U.S. ‘Withdraws’ Forces to Let Turks Advance on
America's Allies
Khalil Ashawi/Reuters
In the latest surge of anti-war rhetoric from the Trump administration, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the U.S. is launching a “deliberate withdrawal” of American forces from northern Syria, but refused to say how long it will take.
“We want to conduct it safely and quickly as possible,” Esper told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning, adding, “I’m not prepared to put a timeline on it, but that’s our general game plan.”
Two knowledgeable U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that the troops are just withdrawing further away from the advance of Turkish forces massacring the Syrian Kurds whom America relied upon to destroy the so-called Islamic State’s caliphate.
There are currently 1,000 U.S. troops in Syria. A knowledgeable U.S. official said hundreds of those troops, without further specificity, will leave Syria for elsewhere in the Mideast. Following a pullout from two northern Syrian observation posts last week, the U.S. will now retreat further away from the area Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invaded.
Esper said that President Donald Trump gave the withdrawal order because Turkish forces are pushing further south into Syria and Kurdish forces are trying to cut a deal with Syria and Russia to counter-attack.
“We have American forces likely caught between two opposing advancing armies and it’s a very untenable situation,” he said.
But as Esper made clear, the order affects only the north and there will still be American forces in the rest of Syria even as Trump—who separately has ordered about 14,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf region over the past six months—rails against the disastrous, bloody and interminable U.S. misadventure in the Middle East over the past generation.
A U.S. official told CNN that U.S. policy “has failed” and that the campaign in Syria to defeat ISIS is “over for now,” giving the terrorist group “a second lease on life with nearly 100,000 [people] who will re-join their jihad.”
The mixed messaging by the Trump administration is making it difficult for even his most ardent supporters to help unravel his foreign policy on Syria as it spins out of control.
Just days after Trump announced the withdrawal of American troops from northern Syria where they have been providing weapons and cover to allied Kurdish fighters on the border between Turkey and Syria, Turkey began a military incursion that has sent the region into a level of chaos it has not seen in recent years.
James Mattis On Trump's Syria Withdrawal: 'Re-Instilling Trust Is Going To Be Very Difficult'
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who served under President Donald Trump for two years, suggested he opposes Trump’s widely condemned decision to abandon U.S-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria.
Mattis, who resigned in January after Trump announced he planned to abruptly withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, has been reluctant to forcefully speak out against the president, saying military officials shouldn’t be political.
But asked about Trump and his apparent decision to greenlight Turkey’s military assault on the Kurds, Mattis said his resignation says it all.
“I have my private, my personal concerns,” Mattis said during a taped interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press” that aired Sunday. “I keep those private. ... The defense of the country is non-partisan so we have to stay out of those sorts of discussions.”
He then pointed to his resignation letter, in which he urged Trump to maintain strong allies and show them respect, to understand his current stance.
“Only in Washington, D.C., could a public resignation over a matter of policy, a matter of principle, with a page-and-a-half letter explaining why be considered careful,” Mattis told host Chuck Todd.
“It talks about our security being tied inextricably to our alliances,” he said of his resignation letter, which prompted panic from Democrats and some Republicans when it was made public. “I don’t know what more I could say about how I think we ought to treat allies and how I think we should treat those who are adversaries.”
TODAY: Former Defense Secretary James Mattis says to know how he feels about the current situation in Syria, read his resignation letter.
"It's a page and a half long. It talks about our security being tied inextricably to our alliances. I don't know what more I can say." #MTP pic.twitter.com/VfUgZR2pMx
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) October 13, 2019
Trump shocked Republicans and Democrats last week when the White House announced U.S. forces in northern Syria would allow Turkish forces to invade the area, essentially abandoning the Kurds.
Over 130,000 people have been displaced since Thursday and hundreds of fighters from the self-described Islamic State, also known as ISIS, have escaped as Turkish-led forces targeted Syrian border towns held by Kurdish militia. Turkish-backed Arab fighters have also killed several Kurdish captives as well as Hervin Khalaf, the head of a Kurdish political party.
Foreign policy experts, including Brett McGurk, a former U.S. envoy to the global anti-ISIS coalition who resigned last year in protest of Trump, have warned that Trump’s decision not to defend the Kurds is highly immoral and threatens national security.
Mattis, during his interview with NBC, warned that ISIS will “absolutely” reemerge if the U.S. doesn’t keep the pressure on in Syria.
“ISIS is not defeated,” he said. “We may want a war over. We may even declare it over. ... But the enemy gets a vote, as we say in the military. In this case, if we don’t keep the pressure on, then ISIS will resurge.”
He said it’s going to be “very difficult” for the U.S. to save face after Trump’s decision to withdraw.
