While the US hasn’t exactly needed an excuse to pick fights with pro-government forces in Syrian recent months, defending an allied faction would actually serve as a pretext to launch a much bigger conflict. That is increasingly looking to be the case with the Kurdish YPG.
While early in the war the YPG was mostly neutral on the civil war, and focused on protecting their own territory from ISIS, the group’s growing territory and ambitions for increased autonomy have them increasingly seeing the Syrian government as a threat.
A handful of mortar strikes weeks ago by Syrian forces against a YPG continues to be a key talking point for Kurdish officials, though recently they seem more bothered by the territorial gains the Syrian military is achieving in ISIS territory south of Raqqa.
YPG commander Daman Frat was frank about the problem, in his view, being the “regime allies trying to extend, to control as much as they can,” arguing that the US needs to support more Kurdish advances into the same area to seize that territory before the government can.
Though US officials are being a bit coy about whether they’d be brought into a full-scale war against Syria to protect the Kurds, signs point to yes, as US commanders in Syria have been spoiling for that fight in the first place, with an eye toward leveraging it into a fight with Iran, one of Syria’s key allies.
It’s interesting that the article nowhere mentions the Turks. IMO, any conflict the YPG might have with government forces, will be with Turkish government forces. Erdogan has already stated that he will never accept any form of Kurdish control in Syria, especially anywhere near the Turkish border. And if there happen to be US “advisors” embedded with the Kurds I don’t expect Erdogan to give a ratsass – consider it collateral damage…ooops, so sorry…not.
Maybe the Turks have been promised that over the next year or two, the Kurds will be kept too busy as the West’s new proxies against Assad to make any expansion efforts in Turkey’s direction or to collaborate meaningfully with Kurdish insurgents in Turkey?
If the Turks fail to open a hot front against the de facto Kurdish zone that’s taking hold in Syria, it might be evidence of such an arrangement, with Turkey giving Washington a chance to prove they can keep the Kurds on a leash.
This doesn’t make any sense. The Kurds won’t be able to hold onto any Arab lands, and the SAA has plenty of other fish to fry. The Syrian and Turkish Kurds will all probably end up in Iraqi Kurdistan before the dust settles.
It wouldn’t be a case of “being dragged” into supporting the Kurds against Assad. The US wants the Syrian military destroyed so that Israel can start a war with Iran. So the US will use ANY excuse to confront the Syrian military – as long as the US doesn’t have to worry about Russia and starting WWIII. It’s unclear whether Russia would directly support the Assad regime against the Kurds, although I suspect they might. It’s also unclear whether Russia is prepared to confront the US over a fight with the Kurds.
It could just as easily be a case of the Kurds getting sucked into Washingotn’s fight against Syria & Iran. The US urgently needed a new proxy to stand between the Syria & Iraq and they’ve obviously made some attractive promises to the Kurds while perhaps hinting that if Kurds didn’t take the deal, the US would instead seek to mend fences with Turkey by giving Ankara a green light to whatever they wish with the Kurdish areas in Syria & Iraq.
You may be correct. In any event, it’s likely the Kurds will end up getting screwed as they usually are.
Maybe they they envision this being the start of a long term patronage along the lines of what the US has provided to Albanians? But It doesn;t seem realistic. First of all they will be asked to operate in provinces in which they have no significant local networks or sympathetic residents, and the groups they will be antagonizing (Turkey, Iran & Sunni Arabs) are each 10 times larger than players in the Balkans. In the long run, the US only real choices are to revive some type of Sunni extremist group or just fall in line with whatever the Turks want even if it means putting “regime change” on the shelf the next few years. Either way the Kurds will have to be sacrificed.
I’m nothing short of disgusted by the prospect of fellow anarchists being used to justify another American imperial flap. The YPG has a good thing going with Rojava. Don’t get f**king greedy. WWEGD? What Would Emma Goldman Do?
I’m not sure it’s so much greed as the temptation to see their best security guarantee in American patronage. In exchange for a US security umbrella, they must become the new anti-Assad attack dogs in Eastern Syria as well as making secession noises in northern Iraq – allowing the West to brandish the threat of recognizing a Kurdish state as punishment for Iraq & Turkeys increasing cooperation with Iran & Russia.
If the Kurds have decided to go all-in as Americas proxy in the theater, they will certainly get a lot of military and diplomatic weight behind them for the moment. But it will also burn bridges with Damascus & Baghdad and make Kurdish security completely dependent on US sponsorship. It won’t be just the Turks they have to worry about, they’ll be high on everyone’s hit list.
It seems to put a lot of faith in a US policy which could change and abandon them at any moment. In the mean time. to remain indispensable they will need to fight and die in a pert of Syria where they have no local support and very little attachment while probably having to at least temporarily sell out the Kurds who live in Turkey or on it’s immediate borders to help the US sell this to the Turks.