To set up ‘safe zone,’ US wades into muddled Syria politics
US flags fluttered on the back of coalition armored vehicles as they whizzed past tiny hamlets in northeastern Syria. Once part of the sprawling territories controlled by Daesh, the villages are under threat of an attack from Turkey which considers their liberators, the US-backed Syrian Kurdish-led forces, terrorists.
To forestall violence between its two allies along the border it has helped clear of Daesh militants, Washington has upped its involvement in this part of Syria.
The armored vehicles patrolled border areas, zigzagging for miles between golden fields and mud and brick houses, escorted by their Syrian allies. US troops inspected Kurdish-controlled bases to ensure trenches and sand berms, considered a threat by Turkey, have been removed. Then a drone, operated by the US troops, filmed the area.
It is part of an agreement that has set up a joint operation room with Turkey to take measures to ease tension. But details of the deal are still being worked out in separate talks with Ankara and the Kurdishled forces in Syria known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. Views are widely divergent on the purpose of these measures, but Washington seems to be buying time to avoid a crisis along the border while its troops are still deployed in Syria.
Associated Press journalists accompanied the coalition and the SDF on a day trip in northeastern Syria that offered a rare glimpse into the intricate mechanics involved in diffusing tensions in the flashpoint region and setting up the so-called safe zone.
“We have no problem with the security mechanism to secure our areas,” said Kurdish commander Khalil Khalfo, the head of the newly established Military Council of Tal Abyad. He has 500 fighters in his group, mostly from the SDF and its core People’s Protection Units, YPG, which he is expected to replace. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group because of its links to Kurdish insurgents within its own borders.
“We want to live in peace and if this is scaring Turkey, we will close it,” Khalfo said, pointing to the berm that surrounds his base. Two bulldozers were moving earth to close the trench around it and flatten the sand. US troops filmed the base after the berms were flattened. He said they had to return to this base on Friday after Turkey complained the berms, about a kilometer from the border, were a threat. In the initial phase, Kurdish-led forces have organized withdrawals from bases along some 80 km of the border. Khalfo’s team replaced them in bases along the border in Tal Abyad over a 75 km stretch. Another sector, Ras Al-Ayn, is undergoing a similar handover. The Kurdish-led forces have also withdrawn heavy weapons— vehicles mounted with machine guns and mortar launchers— from the borders.
US and Turkish helicopters have flown reconnaissance flights along the borders, while joint Turkish-US patrols are planned to start on Sunday.
Khalfo is looking to recruit as many soldiers as he can. Officials say those new recruits will be trained by the coalition to ensure there is no security vacuum during the implementation of new arrangements.
Cmdr. Sean Robertson, Pentagon spokesperson, said the plan, in coordination with the SDF and Turkey, “maintains security in northeast Syria to counter the re-emergence of Daesh and allows the coalition and our partners to remain focused on” achieving the enduring defeat of the militants.
Turkey refers to the area as a safe-zone and wants no presence for Syrian Kurdish fighters along the 50-mile stretch. It says Turkish soldiers should be in charge of the safe zone, which it says should be at least 30 km deep, in some cases more. That would mean taking up most of the Kurdish-majority urban centers as well as border areas.
Turkey is hoping that some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees it is hosting will return to the area. Washington and the Kurdish-led forces say a “security mechanism” is taking shape.
The Kurdish-led forces say they will not accept Turkish bases in territories they control — already a de-facto no-fly zone because of coalition forces’ presence. They say they would only accept Ankara’s inspection of the area so long as the US-led coalition is involved. They have agreed with the Americans that the area should be between four and 15 km deep and say they are already negotiating the return of a number of Syrians native to the area.