Syria Live Updates: Assad’s Army Moves into Border Town

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-kurds.html

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The Syrian Army invaded the town of Tel Tamer in northeastern Syria, state media reported on Monday, soon after the government of President Bashar al-Assad forged an alliance with the Kurdish forces that control the region.

Tel Tamer, a strategic crossroads that connects northeastern Syria with the country’s northern hub, Aleppo, is just 20 miles from Ras al Ain, the center of the Turkish assault.

Tel Tamer was once home to hundreds of Christians before ISIS overran the territory and claimed it as part of its self-declared caliphate in 2015. Kurdish-led fighters repelled the Islamist extremists and had held the town with the backing of American troops until President Trump abruptly withdrew them from the region last week.

Syrian state television showed about half a dozen Syrian soldiers milling around a pickup truck mounted with a machine gun. They were greeted by a small crowd of local residents, some of whom carried portraits of Mr. Assad.

It has been only a week since President Trump pulled back American forces in Syria and effectively gave Turkey the green light to cross the border and pursue its own military agenda. Alliances are shifting, ISIS is reinvigorated and the lives of thousands of civilians are endangered.

Embittered at their abandonment by their American allies, Kurdish leaders adroitly moved to secure a new partner: The government of Bashar al-Assad, an avowed foe of the United States.

Late Sunday, the Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., said they had struck a deal with the Assad government that would allow government forces to enter the Kurdish-controlled northeast of Syria for the first time in years. The commander of the S.D.F. wrote an article for Foreign Policy that explained the reasoning behind the deal.

The commander, Mazloum Abdi, said in the absence of American help against the Turkish invasion, he had no option but to seek help from the Syrian Army and their Russian allies, even though “we do not trust their promises.”

“We know that we would have to make painful compromises with Moscow and Bashar al-Assad if we go down the road of working with them,” he added. “But if we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people.”

Trump administration officials once argued that keeping Mr. Assad’s forces out of the territory was crucial to stemming Iranian and Russian influence in Syria. But with American troops on the way out, Washington has lost its leverage.

“The worst thing in military logic and comrades in the trench is betrayal,” said one official allied with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Some American military members who had worked closely with the Kurdish militia were also appalled.

“They trusted us and we broke that trust,” said one Army officer who has worked alongside the Kurds in northern Syria. “It’s a stain on the American conscience.”

Advisers to the Turkish president said Monday morning that the Turkish Army would press on with its incursion, despite the deal brokered between Kurdish forces and the Syrian government on Sunday.

The official Turkish explanation for the offensive was to clear the area of the Kurdish-led militia that has close ties with a terrorist group that is banned in Turkey.

At the start of the invasion, Turkish officials said they respected Syrian sovereignty.

But on Monday, Yasin Aktay, an adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, said on Twitter that “the fact that Syrian Army has made a deal” with the Kurdish militia “will not stop Turkey’s antiterror operation.”

A second presidential adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, later tweeted that “Turkey will not stop until we reach our goals.” Turkish officials have previously promised to create a buffer zone along the length of its border with Syria, roughly 20 miles deep.

The United States had no greater ally in driving out the Islamic State militants who claimed vast swathes of Syria in the quest for a modern-day caliphate than the coalition of fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F.

Inch by inch, the Kurdish-led militia, working with its American military partners, drove ISIS militants out of their strongholds.

But another United States ally viewed the militia much less fondly: Turkey. Its leaders looked across their southern border and saw not an ally but a threat to its territorial integrity, given the militia’s ties to Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

With Turkish-led forces now threatening the Kurds, the S.D.F. has turned its attention away from the Islamic State, including those militants captured during the war and held in detention camps. Already, some ISIS members said to have escaped, along with hundreds of their family members. A planned transfer of five dozen “high value” detainees to the United States from Syria never happened.

Between escaped ISIS members and the Islamist sleeper cells believed to have been left behind when the militants were defeated in Syria, there is concern that the world has not seen the last of the extremist group.

Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall, Ben Hubbard, Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, Patrick Kingsley, Hwaida Saad, Eric Nagourney and Russell Goldman.