Russia-backed Syrian army sweeps in after US announces abrupt exit
Russia-backed Syrian forces wasted no time in taking advantage of an abrupt US retreat from Syria yesterday, deploying deep inside Kurdishheld territory south of the Turkish frontier less than 24 hours after Washington announced a full withdrawal. Washington’s Kurdish former allies said they invited in the government troops as an emergency step to help fend off an assault by Turkey, launched last week after President Donald Trump moved his troops aside in what the Kurds call a betrayal.
Washington’s decision to abandon a policy it had pursued for five years gives Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin free hands to shape the battlefield of the world’s deadliest ongoing war. In particular, the Syrian army deployment is a victory for President Bashar Al-Assad and his most powerful ally Russia, giving them a foothold in the biggest remaining swathe of the country that had been beyond their grasp.
They will now face Turkish armed forces along a new front line hundreds of miles long. Syrian state media reported that troops had already entered Tel Tamer, a town on the strategically important M4 highway that runs east-west around 30 km south of the frontier with Turkey. State television later showed residents welcoming Syrian forces into the town of Ain Issa, which lies on another part of the highway, hundreds of miles away.
Ain Issa commands the northern approaches to Raqqa, former capital of the Islamic State “caliphate”, which Kurdish fighters recaptured from the militants two years ago in one of the biggest victories of a US-led campaign. Much of the M4 skirts the southern fringe of territory where Turkey aims to set up a “safe zone” inside Syria. Turkey said it had seized part of the highway. An official of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said clashes were ongoing.
The swift Syrian government deployments underscored how suddenly the strategy the United States had pursued in Syria for the past five years had dissolved overnight. Washington announced on Sunday it was pulling out its entire force of 1,000 troops which had provided air support, ground assistance and training for Syrian Kurds against Islamic State since 2014. A US official said yesterday a diplomatic team working to help stabilize territory captured from Islamic State had already pulled out. US troops were still on the ground but early phases of their withdrawal had started, the official said.
Two other US officials have told Reuters the bulk of the US pullout could be completed within days. Sunday’s announcement of the US retreat came just a week after Trump gave what the Kurds consider the goahead for Turkey to attack, by shifting US troops out of the way. Thousands of fighters from a Kurdish-led force have died since 2014 battling Islamic State in partnership with the United States, a strategy the Trump administration had continued after inheriting it from his predecessor Barack Obama. — Reuters