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Syrian Army joins the Kurds in a strategic town.
The Syrian Army entered the town of Tel Tamer in northeastern Syria, the state news media reported on Monday, soon after the government of President Bashar al-Assad forged an alliance with the Kurdish forces that control the region.
The return of Mr. al-Assad’s forces to the area for the first time in nearly a decade signaled a major shift in the power dynamic there. For years, Kurdish-led forces held control of the area, eventually fending off Islamic State militants with the support of the United States.
Tel Tamer, a strategic crossroads that connects northeastern Syria with the country’s northern hub, Aleppo, is 20 miles from Ras al Ain, the center of the Turkish assault.
Tel Tamer was once home to hundreds of Christians before ISIS overran the territory and claimed it as part of its self-declared caliphate in 2015. Kurdish-led fighters repelled the Islamist extremists and held the town with the backing of American troops until President Trump abruptly withdrew them from the region last week.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: A Kurdish General on His People’s Plight
The Americans promised they would protect his people. Now, one Kurdish leader is forced to turn to former foes for help.Syrian state television showed about half a dozen Syrian soldiers milling around a pickup truck mounted with a machine gun. They were greeted by a small crowd of local residents, some of whom carried portraits of Mr. Assad.
Syrian government forces also entered the town of Ain Issa on Monday, a day after it was briefly overrun by Turkish-led troops. Around 500 ISIS sympathizers took advantage of the mayhem and escaped detention, local officials said.
Syrian state television showed long lines of Syrian Army vehicles in Ain Issa on Monday, greeted by a group of cheering residents. “We’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” one woman said.
A soldier held up his gun and said, “I’m here to kick out the Turkish mercenaries.”
Kurds get help from a new ally: Bashar al-Assad.
It has been only a week since President Trump pulled back American forces in Syria and effectively gave Turkey the green light to cross the border and pursue its own military agenda. Alliances are shifting, ISIS is reinvigorated and the lives of thousands of civilians are endangered.
Embittered at their abandonment by their American allies, Kurdish leaders moved to secure a new partner: the government of Bashar al-Assad, an avowed foe of the United States.
Late Sunday, the Syrian Democratic Forces, said they had struck a deal with the Assad government that would allow government forces to enter the Kurdish-controlled northeast of Syria for the first time in years. The commander of the S.D.F. wrote an article for Foreign Policy that explained the reasoning behind the deal.
The commander, Mazloum Abdi, said that in the absence of American help against the Turkish invasion, he had no option but to seek help from the Syrian Army and their Russian allies, even though “we do not trust their promises.”
“We know that we would have to make painful compromises with Moscow and Bashar al-Assad if we go down the road of working with them,” he added. “But if we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people.”
Trump administration officials once argued that keeping Mr. Assad’s forces out of the territory was crucial to stemming Iranian and Russian influence in Syria. But with American troops on the way out, Washington has lost its leverage.
“The worst thing in military logic and comrades in the trench is betrayal,” said one official allied with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Some American military members who had worked closely with the Kurdish militia were also appalled.
“They trusted us and we broke that trust,” said one Army officer who has worked alongside the Kurds in northern Syria. “It’s a stain on the American conscience.”
Turkey has vowed to continue the offensive.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said on Monday that his troops would continue to support an invasion of parts of northern Syria, despite the return of Syrian government forces.
Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Erdogan said a Turkish-backed force would press on with attempts to capture Manbij, a town at the crossroads of two major highways that the Kurdish authorities in northern Syria have handed over to the Syrian government.
The invasion of Manbij would be led on the ground by Syrian Arab militias, but would have Turkish backing, Mr. Erdogan said. The Turkish president appeared to be more ambivalent about Kobani, a Kurdish-run city on the Syrian border that Mr. Erdogan had previously threatened to capture. It was the scene of a fierce battle between Kurdish fighters and ISIS extremists in 2014 and 2015 that ended in an ISIS retreat.
Mr. Erdogan implied on Monday that an agreement about Kobani had been reached with the Russian government, Syria’s main international backer, though his meaning was unclear.
“In Kobani with Russia’s positive approach, it seems like there won’t be a problem,” Mr. Erdogan said, without elaborating.
The official Turkish explanation for the offensive was to clear the area of the Kurdish-led militia that has close ties with a terrorist group that is banned in Turkey.
At the start of the invasion, Turkish officials said they respected Syrian sovereignty.
But on Monday, Yasin Aktay, an adviser to Mr. Erdogan, said on Twitter that “the fact that Syrian Army has made a deal” with the Kurdish militia “will not stop Turkey’s antiterror operation.”
A second presidential adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, later tweeted that “Turkey will not stop until we reach our goals.” Turkish officials have previously promised to create a buffer zone along the length of its border with Syria, roughly 20 miles deep.
U.S. says Turkish strike near American post was a mistake.
Turkish troops shelled within 550 yards of an American observation post in northern Syria late Friday while United States troops were in the area, according to a military situation report obtained by The New York Times.
