This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/world/middleeast/kurds-syria-turkey.html

The article has changed 17 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 9 Version 10
Russia Troops Patrol Between Turkish and Syrian Forces, Filling an American Void In Syria, Russia Pleased to Fill an American Void
(about 3 hours later)
CEYLANPINAR, Turkey — Russia said on Tuesday that its military units were patrolling territory in northern Syria vacated by the Americans following the withdrawal ordered by President Trump, underscoring the sudden loss of United States influence in the eight-year-old Syria war. DOHUK, Iraq — Russia asserted itself in a long-contested part of Syria on Tuesday after the United States pulled out, giving Moscow a new opportunity to press for Syrian army gains and project itself as a rising power broker in the Middle East.
The Americans had until Monday maintained two military bases in the area, and Russia’s announcement signaled that Moscow, the Syrian government’s most important ally, was moving to fill a security void left by the withdrawal of both the American military and its partners in their effort to destroy the Islamic State and its Syrian base. Russian and Syrian troops drove through a key town where the United States had held sway and picked over abandoned American outposts to announce their presence in the area and deter the Turkish incursion that began last week.
Videos circulating on social media appeared to show a Russian-speaking man filming himself walking around a recently evacuated United States military base in northern Syria, punctuating the message that the Russians were now in charge. The Russian advance, enabled by President Trump’s decision to pull back, may boost Russia’s Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, while blunting the Turkish incursion. It was a telling demonstration of how influence over the eight-year-old conflict in Syria has shifted from the United States to Russia. But in this case, there appeared to be little balance left in the Americans’ favor.
President Trump decided last week to abruptly yank American forces from a Kurdish enclave of northern Syria, ending a longstanding alliance with Syrian Kurdish fighters regarded by Turkey as terrorists. Turkey’s military then invaded, driving tens of thousands of civilians from their homes and forcing the Syrian Kurdish fighters to align themselves with the Syrian military in a stunning switch of allegiances for survival. “Look at how they were preparing the base,” a Russian-speaking reporter said in a video shot inside an abandoned American outpost in northeastern Syria, its water tanks, communication towers, tents, and fridges full of soda all left behind. “They thought they were going to be here for a long time.”
In a sign of the concern for the safety of the remaining American troops in Syria, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke on Monday with his Russian counterpart about the deteriorating security in the country’s northeast.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that its military police, which had already established a presence in other parts of Syria, were patrolling along a line of contact separating Syrian and Turkish forces, who have been racing to control large parts of northern Syria since the Turkish invasion began last Wednesday. The abrupt order by Mr. Trump to pull United States military personnel out of the area set off days of violence that sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing, shattered the American partnership with Syria’s Kurds, raised fears about an Islamic State revival and allowed Mr. Assad’s troops backed by their Russian allies to sweep up new territory without a fight.
The Russians were patrolling near the strategically important city of Manbij, vacated by the Americans and Syrian Kurds and now occupied Syrian government troops. The statement also said Russian troops were coordinating “with the Turkish side.” Pentagon concern about the safety of the departing United States forces amid the chaos in northern Syria intensified, as seen in a low-flying buzz of a Turkish-backed militia on Tuesday by American Apache helicopter gunships. The militia was about four miles away from the Americans at the time of the incident, first reported by Fox News and confirmed by an American military official.
The developments came as a spokesman for the United States-led coalition said on Twitter that its forces, which include French and British soldiers, had left Manbij. “Coalition forces are executing a deliberate withdrawal from northeast Syria,” Col. Myles B. Caggins wrote. “We are out of Manbij.” It remained unclear on Tuesday whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia intended to keep his forces in the area indefinitely. But for Russia, the reshuffling of northeastern Syria, which had in recent years been a virtual American protectorate, yielded two main benefits. It empowered Mr. al-Assad, a longtime Russian patron, to accelerate his quest to regain control of all of Syria’s territory, and gave Mr. Putin another place to advertise Russia as a good friend to have in the Middle East.
Russia and Turkey will soon be the only foreign armies in the area. “What’s happening now is a very complicated knot being untied,” said Aleksandr Shumilin, a Middle East specialist at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. “This is an unexpected gift for Putin.”
Syria’s state broadcaster also reported that Syrian government troops had deployed inside Manbij, as Turkish-led forces advanced in the countryside outside the city. Elsewhere, Kurdish-led fighters attempted to retake another important town near the Turkish border, Ras al-Ain, from Turkish-led forces. As the United States has sought to lessen its commitments across the region, Mr. Putin has increasingly cast Russia as a worthy alternative. On Tuesday, as American troops were leaving their bases near the Syrian town of Manbij, Mr. Putin was on a state visit to the United Arab Emirates after a trip to Saudi Arabia the day before.
