Kurds say have left Syria ‘safe zone’, fully complied with Turkey truce deal
WASHINGTON,—Syria’s Kurds have withdrawn all their forces from a land strip bordering Turkey in compliance with a US-brokered truce deal to stem a Turkish assault, a top Kurdish official said.
“We have fully complied with the conditions of the ceasefire agreement… We have withdrawn all our military and security forces from the area of military operations from Serêkaniyê (Ras al-Ain) in the east to Girê Spî (Tel Abyad) in the west,” Redur Khalil told AFP.
Syrian Kurd fighters told the United States on Tuesday they have fully withdrawn from a safe zone under an agreement with Turkey ahead of a deadline, a US official said.
Syrian Democratic Forces chief Mazloum Abdi (Mazloum Kobani) told US Vice President Mike Pence in a letter that they have pulled “all YPG forces” from the zone, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Turkey and its Syrian proxies on October 9, 2019 launched a cross-border attack against Kurdish fighters in Syrian Kurdistan, the Kurdish region in northeastern Syria, after an announced US military pullout.
Turkey wants to set up a buffer zone in Syrian soil along the length of its southern frontier to keep Kurdish forces at bay.
Under a US-brokered truce deal announced last week, the Kurds have until late Tuesday to pull out their fighters from a 120-kilometre (70-mile) long strip along the frontier that it has largely overrun during the operation.
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, who have spent most of the country’s civil war working towards autonomy.
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 | AFP | Reuters
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