Syrian army, Kurdish fighters strike deal to counter Turkey offensive
TALL TAMR: 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 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 the IS group in Syria before deserting them
have condemned the Turkish invasion but their threats of sanctions have failed to stop it.
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 US military presence.
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.