“You turn issues like this around based on trust,” Mattis said. “And re-instilling trust is going to be very difficult for the Americans at this point.”
He added: “America’s always safer when it builds the trust and a sense of reliability among our allies.”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Trump says he is ‘island of one’ on Syria position as domestic and international criticism mounts
Donald Trump has described himself as “an island of one” over his sudden decision to remove US forces from northeastern Syria, as his defence secretary said 1,000 troops would be evacuated to avoid getting caught up in the Turkish invasion.
The president continued to defend the move that effectively green-lit the immediate Turkish assault on America’s Kurdish allies, who fought on the front line against Isis.
Amid bipartisan and international criticism that he has endangered stability in the Middle East, Mr Trump argued the US cannot fight “endless wars”.
Mark Esper, the US defence secretary, said most of the 1,000 US troops still in Syria were being moved as the Turkish military extended the scope of its incursion.
He told CBS’s Face the Nation: “In the last 24 hours we learned that they likely intend to expand their attack further south than originally planned, and to the west.”
The danger of US forces becoming embroiled in the conflict was illustrated on Friday when an American observation post came under shelling from Turkish artillery. No US troops were injured.
Asked whether he thought Turkey, a NATO ally, would deliberately attack American troops in Syria, Mr Esper said, “I don’t know whether they would or wouldn’t.”
A US military official told the Associated Press that the situation across northeastern Syria was “deteriorating rapidly” and that American troops had now become cut off from the Kurdish allies they had been fighting alongside.
Amid reports of 130,000 civilians forced to flee their homes, dozens killed and nearly 800 detainees having escaped from a camp holding Isis relatives, Mr Trump attempted to defend his "very smart" move on Sunday.
"Very smart not to be involved in the intense fighting along the Turkish Border, for a change. Those that mistakenly got us into the Middle East Wars are still pushing to fight," he tweeted.
“We have to bring our great heroes, our great soldiers, we have to bring them home. It’s time. It’s time,” Mr Trump said in a lengthy, wide-ranging address to conservative activists at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.
He portrayed the Middle East as a hopeless cause, despite years of American military involvement and financial investment.
“It’s less safe now. It’s less secure, less stable and they fight,” he said. “That’s what they do. They fight.”
The UN estimated on Sunday that at least 130,000 people had been displaced by the five-day-old Turkish invasion, with the official Kurdish death toll at 76.
Boris Johnson has, in a phone call with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urged Turkey to halt the offensive.
And two of Turkey’s NATO allies, Germany and France, have said they are halting weapons exports to Turkey, while the Arab League denounced the operation.
Donald Trump defends decision to pull US forces out of Syria
Mr Trump announced that he had directed $50m in emergency aid for Syria to support Christians and other religious minorities.
Turkey regards the Kurds as terrorists, and Mr Trump suggested that he was aware of a likely invasion in the event of US withdrawal.
He defended his decision to reporters, saying Turkey had “been wanting to do this for many years ... they’ve been fighting each other for centuries”.
His former defence secretary Jim Mattis has also issued a strong warning that Mr Trump's move could lead to the resurgence of Isis.
"We may want a war over, we may even declare it over," General Mattis said, in an interview with NBC, aired on Sunday.
"You can pull your troops out as President Obama learned the hard way out of Iraq, but the 'enemy gets the vote', we say in the military.
"And in this case, if we don't keep the pressure on, then Isis will resurge. It's absolutely a given that they will come back."
Isis declared on Saturday that it has already started regrouping and is planning a fresh campaign in Syria, claiming responsibility for two deadly car bombs on Friday.
Mr Trump has previously talked tough on Isis, using their existence to justify enacting a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries.
But when asked about the prospect of escaped Isis prisoners shortly after his decision, Mr Trump played down the threat, telling reporters: “Well they’re going to be escaping to Europe. That’s where they want to go. They want to go back to their homes.”
On Sunday, an estimated 785 women and children affiliated with Isis escaped from a camp 50km north of Raqqa.
Kurdish authorities said “mercenaries” had attacked the Ain Issa camp where “Daesh elements” then attacked a severely diminished force of camp guards and opened the gates, amid Turkish shelling in the region.
As reports emerged of the escape, Turkish and Syrian rebel forces captured the neighbouring town of Suluk.
Mr Trump tweeted on Saturday night: “The same people that got us into the Middle East quicksand, $8tn and many thousands of lives (and millions of lives when you count the other side), are now fighting to keep us there.
“Don’t listen to people that haven’t got a clue. They have proven to be inept.”
The Independent/Additional reporting by AP
Syrian Democratic Forces say politician was ambushed and shot dead in attack
Turkish-backed groups have killed nine civilians, including a female politician, in northeastern Syria, according to a human rights monitor.
