two key towns, Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain.
Shu Meng, a researcher at the Middle East Studies Institute at Shanghai International Studies University, said the alliance was not surprising since the two Syrian forces share a common concern.
“The Kurds have clearly recognized that external forces cannot be relied upon to protect them and their land. The Syrian government also realizes it could lose control of its territory to Turkey if it doesn’t work with the Kurds,” she said.
The announcement came hours after the US on Sunday suddenly ordered the withdrawal of the 1,000 remaining US troops from northern Syria in the face of an expanding Turkish offensive.
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in an interview on Sunday that the president had directed US troops in northern Syria to begin pulling out “as safely and quickly as possible”.
The 1,000 US troops in northeastern Syria had worked with the SDF to defeat the Islamic State. The Pentagon previously had pulled about 30 of these troops from the Turkish attack zone along the border.