U.S. continues to arm Kurds in Syrian Kurdistan: Pentagon
The Pentagon. Photo: Courtesy/U.S. DoD
WASHINGTON,— The United States continues to provide Kurdish forces in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) in northeastern Syria with arms and vehicles, despite the creation of a buffer zone with Turkey along the border, a US defense official said Wednesday.
The US supplies the materials to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) units to fight the Islamic State (IS) group, according to the Pentagon.
“We continue to provide very tailored arms and vehicles to the SDF” for use against IS, said Chris Maier, the director of the working group on the fight against the jihadists at the Department of Defense.
“We’re very transparent about what those supplies are,” Maier said.
“We provide monthly to Turkey a report of what those arms and vehicles are.”
The US-led coalition against IS has relied on the SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, to root out and prevent a resurgence of IS.
Turkey, with which the US has established a security buffer zone along the Syrian-Turkish border, considers the Kurdish portion of the SDF, called the People’s Protection Units (YPG), to be a terrorist group.
Maier, who calls the buffer area a “security mechanism,” said five joint helicopter flights by the US and Turkish militaries had already been conducted and the project’s first joint ground patrol took place September 8.
Some Kurdish forces have left and been replaced by Arab fighters, though Maier said there are still YPG forces in the area.
Washington has for years supported the Kurdish forces in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria.
The Kurdish 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 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. But in December 2018 U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the pullout from Syria.
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.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP | Agencies
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