T. Belman. Trump chose to disengage from Syria and the Kurds. What’s wrong with that? Unless you think that the US should have stayed in Syria forever. The US tried to negotiate a syrian deal for a few years but were unsuccessful. The Kurds and ISIS are now Russia’s problem. What’s wrong with that?
Remember that the Kurds cut a deal with Russia a few days ago to stem the Turkish assault.
Trump has stated that he is holding on to the oil fields in eastern Syria with a view to developing them with the profits going to the Kurds.
Moscow (CNN)Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in the southern Russian resort city of Sochi on Tuesday with a shared agenda of shaping the endgame in Syria’s eight-year civil war.
The two leaders unveiled a 10-point memorandum of understanding with an unstated bottom line: The Americans do not have a place in shaping the future of Syria.
What did Putin and Erdogan agree to?
Russia and Turkey announced a wide-ranging agreement that addresses a major Turkish concern — the presence of Kurdish YPG forces near their border. But it also acknowledges a major fear of the Kurds — that Turkish-backed Syrian rebel groups might unleash a campaign of ethnic cleansing against them and other minority groups.
Under the deal, Russian military police and Syrian border guards will enter the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border from noon Wednesday. Over the next 150 hours, they are to remove the YPG and their weapons, back to 30 km (about 18 miles) from the border. From 6 p.m. local time next Tuesday, the Russian military police and Turkish military will begin patrols along that line.
There are some exceptions: the town of Qamishli will not be included in that 10 km zone, and it was not clear if the agreement applies the entire length of the Turkey-Syrian border, or just the areas where the Syrian Kurds exercised control.
The deal also acknowledges some facts on the ground: Turkey will keep control of the areas it has taken in their recent incursion into northern Syria.
What does it mean for the Kurds?
The Kurds will have to make concessions. The agreement asks the YPG or SDF — an American-backed fighting force made up largely of the YPG — to make concession outside of the current area of conflict. The YPG in the agreement are meant to withdraw from the towns of Manbij and Tal Rifaat.
The deal also implies that the Kurds have a new guarantor. After President Donald Trump effectively
abandoned the Kurds, by ordering the sudden withdrawal of US forces from Syria and leaving the YPG exposed to a Turkish advance, that role now falls to the Russians.
A fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF stands guard as a US military vehicle pulling out of a US forces base in the Northern Syrian town of Tal Tamr drives by.
Now Moscow will have to deploy more troops and equipment to Syria as part of an expanded mission. But the question remains open: With so few Russian forces on the ground, Syrian Kurds may have little alternative but to allow Syria’s Russian-backed military into Kurdish-held areas.
Who wins and loses in this arrangement?
Turkey and Russia may have backed opposing sides in the Syrian civil war: Moscow provided air power to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey supported rebel groups seeking to oust the regime.
But Putin and Erdogan seemed to favor an outcome that does not involve redrawing international borders — and that discourages separatist movements, something both countries have faced.
Where does this leave the US?
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Trump’s professed love of Erdogan is not genuine whereas Obama’s was.
Erdogan is in Trump’s crosshairs because he is an islamist and supports the Muslim Brotherhood.
I listened to Trump’s speech yesterday (today EST time) on U.S. policy towards Syria, Turkey and the Mideast in general. I could not agree with his pro-Turkish, pro-Erdogan stance. Erdogan is a repressive dictator who has undermined the democratic process, limited though it was even before he became President, fired 150 ,000 people from their jobs without due process, and imprisoned tens of thousands of people simply because he suspected them of being his political opponents. He has employed repressive measures against both ethnic Turks and Turkish-Kurdish citizens of Turkey, and there is every reason to predict that he will continue these repressive measures, and may already be doing so, in the Turkish occupation zone of Syria. The reports that he is using white phosphorous as a weapon, forbidden by international law, seem credible, as do the reports that some civilians have been badly wounded and scarred for life by this terrible weapon.
Syria was Turkish territory before World War I. There is some reason to believe that Erdogan wants to reassert Turkish control over Syria, since he frequently talks about restoring the glories of the Turkish Empire. Not good.
On the other hand, Trump is quite right in his criticism of previous U.S. governments that involved us in wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The previous governments did not use sufficient force to achieve our objectives in these countries. VBut they did use sufficient force to contribute to and prolong the mayhem and suffering of th people of these countries. He is quite right that Obama’s half-hearted and confused support for the Syrian “rebels,” some of whom are undesireable terrorists, contributed to the beginning of the endless Syrian civil war that has cost as many as 500,000 lives and created milions of refugees-not just Kurds, but people of every ethnic and religious group. He is right that the presense of American soldiers in Syria were not numerous enough to protect many people in Syria, and that the small American force there was vulnerable to attack. He doesn’t have sufficient political support for increasing the U.S. troop presence in Syria. Even if he did send in more troops, it would not be enough to drive the Russians out, and the risk of military clashes with the Russians would be increased. That would be all we need. So troop withdrawal, yes. Verbal support for Erdogan and lifing sanctions against his regime, no.