- Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) October 16, 2019
It's the SAA and its allies that were the most effective at destroying ISIS and jihadi "forces" over the last eight years. For neither Turkey nor the US was ISIS ever anything other than a weapon against the Syrian government and a convenient pretext for "protective" intervention. And the Kurds were always more pawns than "partners."
And the spectacle of countries/actors like the EU, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom financed and armed an invasion of Syria by foreign jihadis for 8 years, now objecting to Turkey violating the "territorial sovereignty" of Syria demonstrates the death of irony.
Turkey is illegally extending its prior illegal invasion of Syria into sovereign Syrian territory that the US had illegally taken control of. Mark Sleboda puts it well: "Turkey is invading the US invasion of Syria."
Neither Trump's staunch Republican allies, nor his Democratic opponents, nor any of those countries give two hoots about the Kurds, let alone Syria's "territorial integrity." They are not upset and outraged at Trump because he opened the possibility of Turkey repressing the Kurds; they are upset and outraged because he made the Kurds finally see what fools they were to ally with the US and to turn instead to an alliance with the Syrian government. US politicians' crocodile tears for the Syrian Kurds are really rage at losing their allegiance.
The Kurdish commander of the US-created Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi, is now saying: "if you're not [protecting my people], I need to make a deal with Russia and the regime now and invite their planes to protect this region," and writing in Foreign Policy that "The Russians and the Syrian regime have made proposals that could save the lives of millions of people who live under our protection." He may also say: "We do not trust their promises," but he knows very well that some kind of autonomy agreement with Damascus is preferable for Syrian Kurds to Turkish occupation and ethnic cleansing.
So, the SDF has formally "agreed to the deployment of the SAA" throughout the group's 'self-administration' area ("to all areas starting East from Ain Dawar to Jarablus in the north"), calling on the SAA to do its "duty to protect the country's borders and preserve Syrian sovereignty."
As I write, the SAA and allied forces have already, often greeted with celebration, entered the towns of Ain Issa, Tel Tamer, Qamishli, Kobani, Raqqah, and Manbij-where they've taken over a US base.
As the NYT reports: "If Syrian government forces can reach the Turkish border to the north and the Iraqi border to the east, it would be a major breakthrough in Mr. Assad's quest to re-establish his control over the whole country."
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