Task of stopping Turkey passes from Trump to Putin.

T. Belman. Trump has been open to this deal for a couple of years now but it was rejected by the SDF. The tail was wagging the dog. Trump’s withdrawal of forces, forced the Kurds to compromise which they just did.  Also it pitted Turkey against Russia thereby stopping their budding romance. Yes some lives were lost but the result I think is good for the US and the Kurds.  The only question is how are they going to push Iran out?

Syrian army defends threatened Kurdish towns

DEBKA Oct 14, 2019 @ 9:09

President Donald Trump’s decision to pull US troops back from the Turkish-Kurdish confrontation on Sunday, Oct.13 produced a lightning realignment of big power strength on the battlefield of NE Syria: the task of protecting the Kurds from the excesses of the Turkish operation passed to Vladimir Putin and the Syrian army. By Monday, Syrian government forces had reached the Kurdish-held towns of Kobani, Manbij and Raqqa as Turkish troops were poised to move in against the first two. According to some reports, the Syrian army was already inside those towns, but, say DEBKAfile’s military sources, it can’t hold out against a Turkish advance without Russian support.

The wheels for this turnabout, as DEBKAfile predicted on Saturday, were set in motion by a deal struck by the Kurdish leaders of the US-backed Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) with Assad regime officials at the Russian command center in the Khmeimim air base near Latakia. Their meetings were chaired by Russian officers. Feeling abandoned by the US pullback, the Kurds quickly agreed to relinquish their struggle for an independent state and settle for autonomous status for their northeastern provinces in return for the Syrian army taking over the defense of their endangered towns.

The deal, which took effect within 24 hours, still has rough edges to be smoothed out, such as:

  1. The exact nature of Kurdish autonomous rule and relations with central government in Damascus.
  2. The borders of Kurdish-ruled lands.
  3. The fate of the SDF.
  4. How far will Russian President Vladimir Putin be willing to push back against Turkish President Recep Erdogan for halting his army’s advance into northern Syria.

Trump ordered American troops in northern Syria to move east, out of the way of a potential clash over the Kurdish regions, up to the areas adjoining the Iraqi border. Already now, since the Syrian government is not up to a full-scale battle with the Turkish army without Russian army and air force support, Turkey and Russian stand at the threshold of a major military clash.

How Putin handles this standoff is open to question. He may be able to resolve it by giving Erdogan a quiet ultimatum to back off or face direct hostilities with the Russian army. Meanwhile, the Russian leader comes out of the mess created by the Turkish operation having attained the overriding goal of his intervention in the Syrian conflict: to bring all parts of the country under the central rule of the Assad regime.

Most immediately, he must halt the flight of thousands of Islamist State fighters from camps in Kurdish territory in the wake of the turmoil. At least 1,000 have so far escaped, raising concerns of an ISIS resurgence.

Trump’s transfer of the Syrian mess to Putin is compatible with his avowed goal: to start withdrawing American forces from Syria after the Islamic State’s defeat.

October 14, 2019 | 2 Comments »

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  1. This is a column about the Turkish-Kurd debacle from World Tribune, a pro-Trump site. The author, Jeffrey Kuhner, makes some legitimate points.

    Special to WorldTribune.com

    Jeffrey T. Kuhner

    President Trump is again under siege from the Beltway elite. His crime? The decision to finally pull all U.S. forces out of Syria — fulfilling a seminal campaign pledge.

    Both Republicans and Democrats, FOX News and CNN, the right and the left, are united in their furious opposition to Trump’s announcement to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria in the face of a massive Turkish invasion. He is being pilloried for “betraying” our allies, the Kurds, who were pivotal in the fight against ISIS. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the valiant Kurds, have now been left to confront alone the rampaging army of Turkey’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    U.S. vehicles in northeast Syria, on Oct. 7. / AHNA / Military Times
    According to the political and media establishment, Trump’s abandonment of our Kurdish allies will not only result in a bloodbath, but it has destroyed America’s credibility on the world stage. They argue our allies and strategic partners will no longer trust us. As Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, put it, Trump has made a mistake of “historic proportions.”

    Nonsense. Whenever there is “bipartisan” support for anything, it’s a good rule of thumb to be skeptical and suspicious. The real reason the War Party is crying foul is that Trump is serious about ending our endless wars in the blood-soaked Middle East. This has nothing to do with protecting our allies; rather, it has everything to do with upholding the American Empire and its evil twin, the military-industrial complex.

