The deployment of US troops into the city of Manbij, and the Kurdish handover of neighboring villages to the Syrian military, weren’t all that happened in the area today. Russian troops, eager to use their presence to sustain a Syria-Turkey ceasefire, also arrived in the area.
This has ended with US troops, Syrian troops, and Russian troops all deployed into neighboring villages for patrols, and all with the same intention, keeping Turkey’s invasion force and its rebel allies from getting to the city of Manbij, which remains under the control of Kurdish forces.
A ceasefire largely remains in place in Syria, which includes Turkey and Syria, and which Russia has been trying to police by being close at hand whenever Turkey-backed rebels started attacking the Syrian military. The Kurds were deliberately excluded from the ceasefire, at Turkey’s insistence.
So Turkey can attack the Kurds just like they were attacking ISIS, but they have to get to them first, and they’ve got three nations in the way. Turkish officials have since insisted that a unilateral attack on Manbij is not necessarily their next step, but wherever they attack, the expectation is that it will involve Kurds.
I am really wondering whether Kurds are going to have a major role. It makes no sense from US perspective, as Kurds do not have the manpower nor the firepower of Turkey. In order to take over Raqqa region, Us needs some serious boots on the ground, along with a lots of hardware. US can find a role for Kurds, but realistically, it cannot rely on them to conquer Raqqa region, and even less Deir Azzor region.
I would like to see some results. So far, Raqqa has not been seriously troubled. And one can see it by how many forces can ISIS keep at Deir Azzor. Syrian Army is facing swarms of ISIS soldiers there. It is fortunate that the rebels in Idlib are at moment at each other’s throats, so Army need not be too concerned about their intentions. So, it is OK to sort out Manbij, but there is still the small matter of Raqqa. And with each passing day, more ISIS fighers are coming from Mosul. Why wait so long to have them reconstitute and regroup in Syria?
So all this worry about the Kurds being betrayed and abandoned haven’t come to pass after all! They have three non-Kurdish armies to protect them, not bad for people without an independent homeland.