Keep Kurds, brass urges

MUSCAT, Feb 16, (RTRS): The United States should keep arming and aiding the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) following the planned US withdrawal from Syria, provided the group keeps up the pressure on Islamic State, a senior US general told Reuters on Friday.

The recommendation by Army General Joseph Votel, who oversees US forces in the Middle East as head of Central Command, is one of the strongest signs yet of US military hopes for an enduring partnership with the SDF despite the concerns of NATO ally Turkey, which says Kurdish SDF fighters are terrorists.

“As long as they are fighting against ISIS and continue to keep pressure on them, I think it would seem to me to be in our interest to continue to provide the means for them to do that,” Votel said in an interview, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Votel said he expected future US assistance to the SDF to change after it seizes the final bits of Islamic State territory. The SDF will then have to contend with a more dispersed, harder-to-detect network of Islamic State fighters, who are expected to wage guerrilla-style attacks.

“When they go to a kind of a wider area security mode, then that will drive a different type of requirement (for support),” he said during a trip to Oman.

Asked about Votel’s remarks, a White House official did not comment on future assistance to the SDF but reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to the broader anti-Islamic State coalition.

US President Donald Trump confounded his own national security team, including generals like Votel, with a surprise decision to withdraw the roughly 2,000 US troops from Syria, declaring that Islamic State had been defeated there.