Hevrin Khalaf, the Future Syria Party’s secretary-general, and her driver were ambushed and shot dead on Saturday, according to Kurdish forces.
“The nine civilians were executed at different moments south of the town of Tal Abyad,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In a statement, the political arm of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said Khalaf was “taken out of her car during a Turkish-backed attack and executed by Turkish-backed mercenary factions”.
“This is clear evidence that the Turkish state is continuing its criminal policy towards unarmed civilians,” the SDF said.
Turkey and its allied fighters began an offensive on Wednesday to push back the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) from its border.
The YPG is the primary component of the SDF who have been instrumental in fighting Isis in Syria.
The Turkish government has described the YPG as a “terrorist” group with links to Kurdish rebels in Turkey.
“With utmost grievance and sadness, the Syria Future Party mourns the martyrdom of engineer Havrin Khalaf, the General Secretary of Syria Future Party, while she was performing her patriotic and political duties,” the Future Party said in a statement on Khalaf’s death.
Two videos of the killings were circulated on social media by Kurdish activists.
Although the Syrian Observatory confirmed the authenticity of the videos, other news agencies, such as AFP, could not independently verify them.
A US State Department spokesperson told Reuters on Sunday that the United States had seen reports of the killings and it was looking into the incidents.
"We find these reports to be extremely troubling, reflecting the overall destabilisation of northeast Syria since the commencement of hostilities on Tuesday," the spokesperson said.
The Syrian Observatory added that the deaths brought the number of civilians killed on the Syrian side to at least 38 since the start of the offensive.
Eighty-one Kurdish fighters have also been killed in the clashes, the human rights group said.
The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army said on Saturday that it had ordered commanders to “continuously supervise combatants on the frontlines to prevent any abuse”,
The group, who oppose the SDF, added that perpetrators of possible abuses “would face the most severe sanctions and be brought to justice for military disobedience."
Islamic State Rears Its Head, Adding to Chaos as Turkey Battles Kurds
The New York Times•October 12, 2019
CEYLANPINAR, Turkey — The Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria raised new fears of a resurgence of the Islamic State on Friday, as five militants escaped from a Kurdish-run prison and the extremist group claimed responsibility for a bomb that exploded in the regional capital.
As Turkish troops launched a third night of airstrikes and ground incursions, Kurdish fighters said they had thwarted a second attempt to break out of a detention camp for families of Islamic State members.
The moves compounded a mounting sense of turmoil in northeast Syria, where tens of thousands of residents were reported fleeing south. The Turkish government said its troops had advanced 5 miles inside part of the country. Several major roads had been blocked and a major hospital abandoned.
Since Wednesday, Turkish forces have pummeled Kurdish-held territory with airstrikes and sent in ground troops, trying to seize land controlled by a Kurdish-led militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces. That militia fought alongside U.S. troops in the recent war against the Islamic State.
The campaign began after President Donald Trump suddenly ordered U.S. troops to withdraw from the area, giving implicit approval to Turkey’s long-anticipated attack on the Kurdish-led militia.
Trump’s decision was widely criticized, including by his Republican allies in the United States, who said it was a betrayal of an ally — the Kurds — that could cause a re-emergence of the Islamic State.
The White House — concerned that Congress would pursue bipartisan sanctions legislation against Turkey — said Trump would sign an executive order giving the Treasury Department new powers to punish officials in Turkey if its military targeted ethnic and religious minorities.
“We hope we don’t have to use them,” said Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary. “But we can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to.”
Since pulling out, U.S. officials have expressed growing concern at the direction the Turkish incursion has taken, with officials warning Friday that the United States would respond forcefully if Islamic State fighters were allowed to escape from prisons in the area.
On Friday afternoon, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey vowed to continue the campaign.
“The West and the U.S., together they say, ‘You are killing the Kurds’,” said Erdogan in a speech. “Kurds are our brothers. This struggle of ours is not against Kurds. It is against terror groups.’’
The Turkish government has framed the campaign as a counterterrorist operation because the Kurdish-led militia has close ties with a banned Turkey-based guerrilla movement that has waged a decades long struggle against the Turkish state.
Erdogan has promised that the fight against the Islamic State will continue and that his forces and their allies will continue to guard any captured militants in Kurdish-held prisons.
But the operation has already proved highly disruptive to efforts to keep the Islamic State at bay. Although U.S. and Kurdish forces have defeated Islamic State militants in northeastern Syria, the group has sleeper cells in the region that could use the turmoil to retake the land they controlled in the early years of the Syrian civil war.
And the Kurdish militia has diverted soldiers to fight the invasion and abandoned joint operations with U.S. troops as it prioritizes the defense of its land.
