Turkey's
military incursion into northern Syria against Kurdish militia opens
yet another front in the seven-year Syrian conflict, and risks giving
ISIS breathing room just as it was being suffocated.
Turkey
has long warned that it will not tolerate control of much of its border
with Syria by the "terrorist" Kurdish YPG -- even as the US has
bolstered its support for the YPG as its proxy in the fight against
ISIS.
In
effect, one NATO member is trying to take down a group which is trained
and armed by another and which has done much of the fighting against
ISIS -- while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fumes on the sidelines.
To Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the YPG are indistinguishable from the Kurdish separatist group in Turkey, the PKK.
The offensive -- euphemistically called "Operation Olive Branch" -- began with dozens of airstrikes
Saturday. On Sunday, Turkish troops crossed into Syria, supported by
rebel factions. The commander of one rebel group supporting the Turkish
offensive said 13,000 fighters were involved.
Turkey's
operation targets the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, adjacent to the
province of Idlib. Turkish forces are deployed in Idlib to police one of
the four '"deconfliction zones" designed by Russia to reduce the
fighting in Syria. But the Turkish military has opted to use its
presence in Idlib to open a new front against the Kurds.
The
Turkish military said airstrikes had destroyed 45 targets, including
barracks and weapon depots. The YPG says airstrikes have targeted at
least 100 locations. But it also claims that resistance has blunted the
early stages of the ground offensive.
Turkey's
Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag says the Turkish border town of
Reyhanli was hit by a YPG missile fired from inside Syria, killing one
and injuring more than 30. The Turkish border city of Kilis was also hit
by rockets fired from Syria on Sunday, according to Turkey's state-run
news agency, Anadolu.
Advance warning
Turkey notified both the US and Russia of its intentions.
Turkish Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar was in Moscow last week
to ensure there would be no unintended consequences; Russia has powerful
anti-air radar in northern Syria. Some analysts believe Turkey has
struck a bargain with the Russians -- help "deconfliction" in Idlib in
return for a free hand in Afrin. Russia withdrew its modest military
presence in the area ahead of the Turkish operation.
For
its part, the YPG says it has been betrayed by the Russians, with whom
it has previously cooperated. "We also hold Russia responsible for these
attacks, and we hold Russia responsible for any massacre of civilians,"
it said in a statement Sunday.
Now
everything depends on how extensive the Turkish operation is. If the
goal is a limited buffer zone along the border, conflict may be
contained. But if Turkey wants to seize the city of Afrin -- and then
launches a second front to seize the town of Manbij further east,
another war within the war in Syria will erupt.
Mattis: 'We'll work this out'
The
US is calling for restraint by all sides but has not (unlike Iran)
demanded an end to Turkish military operations. The State Department
said Sunday that the US was concerned about "the plight of innocent
civilians" and called on Turkey to "ensure that its military operations
remain limited in scope."
US
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, speaking on his way to Asia, said: "We are
working now on the way ahead. We'll work this out." Mattis added that
"Turkey has legitimate security concerns" in northern Syria.
The
current evidence suggests Turkey's aims are far from limited. Erdogan
has demanded the surrender of Manbij, where US forces are present. The
Turkish President insisted Saturday: "Beginning from the west, step by
step, we will annihilate the terror corridor up to the Iraqi border."
The
US has justified its support for the Syrian Democratic Forces, an
umbrella group in which the YPG is the largest player, as a critical
part of the strategy to prevent ISIS re-emerging. The dispute has driven
relations between Washington and Ankara almost to breaking point. For
Ankara, the last straw was a US plan announced earlier this month to
train a 30,000-strong SDF force to patrol the Turkish and Iraqi borders.
Erdogan tweeted: "The US has now acknowledged that it has established a terror army along our borders."
Provoking a wider war?
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War
noted at the weekend that "Turkey's operations threaten to provoke a
widening Turkish-Kurdish war that could unravel the US stabilization
effort in eastern Syria and force the US to reconsider support for the
YPG."
For Erdogan, sending in the
troops plays well to his nationalist base in Turkey and has won the
support of opposition parties. The leader of the right-wing Nationalist
Movement, Devlet Bahceli, declared Sunday that "the operational partner
of the United States should be rooted out," and that the offensive would
counter "the [Western] attempt to reshape the Middle East."
The
leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party, Kemal
Kilicdaroglu, chimed in, saying: "We want the imperialist powers to
leave the Middle East."
Turkey is
one of the "triad" of governments -- with Russia and Iran -- that have
assumed the task of bringing peace, or at least the end of conflict, to
Syria. But the Afrin operation could upend that goal, and allow jihadist
groups in Idlib, as well as ISIS, the opportunity to regroup.
ISIS fighters made a sudden reappearance
in south Idlib last week, killing and capturing a number of regime
soldiers. It later published photographs of the execution of three men
it said were regime soldiers.
After
a gradual reduction in violence in Syria last year, and the elimination
of ISIS' hold on Raqqa and Deir Ezzour, the new fighting in the north
of Syria could quickly ignite a broader conflict, dragging in multiple
factions.
According to the United
Nations, more than 200,000 civilians have fled the regime's offensive in
southern Idlib since mid-December, joining more than a million
displaced Syrians penned into an ever shrinking patch of rebel-held
territory where the former al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al Sham holds
sway.
Any thought those desperate
civilians may have had of seeking refuge in Kurdish-held Afrin, already
crowded with an estimated 600,000 people, is fast evaporating.
Source: cnn
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