Heavy fire from machine guns could be heard to the south and southwest of Ras al-Ain and from the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, which is less than a mile from the fighting. Turkish artillery pounded an eastern suburb of the Syrian settlement midmorning, raising clouds of smoke above low farmhouses and pistachio groves. Both are longtime American allies that have begun questioning the United States’ commitment to their security and looking to diversify their international partnerships.
As of Tuesday, fighting in Ras al-Ain and other areas of northern Syria has forced at least 160,000 people from their homes, according to United Nations estimates. The Kurdish authorities put the figure at 270,000. “I think of Russia as my second home,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, the de facto ruler of the Emirates, told Mr. Putin. “We are connected by a deep strategic relationship.”
Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from northern Syria drew global condemnation, left Kurdish fighters feeling betrayed, and raised the possibility that the president had made a strategic blunder that would open a volatile new chapter in the war. Experts on the region warned that the withdrawal of American troops would embolden Russia, Iran and the Islamic State. Throughout the war in Syria, Russia has been Mr. al-Assad’s most loyal foreign backer, protecting him from sanctions by the United Nations and sending Russian troops to support his forces and jets to bomb his enemies.
Abandoned by the Americans, and quickly losing land to the Turkish force, the Kurdish authorities sought protection from the Syrian government and Russia. As of last month, Russia’s assistance had helped restore Mr. al-Assad’s control over most of Syria, the largest exception being the northeast, where the United States had partnered with a Kurdish-led militia to fight the Islamic State and had maintained a contingent of about 1,000 troops, in part to keep Mr. al-Assad away.
Since the Kurdish authorities asked the government of President Bashar al-Assad for assistance, thousands of Syrian Army troops have flooded into northern Syria for the first time since the government lost control of the region several years ago. But that changed last Wednesday when Turkey launched its military incursion, setting off new violence that sent American troops scrambling to get out of the way. Feeling betrayed by the Americans, the Kurds made a deal with Mr. al-Assad that would put his army along the Turkish border.
But Syrian government troops have stayed clear of the border region near Ras al-Ain, where Kurdish troops fight on alone. Instead, government forces have deployed to other strategic positions, such as Manbij, to help alleviate pressure on Kurdish fighters on the front line. The United States has begun moving its troops onto bases elsewhere in Syria as the first stage in a near total withdrawal from the country.
The last-minute alliance comes at great cost to the Kurdish authorities, who are effectively giving up self-rule. On Tuesday, the United States and its international allies used a single tweet to announce their departure from Manbij, a contested area where they had sought to prevent fighting between their Kurdish-led militia allies and Syrian fighters backed by Turkey.
Syrian Kurdish militias established a system of self-rule in northern Syria in 2012, when the chaos of the Syrian civil war gave them the chance to create a sliver of autonomous territory free of central government influence. “Coalition forces are executing a deliberate withdrawal from northeast Syria,” Col. Myles B. Caggins III, a spokesman for the coalition wrote. “We are out of Manbij.”
The fighters greatly expanded their territory after they partnered with an international military coalition, led by the United States, to push the Islamic State from the area. Syrian government forces soon drove through town with tanks and Russian military vehicles, residents said, before digging through nearby outposts and expressing surprise at how much the Americans had left behind.
After the Kurdish-led fighters captured ISIS territory, they assumed responsibility for its governance, eventually controlling roughly a quarter of the Syrian landmass. They have also been guarding thousands of ISIS fighters and their families, hundreds of whom fled a detention camp in Ras al-Ain after Turkish-led forces bombed the surrounding area.The Kurds’ control of the land in Syria enraged Turkey, since the militia is an offshoot of a guerrilla group that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. Turkey has long pressed the United States to abandon its alliance with Kurdish fighters so Turkish troops could enter Syria and force the Kurds from territory close to the border. “I am on an American base where they were just yesterday morning, and this morning we’re here,” Oleg Blokhin, a pro-Kremlin reporter embedded with Russian troops in Syria, said in a video on his Facebook page. “Now we’ll take a look at how they lived, what they were doing.”
Washington rebuffed Turkey’s requests for several years, maintaining a de facto peacekeeping presence along the border near Ras al-Ain, the town at the center of the fighting on Friday. But that changed last week, when Mr. Trump made a sudden decision to withdraw troops — first from that particular area, and later from all of northern Syria. Another video posted by Anna News, a pro-Kremlin outlet, declared “Manbij is ours!” and gave a virtual tour of the base. A wireless router sat on a desk and cables hung from an office ceiling. A tube of Pringles and a bag of animal crackers lay on a table. A military canteen was stockpiled with boxes of cereal, multiple bags of bagels and four fridges full of soda and juice boxes.
