Kurds: America’s blood sacrifice

US and Kurdish troops were allies in Syria; 24 hours later the Kurds were abandoned.

Smoke rises over the Syrian town of Ras al-Ayn after one of the early bombardments by Turkish forces after the US withdrew troops. Picture: Getty Images

On Tuesday morning in Washington, DC, a Pentagon official grimaced as he handed me a letter that had just been sent to coalition troops in northeast Syria. It was written by the chief of staff to General Mazloum Kobani, head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the mostly Kurdish militia that has been, since 2015, the coalition’s key ally against Islamic State.

Addressed to “our friends and brothers (who) bled with us and were witness to our 11,000 martyrs”, the letter appealed to Americans not to abandon the Kurds to the coming Turkish offensive, lest “the tragedy of the Kurdish people … be repeated again”.

Turkish troops were already massing on the Syrian border when that letter was circulated.

Earlier, President Donald Trump had directed US troops to stand aside, pulling Americans from their posts at Tal Abyad, Tal Musa, Tal Hinzir and Tal Arqam, four key border outposts that sit inside a zone that US special ­forces had been jointly securing with Turkish troops.

LATEST: Turkish forces push deeper into Syria

In recent weeks, on orders from Washington, American commanders had convinced their Kurdish counterparts to demolish their defences and withdraw heavy weapons from the zone, promising that the US presence would act as a “trip-wire” to deter Turkish incursion.

As late as Sunday, according to an SDF commander at Tal Abyad, Kurds and Americans were patrolling the area together. “We got back (from our patrol) and were supposed to meet at noon the next day,” Khalil Khalfo told the Los Angeles Times. “That morning at six we got a message telling us they’re leaving. That was it.”

By early Wednesday, the Turkish armed forces (TSK) with their own local allies — drawn from the Syrian National Army, a militia made up of about 30 Syrian nationalist and religious factions — had launched their offensive.

Ironically, the SNA is the successor to the Free Syrian Army, a force initially funded, trained and equipped by the US under a program allegedly administered by the CIA. Trump ended US support for the group in July 2017; the abandoned US ally quickly turned to Turkey for funding and support.

A US officer speaks with a Kurdish fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2017. Picture: AFP

Turkey’s offensive, known as Operation Peace Spring, began with a bombardment by artillery, rockets and mortars, accomp­anied by airstrikes throughout the border region. Turkish warplanes struck the towns of Tal Abyad, which American troops had just left, and Ain Issa (site of a large refugee camp) as well as the cities of Qamishli and Ras al-Ayn further east.

Airstrikes went in on the flanks of the Turkish operational area — anchored by the Iraqi border to the east and the Euphrates River in the west — with the likely intent of preventing Kurds from Iraq or ­forces from the Kurdish-controlled Syrian city of Manbij from interfering with the operation.

But the heaviest bombardments occurred around Ras al-Ayn and Tal Abyad. These towns quickly emerged as the initial objectives for TSK-SNA ground ­forces, which crossed the border in force after several hours of artillery and air strikes.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced the overall goal of the operation is to create a 30km deep “safe zone” inside Syria, running the length of the border, into which Turkey proposes to resettle up to half the 3.6 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey.

But in its initial phase, the offensive seems to be centred on a much smaller area, aiming to create a shallow cross-border bridgehead 5km to 10km deep, before expanding it once initial Kurdish resistance is defeated.

This narrower area is centred on Tal Abyad, which Turkish troops seem determined to capture first, before swinging east and west to expand and deepen their bridgehead. This will make the fight for Tal Abyad the key early battle of this campaign.

The subsequent Turkish objective looks likely to be the M4 Highway, a major supply route and lateral transport corridor about 30km south of the border. Capturing the M4 would allow the TSK and its SNA allies to control movement throughout the area and prevent SDF fighters in the region reinforcing each other or manoeuvring to assist the area under attack, while pushing the SDF back beyond artillery and rocket range from the Turkish border.

The Turkish military is the second largest in NATO after the US, and the most modern and capable in the region. Roughly 30,000 troops appear to be involved in this operation, including 15,000 to 20,000 SNA members who are spearheading the attack, with Turkish special forces, airstrikes and artillery in support.

This mirrors previous Turkish incursions into Syria, targeting the town of al-Bab in 2016 and the Afrin region last year, which were led by local allies backed by regular TSK troops.

As the fight develops, Turkey can call on several advantages including its air power, dominance in artillery and heavy armoured forces, and advanced night-fighting technologies. The SDF lacks air defences and night vision, and historically have relied on US air power, which of course will not be available in this battle. Where the Kurds excel, however, is in light-infantry ground warfare, anti-tank operations and urban combat. Their ability to move forces rapidly about the battle area, as they have traditionally done using swarms of armed pick-up trucks known as “technicals”, will be severely constrained by Turkey’s command of the air.

This suggests that, absent a political settlement (which looks extremely remote at present) this battle is likely to bog down into urban fighting in the border cities — particularly at the majority-Arab city of Tal Abyad, and at Ras al-Ayn, a mixed Arab-Kurdish city that serves as SDF headquarters.

The SNA and other Turkish-backed forces are engaged in heavy ground combat against SDF and other Kurdish militia in and around both towns. Turkish-backed SNA fighters claimed to have seized a key chokepoint on Route 712, a highway just south of the border that links Ras al-Ayn to Kurdish-held areas further west.

Simultaneously, TSK claimed to have captured several villages and farms east of Tal Abyad. Further east, Turkish-backed militia captured two towns in Hasakah province, just west of Ras al-Ayn. Meanwhile in the town of Ayn Issa, south of Tal Abyad, SDF fighters were still holding out under heavy Turkish ground, air and artillery attack.

SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali claimed late in the week that the Kurds were standing their ground against the offensive, even as more than 60,000 civilians fled south and east from cities under attack, and there were numerous reports of civilian casualties in Syria and the Turkish border towns of Nusaybin and Kilis, which the SDF has mortared and rocketed in an attempt to slow the Turkish offensive. Kurds across northeast Syria are moving north to reinforce border positions, while Syrian Kurdish civilian leaders called for a three-day national mobilisation across the region, and SDF commanders announced they had suspended all operations against Islamic State to focus on fending off the threat from Turkey.

Islamic State is already seeking to exploit the situation. SDF commanders claimed on Wednesday that their troops in Raqqa, the former Islamic State capital (which the SDF, with US air support and a small number of coalition advisers, captured in October 2017), had suffered multiple Islamic State suicide bombings and grenade attacks. The northward movement of Kurdish forces is also likely to leave several detainee camps only lightly guarded, increasing the risk of a breakout or an external attack by Islamic State.

Analysts expect Islamic State to attack SDF-controlled prison camps across Syria, which may hold up to 19,000 Islamic State detainees. US commanders have expressed particular concern about Al-Hawl camp, about 50km east of the city of al-Hasakah, one of the largest such camps in Syria, with a population of almost 70,000 including many families of Islamic State fighters. There are believed to be 80 Australians in camps and detention centres in Syria’s northeast. This includes 66 women and children.

Islamic State fighters are also expected to attack detention sites and military outposts across Iraq, which has been experiencing widespread and deadly anti-government unrest for several weeks.

As a senior US official pointed out to me this week: “By far the most competent component of the SDF is the Kurdish force. They have three critical roles: Kurdish special forces serve as the main ground force against Islamic State; the Kurds protect US forces and installations across northeast Syria; and they guard Islamic State high-value detainees. They can’t do these and simultaneously defend their homes and families against a Turkish invasion.”

Almost certainly, according to this official and to other observers, the net effect of the Turkish offensive will be regional chaos, the empowerment of Iran and Russia, and the resurgence of Islamic State, which has shown strong recuperative powers in the past and is again on the rise despite Trump’s assertion this week the group has been “completely destroyed”. But the risk of a resurgent Islamic State is only one of the concerns triggered by Turkey’s offensive. Kurds in Iraq and Syria worry that Ankara’s real aim is to create a buffer zone by ethnically cleansing Kurdish areas, then resettling Syrian Arab refugees in the region.

For their part, Turkish leaders have claimed the areas in question are historically Arab regions “Kurdified” when Arab populations fled to Turkey during the Syrian civil war, and which were then taken over by Kurds who conducted anti-Arab ethnic cleansing of their own, which Kurdish commanders adamantly deny. Turkish leaders claim all they are doing is returning Syrian refugees to safe zones in historically Arab areas.

At least in the case of Tal Abyad, the current focus of fighting, this is arguably true: Tal Abyad is an Arab-majority city, with an ethnic Turkmen population in the surrounding area, and was an Islamic State stronghold until captured by the SDF in 2015.

Many residents fled into Turkey to escape Islamic State and long sought to return. The city and its population are expected largely to support the Turkish incursion, which probably explains why Turkish commanders chose it as their initial objective.

The province of Hasakah, further east, historically has been dominated by a powerful Arab tribal confederation but also includes a large Kurdish population.

In the far eastern zone of the Turkish operational area, Ras al-Ayn was originally controlled by the FSA (predecessor to today’s SNA) and by Islamist groups aligned with Turkey, before being captured by the SDF in a hard-fought battle in 2013.

Kobane, to the west, is a Kurdish stronghold that became famous when the YPG (a militia linked to the SDF, which also has ties to the anti-Turkish PKK) successfully held it against Islamic State during a desperate defensive battle in 2014. Turkey and the US both regard the PKK as a terrorist group. Its separatist insurgency inside Turkey has cost more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

Turkey’s desire to create a buffer between SDF/YPG and the PKK — and, more important, to prevent the emergence of a de facto autonomous Kurdistan inside Syria, which could encourage separatism in southern Turkey — is thus perfectly understandable.

Turkey’s earlier incursion into Syria, in August 2016, sought to stop the YPG connecting its territory east of the Euphrates with areas to the west of the river, which potentially would have allowed it to link up with PKK. Likewise, early last year Turkish forces invaded and occupied the Kurdish-majority area of Afrin in an attempt to pre-empt the emergence of a contiguous Kurdish-controlled zone along Turkey’s southern border.

Turkey’s goals here are therefore arguably legitimate, even as Ankara is roundly condemned by European officials and threatened with sanctions by a bipartisan group of US senators.

However, at the same time Kurdish claims are also true: without the SDF, and the sacrifice of thousands of Kurdish fighters killed and wounded, the international coalition arguably would never have been able to recapture Raqqa, clear Islamic State’s barbarous rule from large parts of Syria and Iraq, and collapse the so-called territorial “caliphate” led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

This genuinely is, as Kurdish commanders have claimed, a “stab in the back” for the SDF. US policymakers are caught between the claims of two allies, the SDF and Turkey, now in open warfare against each other.

For now, Trump seems to have chosen Turkey over the Kurds, hoping — as he has repeatedly tweeted — that Ankara will own the problem of Islamic State in Syria while also being stuck with the task of stabilising northeast Syria, freeing some or all of the remaining 1000 US troops in Syria to leave. One can disagree strongly with the President’s logic, on moral and strategic grounds, or for the simple practical reason that Turkey is highly unlikely to succeed in any of these tasks.

Still, what the past week of chaos and violence in Syria mostly shows is that in this fiendishly complex and multi-layered conflict there are no real solutions, only trade-offs. As the battle rages in northern Syria, it remains to be seen whether Trump’s trade-off will turn out to be the right one.