When it was announced that the US and Turkey were going to unite against ISIS, there was an immediate announcement of talks underway to establish a “safe zone” in northern Syria, along the Turkish border. It would be 60 miles long. That was all that was known.
Weeks later, that’s still all that is known, with Syrians unclear if they’ll be part of the safe zone, who will be in charge of the region, how it will be “safe,’ or indeed, how the US and Turkey even intend to make such a zone happen since both are ruling out any use of ground troops.
While the timing initial fueled assumptions that the zone would include a lot of ISIS territory, more recent suggestions are that this is not actually what will happen, and that the territory will be further west, carved more out of Kurdish territory than ISIS territory, as Turkey shifts its war focus against the Kurds.
Locals have heard all these plans to end the war before, and the talk of an imminent “safe zone” is just the latest empty promise, and the US and Turkey comments are just another “PR effort” for an unworkable scheme, that will eventually fall by the wayside in favor of more bombings.