U.S. lawmakers continuing Turkey sanctions push despite ceasefire in Syria
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), Ankara, January 19, 2019. Photo: Reuters
BEIRUT,— U.S. senators who have criticized the Trump administration for failing to halt the Turkish assault against Syrian Kurds, said they would press ahead with plans for legislation to impose sanctions against Turkey despite the ceasefire announcement.
Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen will move “full steam ahead” with their plans to impose stiff sanctions on Turkey, despite a temporary ceasefire agreement.
“Senators Van Hollen and Graham have spoken, and they agree on the need to move full steam ahead with their legislation,” said Bridgett Frey, a spokeswoman for Senator Van Hollen. A spokesman for Graham also said the two planned to move ahead.
The US pullback from key positions along Syria’s northern border, announced last week, effectively abandons the Kurds, Washington’s main ally in the years-old battle against the so-called Islamic State group.
On October 8, 2019 Senior US Republican senator Lindsey Graham urgently warned Turkey against sending troops into Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) in northern Syria.
Turkey agreed on Thursday to pause its offensive in Syrian Kurdistan for five days to let Kurdish forces withdraw from a “safe zone” Ankara had sought to capture, in a deal hailed by the Trump administration and cast by Turkey as a complete victory.
But if implemented it would achieve all the main objectives Turkey announced when it launched the assault eight days ago: control of a strip of Syria more than 30 km (20 miles) deep, with the Kurdish YPG militia, formerly close U.S. allies, obliged to pull out.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said Thursday they are willing to abide by a ceasefire announced by Washington and Turkey, after nine days of fighting along Syria’s northern border.
“We are ready to abide by the ceasefire,” covering the area from Ras al-Ain to Tel Abyad, SDF chief Mazlum Abdi told a Kurdish TV station.
A ceasefire announced by the United States to end hostilities in northern Syria with Turkey is “vague,” a senior adviser to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad told Al-Mayadeen TV on Thursday.
Top Assad adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said Damascus “cannot accept” another Iraqi Kurdistan in Syria, comments that came just after an agreement announced by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in Turkey.
Shaaban said “important steps” had been taken so far with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, but that all remaining issues could not be resolved at once.
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.
Syria’s Kurds have detained thousands of local and foreign fighters suspected of fighting for Islamic State, as well as thousands of related women and children.
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.
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.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | Reuters
Comments
Loading...