    The same media elites that are howling about the Kurds had no problem when the United States abandoned South Vietnam to communism — and genocidal mass murder. Nor did they scream betrayal when President Obama unilaterally pulled all U.S. forces out of Iraq, thereby snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

    Trump is right for one seminal reason: Our U.S. troop presence in Syria is illegal. Obama inserted American forces without congressional authorization. We have no business being there. Only in Washington, can a president be denounced for ending a criminal war using illegal troop deployments.

    Moreover, Trump is not betraying the Kurds. That SDF forces did much of the fighting on the ground to smash ISIS is undeniable. The Kurds did help us defeat the Islamic State caliphate. But they didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. ISIS posed an existential threat to the Kurds in northeastern Syria. They fought because they had to. The Kurds faced a stark choice: fight or be annihilated. It was the United States — in particular, the Trump administration — that armed, trained and funded the SDF, as well as providing crucial air power, enabling the Kurds to triumph over ISIS. The Kurds needed us much more than we needed them.

    Which begs the question: Why should the United States defend the Kurds against Turkey? There is no American national interest at stake. American’s strategic goal was to knock out the ISIS caliphate. That mission has been accomplished. It’s time to bring the troops home. Instead, our elites want U.S. forces to guard the borders of Syria, while our own borders remain unprotected. This is the logic — and folly — of empire.

    If Trump decided to defend the Kurds, we would now be at war with Turkey — a NATO ally member. It would tear the alliance apart, as Germany and France, with surging and restive Muslim populations, would be compelled to side with Ankara against Washington. And Trump would be plunging the United States into another Mideast war.

    The tragic reality is that it is up to the Kurds to defend their ancestral lands, their homes and their culture from Turkish aggression. The obvious play is for the Syrian Kurds to cut a deal with Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus: regional autonomy in exchange for a military alliance. The Kurds must look to Assad, Russia and Iran to help repel Turkey’s invasion. After all, Ankara is now violating Syria’s sovereignty. Assad and his allies must confront Erdogan. It’s their problem, not ours.

    There has been a lot of mythologizing about the Kurds. And although I sympathize with their struggle against Turkey’s iron rule, the Kurds have no one to blame but themselves. They were willing collaborators in the massacre of over one million Armenian and Greek Christians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 — the first genocide of the 20th century. Having been fierce mercenaries for Islamist Turkey, the Kurds have become their vassals.

    The ruling class cares nothing about betrayal. For decades, they have been betraying millions of their fellow Americans through open borders, free trade and endless wars. Trump, however, is the very opposite: He is an anti-globalist and seeks to extricate us from imperial entanglements, especially in the Middle East. His job as commander-in-chief is not to put Kurdistan first, but America first.

    It’s time we got out of Syria — the sooner, the better.

    Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at WorldTribune.com and the host of “The Kuhner Report” weekdays 6-10 a.m. EST on WRKO AM-680 in Boston.

    Jeffrey Kuhner, Why Trump is right about Syria, WorldTribune.com

  2. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sanctions-on-turkey-trump-imposes-new-sanctions-over-kurdish-offensive-in-northern-syria-2019-10-14/ . Trump, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Vice President Pence have all announced sanctions on Turkey. The sanctions seem mild and perhaps are largely token, but Trump’s executive order is phrased in such a way as to allow it to be expanded as more Turkish human rights violators are identified. For the time being, Three Turkish government ministries involved in the invasion have been put on a sanctions list, along with the three cabinet ministers for each of these ministries. Negotiations for a 100 million dollar trade deal with Turkey have been “suspended,” and tariffs on Turkish steel, which had been reducred in May, have now been returned to their previus level of 50 per cent. Germmany and France have already announced sanctions. While Russia has not announced any sanctions and has not publicly condemned the invasion or Erdogan, Assad has moved troops to the border to thwart the invasion, and everyone knows Russia is close to Assad. With four of the five permanent members of the Security Council opposing the invasion, and the Arab League and Iran condemning it, Erdogan seems to be increasingly isolated internationally. He may attempt to find a face-saving way to negotiate a cease-fire over the next few weeks, and undertake a gradual pull-back of his forces into Turkish Turkish territory. Let’s hope so, anyway.

    While Trump’s sanctions at this point seem to be token, they may be ramped up over the next few weeks as a result of pressure from both parties in Congress.