Syria govt attack averted
TURKEY will send more troops into Syria’s Idlib province after striking a deal with Russia that has averted a government offensive and delighted rebels who said it kept the area out of President Bashar al-Assad’s hands.
The deal unveiled on Monday by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr Assad’s most powerful ally, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will create a demilitarised zone from which “radical” rebels must withdraw by the middle of next month.
Damascus also welcomed the agreement but vowed to continue its efforts to recover “every inch” of Syria. Iran, Mr Assad’s other main ally, said that “responsible diplomacy” had averted a war in Idlib “with a firm commitment to fight extremist terror”.
The agreement halted a threatened Syrian government offensive. The United Nations had warned such an attack would create a humanitarian catastrophe in the Idlib region, home to about three million people. The Idlib region and adjoining territory north of Aleppo represent the opposition’s last big foothold in Syria. Mr Assad has recovered most of the areas once held by the rebels, with decisive military support from Iran and Russia.
But his plans to recover the north-west have been complicated by Turkey’s role on the ground. It has soldiers at 12 locations in Idlib and supplies weapons to some of the rebels.
Mr Erdoğan had feared another exodus of refugees to join the three-and-a-half million already in Turkey, and warned against any attack.
In striking the deal, Russia appears, at least for now, to have put its ties with Turkey ahead of advancing the goal of bringing all Syria back under Mr Assad’s rule.
That goal is also obstructed by the presence of US forces in the quarter of Syria east of the Euphrates that is held by an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, and at a base near the borders with Jordan and Iraq.
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis played down any notion the TurkeyRussia agreement had resolved the situation in Idlib.
“Idlib is one of the most complex problems in a complex theatre of conflict right now. So I’m quite sure it’s not all sorted,” Mr Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.
Analysts cautioned that implementation of the deal faced big challenges, notably how to separate jihadists from other rebels, a goal Ankara has been struggling to achieve.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said the “moderate opposition” would keep its weapons and the “region will be cleared of radicals”. Turkey would “make additional troop deployments” and its 12 observation posts would remain. The deal was “very important for the political resolution in Syria”. “If this [Idlib] had been lost too, there would be no opposition anymore,” he said.