Since 2016, the United States has maintained several camps in northern Syria, including a post near the town of Kobani, as part of an international alliance fighting the Islamic State.
The military report undermines both American and Turkish narratives about the shelling, which was first reported on Friday by Newsweek. In American news reports over the weekend, unidentified officials variously claimed that the Turkish shelling was probably deliberate, that it was intense and that it had hit areas on both sides of the American post. In an official statement, the Pentagon said only that Turkish forces had shelled within a few hundred meters of American troops.
In response, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said that the strike was an accident and that its forces had fired on Kurdish troops around 1,000 yards from the American outpost. But the military situation report contests both the anonymous American briefings and the Turkish account.
A map shows two Turkish artillery strikes two miles west of the American outpost and one strike landing roughly 300 to 500 yards southwest of the post, closer than the Turks acknowledged, but less intense than some United States officials have claimed.
The military report said that the shelling near the American post was probably an accident, and added that further misfires by Turkish forces could not be ruled out.
E.U. weighs ban on arm sales to Turkey.
The foreign ministers of European Union member states meet in Luxembourg on Monday, and among the issues up for debate is a Swedish proposal for a bloc-wide arms embargo on Turkey. The proposal could be endorsed by the 28 heads of government meeting in Brussels later this week.
Germany and France announced plans this weekend to curb arms sales to Turkey over the incursion into Syria, raising the prospect of a broader ban. Additionally, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called for “an immediate cessation to the military operation” in northern Syria, according to a government statement.
But other European nations have been slower to condemn the offensive. Italy insists that any ban on arms sales should come from the European Union level, not from individual members.
Turkey is the main buyer of Italian arms exports, and a ban on sales could deliver a major blow to an already faltering economy. Turkey accounted for 15 percent of Italy’s total weapons exports between 2014 and 2018, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
But Italy is facing pressure to take a similar line as Germany and France. Josep Borrell, the European Union’s incoming foreign policy chief, said as he made his way to the foreign ministers’ meeting that “for the time being we need to stop any kind of flow of arms to Turkey.”
Has Turkey opened the door to a reinvigorated ISIS?
The United States had no greater ally in driving out the Islamic State militants who claimed vast swathes of Syria in the quest for a modern-day caliphate than the coalition of fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Inch by inch, the Kurdish-led militia, working with its American military partners, drove ISIS militants out of their strongholds.
But another United States ally viewed the militia much less fondly: Turkey. Its leaders looked across their southern border and saw not an ally but a threat to its territorial integrity, given the militia’s ties to Kurdish separatists in Turkey.
With Turkish-led forces now threatening the Kurds, the S.D.F. has turned its attention away from the Islamic State, including those militants captured during the war and held in detention camps. Already, some ISIS members said to have escaped, along with hundreds of their family members. A planned transfer of five dozen “high-value” detainees to the United States from Syria never happened.
Between escaped ISIS members and the Islamist sleeper cells believed to have been left behind when the militants were defeated in Syria, there is concern that the world has not seen the last of the extremist group.
Where Turkish forces struck Kurdish-held areas
Qamishli
Turkey
Kobani
Ras al Ain
Akcakale
Turkey’s proposed
buffer zone
Tel Abyad
Suluk
Hasaka
Manbij
Ain Issa
KURDISH
Control
ISIS members’ families escape from detention.
SYRIA
Government
Control
10 MILES
Turkish army AND
syrian opposition
Turkey
Manbij
Hasaka
Aleppo
Idlib
Raqqa
KURDISH
Control
Other
opposition
Latakia
Government
Control
Deir al-Zour
Hama
Homs
Palmyra
Albu Kamal
Syria
lebanon
Iraq
Damascus
Dara‘a
Sweida
Jordan
20 MILES
Qamishli
Turkey
Kobani
Ras al Ain
Akcakale
Turkey’s proposed
buffer zone
Tel Abyad
Manbij
Suluk
Ain Issa
Hasaka
ISIS members’ families escape from detention.
SYRIA
20 MILES
Raqqa
Turkish army
AND syrian
opposition
Turkey
Manbij
Aleppo
KURDISH
Control
Raqqa
Other
opposition
Government
Control
Syria
Damascus
Iraq
Jordan
Qamishli
Turkey
Ras al Ain
Kobani
Akcakale
Turkey’s proposed
buffer zone
Tel Abyad
Suluk
Manbij
Ain Issa
Hasaka
ISIS members’ families escape from detention.
SYRIA
20 MILES
Raqqa
Turkish army AND
syrian opposition
Turkey
Manbij
Aleppo
KURDISH
Control
Raqqa
Other
opposition
Government
Control
Syria
Damascus
Iraq
Jordan
Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall, Ben Hubbard, Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, Patrick Kingsley, Hwaida Saad, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Anna Momigliano, Anton Troianovski, Eric Nagourney, Russell Goldman and Megan Specia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/world/middleeast/turkey-syria.html
2019-10-14 11:44:30Z
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