Syrian Kurdish SDF officials announced on Sunday that they have agreed
to fully withdraw from the 30 km buffer zone along the Turkish border,
and will be withdrawing under the terms of the Russia-Turkey deal.
The SDF statement said that they are in the process of deploying
already, and urged Russia to help them establish a “constructive
dialogue” between the Kurds and the Assad government of Syria.
The SDF had claimed to withdraw under the US ceasefire, which ended a
week ago. When that fell apart, Turkey was set to renew its offensive
before Russia made a deal promising to get the rest of the Kurds out.
That ceasefire is set to end on Tuesday night.
Turkey’s President Erdogan has suggested that the Kurdish “terrorists”
are not out of the area yet, saying Turkey is advancing its
establishment of a safe zone, and is prepared to “clean” the zone of
Kurds if Russia misses the deadline.
This is a quagmire inside of a paradox within an enigma. Too bad we didn’t think this through before we sent our troops in there. We could wait another couple of years, or five years, or ten years, or fifty years and the consequences of our pullout would be the same. I hope that some day we will hear the words “we’ll just let them solve their own problems” from our leaders in Washington DC, but I won’t hold my breath until then.
Safe Zone=New Idlib. Pass it around.