Syrian Kurdish General, Mazloum Abdi Kobani, Commander-in-chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, the autonomous Kurdish administration’s de facto army, in Syrian Kurdistan *rojava), October 2019. Photo: AFP
WASHINGTON,— Republican and Democratic U.S. senators asked the State Department on Wednesday to quickly provide a visa so that the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces could visit the United states to discuss the situation in the country.
Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Marsha Blackburn and Democrats Chris Van Hollen, Jeanne Shaheen and Richard Blumenthal wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking him to expedite a visa for the commander, General Mazloum Abdi Kobani.
“To say we are extremely concerned with the situation unfolding in northern Syria is an understatement,” they said in their letter, saying it would benefit both Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration to hear from Kobani.
Their request came hours after Trump announced that a ceasefire in Syrian Kurdistan, the Kurdish region in northern Syria was now permanent and he lifted sanctions on Turkey as a result, rejecting criticism of his decision to pull out U.S. troops that allowed Kurdish allies to come under attack from Turkey.
The lawmakers who sent the letter have been among the loudest voices in the U.S. Congress lamenting Trump’s decision, which many see as abandoning Kurdish forces who fought for years alongside U.S. troops as they battled Islamic State militants.
Turkey and its Syrian proxies on October 9, 2019 launched a cross-border attack against Kurdish fighters in Syrian Kurdistan, after an announced US military pullout.
The Kurdish SDF, the de facto army of the autonomous Kurdish region, have been a key ally of the United States in the battle against Islamic State group in Syria.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.
The US pullout has largely been seen as a betrayal of Syria’s Kurds.
Syria’s Kurds have established a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Syria during the country’s eight-year war.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
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