Outgunned Kurds vow to make attacking Turkish army bleed

BEIRUT — Kurdish fighters, who defeated Islamic State across much of Syria with US help, will struggle to fend off the Turkish army and its Syrian rebel allies who thrust across the border on Wednesday in a longthreatened offensive.

Under Turkish attack after their US allies withdrew from part of the border, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — which the Kurdish YPG militia spearheads — is heavily outgunned by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s second-largest military.

While the United States has armed and trained the SDF through years of fighting IS, Washington held back from supplying its Kurdish allies with a more sophisticated arsenal, reflecting the needs of the battle but also Turkish concerns.

“The YPG don’t have heavy weapons (from the US) that would be useful against Turkish aircraft or tanks,” a YPG source told Reuters.

“The heaviest weapons we got from the US are some mortar shells, nothing heavier. No missiles, no anti-aircraft weapons, no anti-tank,” added the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Washington’s policy towards the YPG has underscored the broader complexities of its role in the Syrian conflict that developed from protests against President Bashar al-Assad into a multi-sided war and sucked in Russia, Turkey and Iran.

Though the SDF proved an effective ally against IS, US support for it infuriated Turkey. Ankara views the YPG as terrorists because of links to the Kurdish PKK movement which has waged a long insurgency inside Turkey.

Syrian opposition sources said some of the Turkey-backed Syrians now facing the SDF benefited from US military support in an earlier phase of the war, when the Central Intelligence Agency oversaw a program to arm and train anti-Assad rebels.

US President Donald Trump shut down that program in 2017, part of an effort at the time to improve US relations with Russia, Mr. Assad’s most powerful ally. The program was criticized because some of the rebels switched to jihadist groups.

The SDF currently numbers around 40,000 fighters, a second YPG source said. On top of this, Kurdish authorities had long established other security forces such as the Asayish numbering in the tens of thousands.

“Our duty is to resist. This is the Middle East and the black market is in full swing,” a second YPG source said.

The part of the border that US forces vacated this week, a nearly 100-kilometer (62-mile) stretch between the Syrian towns of Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain, has been under attack by Turkey since Wednesday.

The first YPG military source said the border strip between the two towns, which is Ankara’s current focus, may ultimately be lost. But YPG forces were bent on making the battle as difficult and long as possible for Turkey, relying in part on fortifications at the border and fighters ready to die for the Kurdish cause, he said.

If they face defeat there, “there would be a never-ending insurgency” against Turkish forces there. “They will pay for this. Ultimately we may lose (that) area, which seems like it will be the case, but that doesn’t mean we will just give up and retreat.”

Nihat Ali Ozcan, security analyst at TEPAV, a Turkish think-tank, said the SDF would use guerrilla tactics, hit-and-runs, mines, roadside bombs or perhaps anti-tank missiles in its possession. “They will keep biting, like a mosquito,” he said. —