On Friday, a car bomb exploded on a residential street in Qamishli, the de facto capital of the Kurdish-held region — a rare act of Islamic State terrorism in a city that was relatively free of trouble before the Turkish assault began.
The Turkish bombardment has also endangered the security of several Kurdish-run prisons for Islamic State militants, with at least three in the vicinity of continuing Turkish airstrikes. It is widely feared that in the chaos, Islamic State fighters will escape captivity, as the five did Friday.
Kurdish authorities said shells had reached two Kurdish-controlled displacement camps, prompting officials to move some of their 20,000 inhabitants farther south.
One of the camps, in Ain Issa, has hundreds of relatives of Islamic State fighters, heightening fears over the effect that the Turkish invasion will have on the fight against the militant group.
Kurdish forces also released video of a third camp, which they said showed an effort to escape by members of Islamic State families.
A second video, seen by The New York Times, appeared to show prisoners trying to escape a Kurdish-controlled jail after it was hit by an airstrike.
While the Turkish airstrikes have hit targets along most of the 300-mile-long Kurdish-held territory, the ground battle has focused on two small but strategically located Syrian border towns, Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain.
Turkish troops and their Syrian Arab allies have captured a cluster of villages around the two towns, which lie in the center of the Kurdish region. The troops have in one place established a front line 5 miles from the Turkish border, the Turkish vice president, Fuat Oktay, said Friday evening, according to Turkish media.
Their presence has prompted 100,000 residents to flee south, according to U.N. estimates, and forced the evacuation of a major hospital in Tel Abyad that was run by Doctors Without Borders, an international medical charity.
A second hospital, in Ras al-Ain, was also evacuated, according to a separate report by the Rojava Information Center, an information service run by activists in the region.
Turkish mortar shells also landed close to U.S. troops near the city of Kobani on Friday, prompting a complaint from the U.S. military, the Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed. No one was killed. Turkish officials said the Americans had not been targeted, though the Pentagon said Turkey had known that U.S. forces were in the area.
At least 54 Kurdish fighters have been killed since Wednesday, along with 42 from the Turkish-backed force, according to tolls compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict monitor based in Britain.
Turkish towns north of the border have also been affected, as Kurdish fighters have returned fire.
Since fighting began Wednesday, at least 17 civilians, including four children, have been killed in Turkish border towns. At least four Turkish soldiers have died in the fighting, according to Turkish officials.
An entire Turkish border town — Ceylanpinar — was evacuated, after two girls were killed in a rocket strike Thursday and two people were seriously wounded Friday.
Ceylanpinar was largely deserted Friday afternoon, with shops shuttered and only stray dogs and a few men slipping out to chat or buy cigarettes.
“Our city is a ghost town,” complained Musa Sahman, 70, who sells a local raw meat delicacy but had no customers. “Our government is fighting for Syria, but we don’t have any business.”
But the damage has been far worse on the Kurdish side, where 60 civilians have died since Wednesday, according to the Kurdish Red Crescent.
The U.S. decision to ally with Kurdish militias set the stage for Turkey’s invasion this week.
By capturing land previously held by the Islamic State, Kurdish fighters were then able to create an autonomous statelet that spans roughly a quarter of all Syrian territory and is effectively independent of the central Syrian government in Damascus.
But this dynamic has been chastening for Syria’s northern neighbor, Turkey, which views the central figures in the autonomous Kurdish region as hostile actors with strong connections to a violent Kurdish nationalist group inside Turkey itself.
Turkey’s military campaign has come hand in hand with a crackdown on criticism inside Turkey.
The state-run media authority warned that it would “silence” any outlet deemed to have published material damaging to the offensive. Two editors at separate independent news websites were briefly detained, their outlets reported.
“We will never tolerate broadcasts that will negatively affect our beloved nation and glorious soldiers’ morale and motivation, that serves the aim of terror, and might mislead our citizens with faulty, wrong and biased information,” the media authority said in a statement.
The Turkish incursion has prompted a mixed reaction from the 3.6 million Syrian refugees sheltering in Turkey.
Some fear they will end up being deported to the areas recaptured by Turkish forces in northern Syria, despite having no ancestral links there. Others from the areas of northern Syria currently under attack said they welcomed the campaign.
In Turkey, on a hilltop overlooking the Syrian border and the town of Tel Abyad, a lone Syrian man, Mehmet Huseyn, 45, crouched in the shade of a rusting water tank, scanning the horizon for signs of movement.
His brother and family were in his home village, 6 miles beyond the ridgeline, while he had been working as a farm laborer in Turkey for four years to support his family of seven, he said.
“Our village is there,” he said. “I am looking in case they leave and we can return home.”
But it pained him to see more war visited on his home. “Our insides are burning,” he said. “We love our land and we love our country.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
© 2019 The New York Times Company
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