VP Pence works to reassure Kurdish allies
Coalition reports U.S., Kurd attack IS in east Syria; dozens captured
IRBIL, IRAQ » Vice President Mike Pence worked to reassure the United States’ Kurdish allies in an unannounced trip to Iraq on Saturday, the highest-level American trip since President Donald Trump ordered a pullback of U.S. forces in Syria two months ago.
Flying in a C-17 military cargo aircraft, Pence landed in Irbil, capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, to meet with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani.
The visit was meant to hearten the United States’ regional partners in the fight against Islamic State after the U.S. pulled troops from northern Syria, leaving America’s Kurdish allies there to face a bloody cross-border Turkish
assault last month.
Asked by reporters if the United States was facing a sense of betrayal from Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish allies over Trump’s actions in Syria, Pence said both groups, including Syrian Kurdish forces “who fought alongside us,” had no doubts about the U.S. commitment to them. “It’s unchanging,” Pence said. Earlier, Pence received a classified briefing at Iraq’s Al-Asad Air Base and also spoke by phone with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi.
Underscoring Pence’s message that American military partnership with Syrian Kurdish forces is ongoing, the U.S.-led coalition said Saturday that its forces, along with hundreds of Syrian Kurdish commandos, had jointly carried out the largest operation against Islamic State in eastern Syria since the U.S. pullback began in early October.
Friday’s operation in southeastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour province captured dozens of Islamic
State militants, cleared enemy compounds and seized weapons and explosives, the U.S.-led coalition said. Operations against Islamic State militants in Syria had been disrupted, but not totally halted, because of the U.S. troop pullback and Turkey’s invasion.
Pence’s trip Saturday was his second to the region in five weeks. Trump deployed him on a whirlwind journey to Ankara, Turkey, last month to negotiate a ceasefire after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seized on the U.S. withdrawal to launch the offensive on U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.
When the U.S. forces withdrew, Syria’s Kurds — seeking protection from their No. 1 enemy, Turkey — invited Syrian government and Russian forces into parts of northeastern Syria where they had not set foot in years.
More are now deploying along large parts of the border region under a Russian-Turkish deal, including to at least one former U.S. garrison in northern Syria.
The Ankara agreement required Syrian Kurds to vacate a swath of territory in Syria along the Turkish border in an arrangement that largely solidified Turkey’s position and aims.
Pence hailed the cease-fire as the way to end the bloodshed caused by Turkey’s invasion.
But Syrian-led Kurdish forces say the cease-fire is persistently violated.
Pence, joined on the trip by his wife, Karen Pence, also greeted U.S. troops ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, serving turkey and accompaniments to hundreds of troops at the two locations.
“While you come from the rest of us, you’re the best of us,” Pence told service members in a dusty hangar at Iraq’s Al-Asad Air Base.
He said that the Trump administration is working to secure another pay increase for the armed services, and he suggested that the ongoing impeachment inquiry in Washington was slowing the way.