In Britain, meanwhile, a day after foreign ministers from all 28 European Union member states agreed unanimously to stop selling arms to Turkey — the first time the bloc has reached such a decision about a NATO ally — Britain announced a pause in such ties with Turkey. A post on the outlet’s Telegram channel observed that “the Americans packed so quickly that they left behind some of their property and personal items.” A photo showed a door marked “Emergency Exit.”
Dominic Raab, Britain’s foreign secretary, told the House of Commons on Tuesday that “no further export licenses to Turkey for items which might be used in military operations in Syria will be granted” until the government had conducted a review. Throughout the war, Russia has used means ranging from military force to creative diplomacy to make itself a central player in Syria — at the expense of the United States. In 2015, it dispatched forces to help Mr. al-Assad by heavily bombing his rebel enemies, turning the overall battle in his favor and away from the opposition supported by the United States. The Russians have repeatedly blunted Western attempts to hold Mr. al-Assad’s government accountable for using banned chemical weapons.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has made clear he will not bow to pressure to halt the offensive. “We will soon secure the region from Manbij to the border with Iraq,” he said on Tuesday during a visit to Azerbaijan, referring to the 230-mile expanse of territory. And to steer diplomacy away from United Nations peace talks the West hoped would remove Mr. al-Assad, Russia opened an alternative track with Iran and Turkey that sidelined Western nations.
Carlotta Gall reported from Ceylanpinar, and Patrick Kingsley from Istanbul. Reporting was contributed by Anton Troianovski from Moscow, Iliana Magra from London and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mr. Shumilin, the analyst, said Russia also had found ways to benefit from Western missteps.
“It must be said that all of Russia’s most significant successes in Syria have not been reached as a result of deliberate efforts by Moscow,” he said. “They simply crashed down onto Putin and Moscow as manna from heaven as a result of the peculiar behavior of the Western countries and of Turkey.”
Mr. Putin had also hoped to use Syria in the service of a broader geopolitical goal: to strengthen ties with Turkey and pull it away from NATO.
“Turkey’s operation drives the wedge even deeper between Turkey and NATO,” Mr. Shumilin said. “That is even more important for Putin.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday its military police were patrolling the northwestern borders of the Manbij area to avert clashes between Syrian government troops and Turkish-led forces who were also set on seizing the district.
Russia’s special envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentyev, said during Mr. Putin’s visit to Abu Dhabi that Russia and Turkey were in contact to prevent such clashes — a role previously played by the United States.
Mr. Lavrentyev also said Russia was facilitating talks between Mr. al-Assad’s government and the United States’ erstwhile allies, the Kurdish-led militia.
“If this trend prevails, it will be a big step toward the restoration of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence of Syria,” he said.
Despite an agreement with the Syrian Kurds that would put Syrian government troops on the border with Turkey, they stayed clear of the border region near Ras al-Ain, where Syrian Kurdish troops were fighting alone.
The agreement with Damascus comes at great cost to the Kurdish authorities, who are effectively relinquishing self-rule. Syrian Kurdish militias established autonomy in northern Syria in 2012, when the chaos of the Syrian civil war gave them the opportunity to create a sliver of independent territory free from the central government.
The fighters greatly expanded their territory after they partnered with a military coalition led by the United States to push the Islamic State from the area.
After the Kurdish-led fighters captured ISIS territory, they assumed responsibility for its governance, eventually controlling roughly a quarter of Syria. They also guard thousands of ISIS fighters in prisons and tens of thousands of their relatives in squalid camps.
The fighting has raised questions about who will ultimately take charge of these people and what will be done with them.
The Kurds’ control of the land in Syria enraged Turkey, since the militia is an offshoot of a anti-Turkish guerrilla group that has waged a decades-long insurgency. Turkey had pressed the United States to abandon its alliance with Kurdish fighters, but Washington rebuffed Turkey’s requests for years.
That all changed last week, when Mr. Trump made a sudden decision to withdraw troops — first from the pathway of the Turkish incursion, and later from all of northeastern Syria.
Turkey’s actions have angered the West. Britain paused arms sales to Turkey on Tuesday, one day after all 28 European Union member states agreed to do so. It was the first time the bloc had reached such a decision about a NATO ally.
But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has made clear he will resist pressure to halt the offensive, which has also included the threat of new sanctions by Mr. Trump.
“We will soon secure the region from Manbij to the border with Iraq,” Mr. Erdogan said.
Ben Hubbard reported from Dohuk, Iraq, Anton Troianovski from Moscow, Carlotta Gall from Ceylanpinar, Turkey, and Patrick Kingsley from Istanbul. Reporting was contributed by Ivan Nechepurenko and Oleg Matsnev from Moscow, Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Iliana Magra from London and Eric Schmitt from Washington.