Britons ‘on their own’ if they join Syria fight

BRITONS among foreign volunteers heading to the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria to defend it from Turkish forces have been warned they are “on their own”.

Huang Lei, 24, from Manchester, and two others from the UK left for Afrin to join the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia on Tuesday, raising the prospect that a Nato member army could fire on British citizens.

For the past four days, Turkish troops and allied Free Syrian Army rebels have been battling YPG fighters for control of the enclave.

Many of the volunteers travelled to northern Syria to fight Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) alongside the YPG. The British Foreign Office has repeatedly warned people not to get involved in fighting abroad, saying they could face prosecution if they return.

The US said any volunteer who decided to fight in Afrin would be doing so without its support. Adrian Rankinegalloway, a Pentagon spokesman, said: “Let’s say for example, a unit of the YPG says, ‘Hey, we’ll no longer fight Isil and we are going to support our brothers in Afrin,’ then they are on their own.”

The North Atlantic Treaty’s celebrated Article 5 – decreeing that an attack on one member nation is an attack on all – has been a formidable guarantor of postwar peace. Such a challenge does this vow of collective security present to adversaries that it has been triggered only once – after 9/11, the most notorious attack on the Western world of recent times. So it is a matter of great concern that close allies of Nato’s most powerful member, America, are now the direct targets of a military campaign launched by another Nato member, Turkey.

Kurdish fighters have proved the West’s most reliable, most effective allies on the ground in Iraq and Syria. Their efforts have been critical in the campaign against Islamic State. But Turkey fears that Kurds across the region seek to carve out an independent nation, a move that would threaten the integrity of the Turkish state. As a result, some of the very same fighters lauded as allies by Washington are considered separatist terrorists by Ankara. No wonder Russia, Nato’s original enemy, is revelling in the blue-on-blue showdown.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been disgruntled with Western leaders since their muted condemnation of the failed coup against him in the summer of 2016. Moscow would love to widen this fissure and lure Turkey out of Nato altogether. It is essential this doesn’t happen. Turkey’s security concerns, particularly over its border with Syria, can be addressed. Kurds already have de facto autonomy in large areas. Both sides must resist provocation, as sensible compromise is possible. A military escalation would most please Vladimir Putin. That ought to be incentive enough to ensure it doesn’t happen.