When Syria’s Kurdish fighters announced they were joining with Damascus and Moscow, it seemed like a moment of geopolitical whiplash. In fact, the move from America’s longtime allies against the Islamic State had been in the works for more than a year.
Turkish tanks and troops stationed near Syrian town of Manbij, Syria, Tuesday. Oct. 15, 2019. Russia moved to fill the void left by the United States in northern Syria on Tuesday, deploying troops to keep apart advancing Syrian government and Turkish forces.
The switch in allegiances is a stark illustration of how American foes like Russia and Syria are working. It also betrays the anxiety that U.S. allies across the globe now feel in the face of Trump’s seemingly impulsive foreign policy decisions, which often come as a surprise to allies and critics alike.
The Turks have long been eager for an opportunity to go in and flush out the Kurdish fighters in Syria, which they consider terrorists. Turkey says the group is an offshoot of a Kurdish guerrilla group known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has waged a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey. Afrin has major significance to the Kurds. It’s one of the first Kurdish areas to rise up against Syrian President Bashar Assad and back self-rule, a base for senior fighters who pioneered the alliance with the Americans and a key link in their efforts to form a contiguous entity along Turkey’s border.In one of the first high-level meetings in Russia, a Kurdish delegation flew to Moscow in November 2018, where on the same day a Turkish senior security delegation was present.
In December 2018, Trump — against the advice of his senior policy advisers — announced that he was going to pull all American troops out of Syria. The surprise announcement prompted the resignations of Defense Secretary James Mattis and Brett McGurk, the special envoy for the counter-IS campaign.
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