Thread: U.S. begins airdrops of weapons to Kurdish forces in northern Syria

U.S. begins airdrops of weapons to Kurdish forces in northern Syria

BY ROY GUTMAN
rgutman@mcclatchydc.com October 12, 2015

SULAYMANIYAH, IRAQ — In a major boost for forces fighting Islamic State extremists in Syria but likely to stir controversy with NATO ally Turkey, the United States on Monday began airdropping pallets of weapons and ammunition to a Syrian Kurdish militia and allied Arab forces in northern Syria.

“They started dropping the arms in Rojava early this morning,” said Polat Can, the spokesman for the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Kurdish political party whose armed wing, with the help of U.S. bombing, has pushed the Islamic State from as much as 6,800 square miles of northern Syria. Rojava, or “west Kurdistan,” is the name the PYD uses to refer to northern Syria’s Kurdish areas.

Meanwhile, Russian aircraft continued to bomb targets in Syria’s west, far removed from the main operating areas of the Islamic State, while the United Nations’ special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, stepped up his efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, setting visits to Moscow and Washington. He said his first priority was to make certain that Russian military intervention doesn’t result in a spreading conflict.

The Pentagon confirmed that C-17 transport aircraft had dropped 45 tons of arms in 100 pallets to groups inside northern Syria. But it said the initial drop, which it said occurred late Sunday night, was to benefit “Arab groups,” a nod to Turkish concerns about U.S. support for the PYD’s Popular Protection Units, or YPG, militia.

Can said the airdrops are expected to continue for days.
The drop came just two days after the Pentagon announced that it had ended its ill-starred $500 million program to train and equip vetted Syrians to fight the Islamic State and said that the money that remained would be used to supply weapons to armed groups already in Syria that had had success combating the Islamic State.

Can said the weapons dropped in “Rojava” included assault rifles, mortars and ammunition – but no TOW anti-tank missiles nor anti-aircraft weapons. He said the Kurdish forces would distribute weapons to Arab units affiliated with the YPG.

“Everyone will take arms. We believe in sharing,” he said in an interview with McClatchy, adding that the YPG’s ability to provide arms “is why some Arab tribes are joining us.”
It’s just short of a year since the United States last dropped weapons to YPG, which at the time was battling to beat off an Islamic State offensive against the town of Kobani. The YPG prevailed, with the help of hundreds of American airstrikes. Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally and a major player in the region and which views the YPG as a terrorist organization, objected bitterly.

The YPG is the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, with which Turkey is currently fighting in southern Turkey and in Iraq.

The very fact that the U.S. could not deliver the arms overland from the territory of two allies, Turkey or Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, illustrates the controversy surrounding the U.S. decision to supply the YPG.

Turkey views the YPG’s stated ambition of creating a contiguous Kurdish-run entity in northern Syria as a threat to its own security. Meanwhile, the largely autonomous Kurdistan government in Iraq has strained relations with the YPG militia and often holds up its supplies over the land border to Syria.

The quantity of arms may add to the strains. The Obama administration has said much of what remains of the money appropriated for the train-and-equip program will go to groups in northern Syria, a huge amount for a force that numbers an estimated 20,000.

Under the plan, a YPG officer will be in overall command of the Kurdish-Arab fighting force, which is calling itself the Syrian Democratic Forces. Can announced the creation of the alliance Sunday, just as the airdrops were starting.
U.S. officials hope the YPG will now turn its attention to Raqqa, the Syrian city that is the defacto capital of the Islamic State, which lies just 60 miles south of Tal Abyad, a border town the YPG seized from the Islamic State in June, with U.S. help.

But PYD spokesman Can said the Kurdish group’s first priority is to link the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, northwest of the Syrian city of Aleppo, with Kobani, the Kurdish enclave northeast of Aleppo. That would mean clearing the Islamic State from villages along 60 miles of the Turkey-Syria border, in particular the border town of Jarablus.

“Our prime and most important goal is to liberate Jarablus and to connect Kobani with Afrin,” Can told McClatchy. Capturing Raqqa, a mostly Arab city, is “not really” a PYD objective, he said. “Not for now,” he said.

But the capture of Jarablus and the linking of Afrin with Kobani is likely to be seen as a threat to Turkey, whose objection to Kurds control that last stretch of border was one reason a Kurdish push against the Islamic State has stalled in recent weeks.

“The Turks are very unhappy,” Can said, though he added that at the end of the day, the outcome in northern Syria is “a Syrian issue, not a Turkish issue.”

Turkish officials have said Turkey will not permit the YPG to establish a contiguous link across northern Syria, but how Turkey will prevent that is not clear. Turkey is preoccupied by the final six weeks of a controversial parliamentary election campaign and reeling from a suicide bombing Saturday that killed nearly 100.

There was no immediate Turkish reaction to the airdrops. A Turkish government official interviewed in Ankara last week told McClatchy that Turkey cannot and will not let a linkage of the Kurdish enclaves happen.

In noting that the first airdrop was to “Arab groups,” a Pentagon spokeswoman said “we share the concern of our Turkish partners over the sensitivity of expanding Kurdish control into traditionally non-Kurdish areas in Syria.”

