Abandoning a Critical Ally
"We were comrades in arms [with the Americans] -- we are on the same front fighting ISIS."
"Of course it will be hard. But if we end up on our own, we'll continue the war [against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] as we did in the time before the coalition."
"The Turks are focused on the period before 2011 but we are looking ahead."
Commander Mazlum Kobani, Kurdish leader, Syrian Democratic Forces
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"He is a very educated, savvy politician and a very effective front-line soldier."
"He is the head of a highly disciplined and, to some degree, ideological movement that is centrally controlled and has a long history of fighting."
American official
"They [the S.D.F.] have gained in Syria what they are not going to be able to get anywhere else,so they want to preserve that."
"The U.S. has refused to acknowledge the problem [to push for a longer-term accommodation between Turkey and the Syrian Democratic Forces], and therefore has refused to act on it."
Dareen Khalifa, senior Syria analyst, International Crisis Group
There was praise from Commander Kobani for the working alliance for his Kurdish military backed by the United States as Syrian Democratic Forces, even while he continued to hope that American troops would, after all, remain in Syria. Regardless of whether they remain or be withdrawn, he is prepared to continue defending the gains his militia has realized through their years of fighting the Islamist jihadi terrorists.
It is the thought of a swift withdrawal that concerns him most, using the experience of the U.S. departure from Iraq in 2011 as an example. In the vacuum that was created, the Islamic State arose, splintering from the al-Qaeda group to which its leaders were attached. The forces that Commander Mazlum oversees controls a third of Syria, seated at the center of opposing international interests in the former caliphate of the Islamic State.
It is the intention of the Syrian regime to retake the territory now held by the Kurds. Even while thousands of Islamic State fighters, planning a return to the area as the power of conquest revisited, remain underground for the time being. Another huge concern is Turkey's plans, hostile to the Syrian Kurds' presence along its border with Syria. The territory they have gained, infuriates Recep Tayyip Erdogan knowing they are equipped with alliances and weapons resulting from the eight-year civil war.
The Syrian Democratic Forces with their critical Kurdish forces backbone have no illusions about Turkey's plan for them. Their historic militant opposition to one another threatens the territory, alliances and power the Kurds have attained in Syria.
In 2014, the Islamic State surrounded the Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria along the border with Turkey in the wake of its having seized large parts of Syria and Iraq. Countering the assault, the U.S. armed the Syrian Kurdish militia in the region, supporting their ground-level push-back, while giving them air cover, bombing the Islamic State positions. It was a successful strategy.
The Kurdish militia, as the People's Protection Units, a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party known for its conflict against Turkey for Kurdish autonomy, felt that with American support, and with the rapport they had built, the confidence in their fighting ability as the sole dependable defender of territory from Islamic State acquisition to build on their caliphate, would give them the international recognition they required to claim full sovereignty.
While Syria's Sunnis rebelled against the Alawite Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad, the Kurds preferred to fight the Islamic State. Support came from the United States and other allies such as Canada to give the Kurds the opportunity to prove their fighting mettle by pushing the jihadists from Syria, building ties in the process, with other militias whose agenda matched theirs.
That resulted in a rebranding of the Kurdish forces to reflect a mix of Kurdish, Arab and other fighters into the Syrian Democratic Forces. But the reality didn't change; that it was primarily the Kurds who sustained the battle against Islamic State. The Kurdish reliability and fighting prowess made it indispensable to the United States. Leaving Commander Mazlum confident of the value his fighting forces represented to America.
Until the plans changed back and forth, the most recent calling for a drawdown of American troops to 1,000 personnel. According to an American official, joining forces with Commander Mazlum had been a necessity to successfully fight the Islamic State. "We owe these guys a lot. And they owe us a lot", he stated while Commander Mazlum responds that he needs continued support from the US.-led coalition.
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Labels: Coalition, Islamic State, Kurdish Fighters, Syria, Turkey, United States
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, June 01, 2019
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