Scene set for Syrian showdown
US warning over Turkish assault of Kurds
Syrian government troops have moved into towns and villages in northeastern Syria, including the flashpoint region of Manbij, setting up a potential clash with Turkish-led forces advancing in the area as long-standing alliances in the region began to shift or crumble following the pullback of US forces.
The Syrian military’s deployment near the Turkish border came after Syrian Kurdish forces, previously allied with the United States, said they had reached a deal with President Bashar al-Assad’s Government to help them fend off Turkey’s invasion, now in its sixth day.
Assad’s return to the region his troops abandoned in 2012 is a turning point in Syria’s eight-year civil war, giving yet another major boost to his Government and its Russian backers and is likely to endanger, if not altogether crush, the brief experiment in self-rule set up by Syria’s Kurds since the conflict began.
Turkey aims to neutralise the Kurdish YPG militia, the main element of Washington’s Kurdish-led ally, the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The rapidly changing situation was set in motion last week, when US President Donald Trump ordered American troops in northern Syria to step aside, clearing the way for an attack by Turkey, which regards the Kurdish fighters as terrorists. Since 2014, the Kurds have fought alongside the US in defeating Isis (Islamic State) in Syria, and Trump’s move was decried at home and abroad as a betrayal of an ally.
Faced with unrelenting criticism, Trump said yesterday he was putting new sanctions on Turkey, halting trade negotiations and raising steel tariffs in an effort to pressure Ankara to stop its offensive. Vice-President Mike Pence also said Trump was sending him to the Middle East because the President was concerned about instability in the region.
Pence said Trump spoke with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and called for an immediate end to Turkey’s military campaign.
In the past six days, Turkish troops and their allies have pushed into northern towns and villages, clashing with the Kurdish fighters over a stretch of 200km. The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said at least 150,000 civilians had fled their homes by Sunday and that up to 400,000 may need help in the coming days and weeks.
“Where is the United Nations? Let them come see the blood of our children on the floor! Why don’t they show up?” cried a medic at the Tal Tamr hospital, which received dozens of injured people from nearby Turkish shelling in recent days.
Abandoned in the middle of the battlefield, the Kurds turned to Assad and Russia for protection and announced on Monday that Syrian government troops would be deployed in Kurdish-controlled towns and villages along the border to help repel the Turkish advance.