Meanwhile, Russia continued its bombing campaign in western Syria, announcing that its aircraft had carried out 55 combat sorties “engaging 53 ISIS objects.” But the locations it stated, Homs, Hama, Latakia and Idlib provinces, are locations held by rebel forces and not by the Islamic State.

De Mistura said he would meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday in Moscow, then travel to Washington.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/10...f-weapons.html

10/12/15

U.S. delivers 50 tons of ammunition to Syria rebels 10/12/15

Rights Group Says US-Backed Kurds Displacing Arabs in Syria

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSOCT. 12, 2015, 8:57 P.M. E.D.T.

BEIRUT — U.S.-backed Kurdish forces have forcefully displaced thousands of Syrian civilians, mostly Arabs, and demolished villages in northern Syria, often in retaliation for the residents' perceived sympathies for the Islamic State group and other militants, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

Amnesty said its findings were based on visits to 14 towns and villages in the provinces of Hassakeh and Raqqa this summer, areas that are under Kurdish control. It said the abuses amount to war crimes.

The rights group said at least two villages were entirely demolished. In at least eight other villages, the residents were forced to leave, sometimes threatened with being shot or targeted in U.S. airstrikes. It said the victims were mainly Arab, but also included Turkmens and other Kurds.

Amnesty quoted Kurdish fighters as saying the displacement was carried out for security purposes.

A Kurdish official in northern Syria told The Associated Press that forces may have committed minor violations against people suspected of ties to the IS group, but that such actions were not based on ethnicity. The official was not authorized to brief media and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Kurds, Syria's largest ethnic minority, have carved out a semi-autonomous enclave in the north since the start of the civil war in 2011.

Kurdish fighters have been among the most successful ground forces battling the IS group. Backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, they defeated the IS group in the Syrian border town of Kobani earlier this year and have since expanded their territory along the border with Turkey.

But Amnesty adviser Lama Fakih said the Kurds' treatment of civilians amounted to collective punishment.

"In its fight against IS, the (Kurdish administration) appears to be trampling all over the rights of civilians who are caught in the middle."

The London-based group called on Kurdish officials to end such abuses, compensate the families for their losses and hold those responsible accountable.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015...-by-kurds.html

The Kurds could have probably solved the Middle East mess, following the first Gulf War. Reaganites probably didn't like them because they identify themselves as socialists---just like they didn't like the regime in Afghanistan and just had to arm the mujaheddin.

I think the U.S./Russia/China coalition plan is to arm everyone in the mideast and sit back and watch them kill each other.

Tue Oct 13, 2015 7:47am EDT

Turkey warns U.S., Russia against backing Kurdish militia in Syria

ANKARA | BY ORHAN COSKUN

A frame grab taken from footage released by Russia's Defence Ministry October 9, 2015, shows a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber dropping a bomb in the air over Syria.
REUTERS/MINISTRY OF DEFENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS


Turkey has warned the United States and Russia it will not tolerate Kurdish territorial gains by Kurdish militia close to its frontiers in north-western Syria, two senior officials said.

"This is clear cut for us and there is no joking about it," one official said of the possibility of Syrian Kurdish militia crossing the Euphrates to extend control along Turkish borders from Iraq's Kurdistan region towards the Mediterranean coast.

Turkey fears advances by Kurdish YPG militia, backed by its PYD political wing, on the Syrian side of its 900 km (560-mile) border will fuel separatist ambitions among Kurds in its own southeastern territories. But Washington has supported YPG fighters as an effective force in combating Islamic State.

"The PYD has been getting closer with both the United States and Russia of late. We view the PYD as a terrorist group and we want all countries to consider the consequences of their cooperation," one of the Turkish officials said.

Turkey suspects Russia, which launched air strikes in Syria two weeks ago, has also been lending support to the YPG and PYD.

"With support from Russia, the PYD is trying to capture land between Jarablus and Azaz, going west of the Euphrates. We will never accept this," the official said.

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He said Turkey had raised its concerns at high level meetings with the U.S., European Union and Russia.

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The officials did not say what action, if any, Turkey might take if YPG forces crossed the Euphrates. Ankara has carried out air strikes against Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels based in the mountains of northern Iraq; but attacks on Kurds in Syria would be far riskier, bringing Ankara into possible conflict both with U.S. and Russian air forces.

The YPG said on Monday it had joined forces with Arab rebels and that their new alliance has been promised fresh weapon supplies by the United States for an assault on Islamic State forces in what is effectively their capital, Raqqa.

Turkey has accused the Kurdish militia of pursuing "demographic change" in northern Syria by forcibly displacing Turkmen and Arab communities. Ankara fears ultimately the creation of an independent Kurdish state occupying contiguous territories currently belonging to Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

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Amnesty International on Tuesday accused the YPG, which has seized swathes of northern Syria from Islamic State this year, of committing war crimes by driving out thousands of non-Kurdish civilians and destroying their homes.

The Kurds, who have emerged as the U.S.-led coalition's most capable partner in Syria against Islamic State on the ground, deny such accusations. They say those who left areas they seized did so to escape fighting and are welcome to return.

Over 40,000 people have been killed in a Kurdish insurgency in Turkey since 1984. The collapse of a ceasefire in July has brought a sharp increase in conflict between security forces and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters.

​ http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/13/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-idUSKCN0S71BF20151013