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Ankara Launches Operation in Syria’s Afrin with Cross-Border Bombardment

A general view shows the Kurdish-controlled city of Afrin, northern Syria. (Reuters)
A general view shows the Kurdish-controlled city of Afrin, northern Syria. (Reuters)
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Ankara Launches Operation in Syria’s Afrin with Cross-Border Bombardment

A general view shows the Kurdish-controlled city of Afrin, northern Syria. (Reuters)
A general view shows the Kurdish-controlled city of Afrin, northern Syria. (Reuters)

Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli announced on Friday that the military operation in the Kurdish-held region of Afrin in northern Syria has gotten underway.

The cross-border bombardment took place after days of threats from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to crush the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin in response to growing Kurdish strength across a wide stretch of north Syria.

“The operation has actually de facto started with cross-border shelling,” confirmed Canikli, adding that no troops had crossed into Afrin.

Reuters TV filmed Turkish artillery at the border village of Sugedigi firing on Friday morning into Afrin region, and the YPG said Turkish forces fired 70 shells at Kurdish villages between midnight and Friday morning. Shelling continued in the late afternoon, said Rojhat Roj, a YPG spokesman in Afrin.

Roj said it was the heaviest Turkish bombardment since Ankara stepped up threats to take military action against the Kurdish region.

He said that the YPG will retaliate with force against any attack against Afrin.

Canikli said Ankara was determined to destroy the Kurdish group. “All terror networks and elements in northern Syria will be eliminated. There is no other way,” he said.

A US State Department official said that the Afrin shelling undermines regional stability and would not help protect Turkey’s border security.

“We do not believe that a military operation serves the cause of regional stability, Syrian stability or indeed Turkish concerns about the security of their border,” the official told reporters, stressing he had limited information about Turkey’s reported military moves.

“The kind of threats or activities which these initial reports may be referring to, we don’t think advance any of these issues. They are destabilizing.”

The United States has instead called on Turkey to focus on the fight against ISIS and not take military action in Afrin.

Turkey has been angered by US military support for the Kurdish YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces which spearheaded the fight against ISIS in Syria, and by an announcement that the United States would stay in Syria to train about 30,000 personnel in the swathe of eastern Syria under SDF control.

Turkey says the YPG is a terrorist group and a branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party which has waged an insurgency in southeast Turkey for decades, and Canikli criticized Washington for its continued emphasis on countering ISIS.

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin stated that his country’s measures against Afrin, Manbij and Jarablus or any other region is aimed at protecting its national security, and not directed against Syria’s Kurds.

Erdogan’s aide Gülnur Aybet meanwhile said that Ankara would reject the US-backed border force if it included the YPG, saying that it would be tantamount to a “terrorist army.”

Turkey is determined to thwart the formation of any terrorist entity along its border with Syria, she stressed.

In Russia meanwhile, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Turkish claims that the Afrin operation was coordinated with Moscow.

He instead said that inquiries on this issue should be directed to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Former Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Airborne Troops Vladimir Shamanov announced that his country will not intervene militarily in Afrin, saying: “We have a special mission in Syria that is determined by agreements signed with the Syrian regime.”

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US Pulls Out of Two More Bases in Syria, Worrying Kurdish Forces

SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
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US Pulls Out of Two More Bases in Syria, Worrying Kurdish Forces

SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)

US forces have pulled out of two more bases in northeastern Syria, visiting Reuters reporters found, accelerating a troop drawdown that the commander of US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces said was allowing a resurgence of ISIS.

Reuters reporters who visited the two bases in the past week found them mostly deserted, both guarded by small contingents of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - the Kurdish-led military group that Washington has backed in the fight against ISIS for a decade.

Cameras used on bases occupied by the US-led military coalition had been taken down, and razor wire on the outer perimeters had begun to sag.

A Kurdish politician who lives on one base said there were no longer US troops there. SDF guards at the second base said troops had left recently but declined to say when. The Pentagon declined to comment.

It is the first confirmation on the ground by reporters that the US has withdrawn from Al-Wazir and Tel Baydar bases in Hasaka province. It brings to at least four the number of bases in Syria US troops have left since President Donald Trump took office.

Trump’s administration said this month it will scale down its military presence in Syria to one base from eight in parts of northeastern Syria that the SDF controls. The New York Times reported in April that troops might be reduced from 2,000 to 500 in the drawdown.

The SDF did not respond to questions about the current number of troops and open US bases in northeastern Syria.

But SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, who spoke to Reuters at another US base, Al Shadadi, said the presence of a few hundred troops on one base would be "not enough" to contain the threat of ISIS.

"The threat of ISIS has significantly increased recently. But this is the US military’s plan. We’ve known about it for a long time ... and we’re working with them to make sure there are no gaps and we can maintain pressure on ISIS," he said.

Abdi spoke to Reuters on Friday, hours after Israel launched its air war on Iran. He declined to comment on how the new Israel-Iran war would affect Syria, saying simply that he hoped it would not spill over there and that he felt safe on a US base.

Hours after the interview, three Iranian-made missiles targeted the Al Shadadi base and were shot down by US defense systems, two SDF security sources said.

ISIS ACTIVE IN SYRIAN CITIES

ISIS ruled vast swathes of Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2017 during Syria’s civil war, imposing a vision of religious rule under which it beheaded locals in city squares, sex-trafficked members of the Yazidi minority and executed foreign journalists and aid workers.

The group, from its strongholds in Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, also launched deadly attacks in European and Middle Eastern countries.

A US-led military Coalition of more than 80 countries waged a yearslong campaign to defeat the group and end its territorial control, supporting Iraqi forces and the SDF.

But ISIS has been reinvigorated since the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December at the hands of separate opposition factions.

Abdi said ISIS cells had become active in several Syrian cities, including Damascus, and that a group of foreign extremists who once battled the Syrian regime had joined its ranks. He did not elaborate.

He said ISIS had seized weapons and ammunition from Syrian regime depots in the chaos after Assad's fall.

Several Kurdish officials told Reuters that ISIS had already begun moving more openly around US bases which had recently been shuttered, including near the cities of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa, once strongholds for the extremist group.

In areas the SDF controls east of the Euphrates River, ISIS has waged a series of attacks and killed at least 10 SDF fighters and security forces, Abdi said. Attacks included a roadside bomb targeting a convoy of oil tankers on a road near the US base where he gave the interview.