{"id":41322,"date":"2019-10-25T00:22:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T00:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41322"},"modified":"2019-10-25T00:22:22","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T00:22:22","slug":"nato-hammers-turkey-on-syria-operation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41322","title":{"rendered":"NATO hammers Turkey on Syria operation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nQAMISHLI, Syria: Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria left several positions along the long border with Turkey on Thursday, complying with a deal that sees Damascus, Ankara and Moscow carve up their now-defunct autonomous region.
Russian forces have started patrols along the flashpoint frontier, filling the vacuum left by a US troop withdrawal that effectively returned a third of the country to the Moscow-backed regime of President Bashar Assad.
An AFP correspondent saw a Russian patrol set off from the town of Qamishli westwards along the Turkish border flying Russian flags, accompanied by Kurdish security forces.
US President Donald Trump has praised the agreement reached in Sochi by NATO member Turkey and Russia and rejoiced that US personnel were leaving the \u201clong blood-stained sand\u201d of Syria, leaving just a residual contingent behind \u201cwhere they have the oil.\u201d
The deal signed in the Black Sea resort by Syria\u2019s two main foreign brokers gives Kurdish forces until Tuesday to withdraw to a line 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces had pulled out of some areas at the eastern end of the border on Thursday.
\u201cThe SDF have withdrawn from positions between Derbasiyeh and Amuda in the Hasakah countryside,\u201d the Britain-based war monitor\u2019s head, Rami Abdel Rahman, said.
Fighters of the Kurdish People\u2019s Protection Units (YPG) \u2014 the main component of the SDF \u2014 remained in many positions along the 440 kilometer (275 mile) border, he added.
The Observatory also reported clashes near the town of Tal Tamr between SDF fighters and some of the Syrian former rebels paid by Turkey to fight ground battles.
SDF commander Mazloum Abdi on Twitter accused the Turkish-led forces of violating the truce on the eastern front of Ras Al-Ain.
\u201cThe guarantors of the cease-fire must carry out their responsibilities to rein in the Turks,\u201d he added on Twitter.
The events were set to provoke \u201cforceful\u201d discussion at a NATO defense minister meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday but Ankara risked little because of its strategic position, diplomats said.
Russian and Syrian government forces were deploying across the Kurdish heartland to assist \u201cthe removal of YPG elements and their weapons.\u201d
Kurdish forces had already vacated a 120-kilometer segment of the border strip \u2014 an Arab-majority area between the towns of Ras Al-Ain and Tal Abyad.
The SDF withdrawal from that area came after Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched their deadly cross-border offensive on October 9.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is embattled on the domestic political front, hopes to use the pocket to resettle at least half of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees his country hosts.
Under the Sochi deal, the area will remain under the full control of Turkey, unlike the rest of the projected buffer zone which will eventually be jointly patrolled by Turkey and Russia.
Some 300,000 people have fled their homes since the start of the Turkish offensive and many Kurds among them seem unlikely to return.
US forces pulled back from the border area earlier this month, in a move the Kurds saw as a betrayal but which Trump had discussed since last year.
The autonomous Kurdish administration in Syria had hoped that the sacrifices made in the name of the international community to help crush the Daesh group\u2019s \u201ccaliphate\u201d would pay off.
But Trump has been keen to keep a promise to remove his troops from Syria, where IS\u2019s \u201ccaliphate\u201d was eliminated in March but where conflict continues.
\u201cLet someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand,\u201d he said in a White House speech on Wednesday.
That \u201csomeone\u201d is undoubtedly Russia, whose status as the main foreign power in Syria is now undisputed, to Assad\u2019s great benefit.
\u201cAssad is getting back a third of Syria\u2019s territory without firing a shot,\u201d geographer and Syria specialist Fabrice Balanche said.
Some US forces remain in eastern districts of Syria, where government forces have been deploying but have not yet re-established full control.
\u201cWe have secured the oil and, therefore, a small number of US troops will remain in the area where they have the oil,\u201d Trump said on Wednesday.
The Syrian government is keen to reclaim the northeast, which is home to the country\u2019s main oilfields and some of its most fertile farmland.
In a phone call with Russia\u2019s defense minister and military chief on Wednesday, Abdi thanked Moscow for \u201cdefusing the war in our region and sparing civilians its scourge,\u201d the SDF said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

QAMISHLI, Syria: Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria left several positions along the long border with Turkey on Thursday, complying with a deal that sees Damascus, Ankara and Moscow carve up their now-defunct autonomous region.Russian forces have started patrols along the flashpoint frontier, filling the vacuum left by a US troop withdrawal that effectively returned a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}