US, Allied Kurdish Force Conduct Patrol on Syrian Border

Kurdish fighters walk with their weapons outside the town of Tal Abyad, Syria, June 14, 2015. (Reuters)
Kurdish fighters walk with their weapons outside the town of Tal Abyad, Syria, June 14, 2015. (Reuters)
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US, Allied Kurdish Force Conduct Patrol on Syrian Border

Kurdish fighters walk with their weapons outside the town of Tal Abyad, Syria, June 14, 2015. (Reuters)
Kurdish fighters walk with their weapons outside the town of Tal Abyad, Syria, June 14, 2015. (Reuters)

US troops and an allied Syrian faction conducted a joint patrol Wednesday in a town on the border with Turkey, a Kurdish news agency and a Syria war monitor reported, according to The Associated Press. The move appeared to be part of an agreement to set up a safe zone along Syria's northeast border.

Turkey sees the Syrian Kurdish fighters, who make up the majority of the Syrian Democratic Forces and are allied with the US, as terrorists aligned with a Kurdish insurgency within Turkey. American troops are stationed in northeast Syria, along with the Kurdish forces, and have fought the ISIS group together.

Turkey has been pressing for a safe zone to ensure security on its border running east of the Euphrates River toward the Iraqi border. Turkey wants to control — in coordination with the US — a 19-25 mile (30-40 kilometer) deep zone within civil war-ravaged Syria.

The patrol occurred near the town of Ras al-Ayn and consisted of US troops and members of the Ras al-Ayn Military Council, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Kurdish ANHA news agency. ANHA aired a video of the joint patrol that included armored vehicles raising American flags accompanied by allied fighters in pickup trucks.

The Ras al-Ayn Military Council is purportedly a local force separate from the SDF but Turkey will likely see it as being under SDF influence.

Ras al-Ayn is in Hassakeh province and is home to several ethnic and religious groups, including Kurds, Arabs and Assyrians.

The patrol came a week after the SDF announced that it had begun withdrawing its fighters from Ras al-Ayn and another border town, Tal Abyad. The withdrawals were part of a deal for the so-called safe zone in northeast Syria involving the US and Turkey.

Turkey wants the region along its border to be clear of Syrian Kurdish forces and has threatened on numerous occasions to launch a new operation in Syria against Syrian Kurdish forces if such a zone is not established.

The developments in the country's northeast came as a truce in the northwestern province of Idlib held despite some violations.

The UN human rights chief said earlier Wednesday her office has tallied more than 1,000 civilian deaths in Syria over the last four months, the majority of them due to airstrikes and ground attacks by Bashar Assad's forces and their allies.

Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said 1,089 civilians were killed in the war-battered country between April 29 and August 29, including 304 children.

She said nearly all — 1,031 — were reportedly attributable to regime forces and their allies in Idlib and Hama provinces. Another 58 were caused by "non-state actors."

Bachelet was speaking to reporters in Geneva on Wednesday to go over her first year in office.

Idlib province, near Syria's border with Turkey, is the final stronghold of the opposition in Syria.



Anxiety Clouds Easter for West Bank Christians

Residents of the West Bank town of Zababdeh say its church bells are often drowned out by the roar of Israeli air force jets headed for action nearby. - AFP
Residents of the West Bank town of Zababdeh say its church bells are often drowned out by the roar of Israeli air force jets headed for action nearby. - AFP
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Anxiety Clouds Easter for West Bank Christians

Residents of the West Bank town of Zababdeh say its church bells are often drowned out by the roar of Israeli air force jets headed for action nearby. - AFP
Residents of the West Bank town of Zababdeh say its church bells are often drowned out by the roar of Israeli air force jets headed for action nearby. - AFP

In the mainly Christian Palestinian town of Zababdeh, the runup to Easter has been overshadowed by nearby Israeli military operations, which have proliferated in the occupied West Bank alongside the Gaza war.

This year unusually Easter falls on the same weekend for all of the town's main Christian communities -- Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican --- and residents have attempted to busy themselves with holiday traditions like making date cakes or getting ready for the scout parade.

But their minds have been elsewhere.

Dozens of families from nearby Jenin have found refuge in Zababdeh from the continual Israeli military operations that have devastated the city and its adjacent refugee camp this year.

"The other day, the (Israeli) army entered Jenin, people were panicking, families were running to pick up their children," said Zababdeh resident Janet Ghanam.

"There is a constant fear, you go to bed with it, you wake up with it," the 57-year-old Anglican added, before rushing off to one of the last Lenten prayers before Easter.

Ghanam said her son had told her he would not be able to visit her for Easter this year, for fear of being stuck at the Israeli military roadblocks that have mushroomed across the territory.

Zabadeh's Anglican church was busy in the runup to Easter but across the West Bank Christian communities have been in sharp decline as people emigrate in search of a better life abroad.

Zabadeh looks idyllic, nestled in the hills of the northern West Bank, but the roar of Israeli air force jets sometimes drowns out the sound of its church bells.

"It led to a lot of people to think: 'Okay, am I going to stay in my home for the next five years?'" said Saleem Kasabreh, an Anglican deacon in the town.

"Would my home be taken away? Would they bomb my home?"

- 'Existential threat' -

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and in recent months far-right ministers in its coalition government have called for the annexation of swathes of the territory.

Kasabreh said this "existential threat" was compounded by constant "depression" at the news from Gaza, where the death toll from the Israel's response to Hamas's October 2023 attack now tops 51,000, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

Work has been hard to find for Zababdeh's mainly Christian residents since Israel rescinded Palestinian work permits following the October 2023 attack by Hamas that sparked the Gaza war.

Zababdeh has been spared the devastation wreaked on Gaza, but the mayor's office says nearly 450 townspeople lost their jobs in Israel when Palestinian work permits were rescinded after the Hamas attack.

"Israel had never completely closed us in the West Bank before this war," said 73-year-old farmer Ibrahim Daoud. "Nobody knows what will happen".

Many say they are stalked by the spectre of exile, with departures abroad fuelling fears that Christians may disappear from the Holy Land.

"People can't stay without work and life isn't easy," said 60-year-old maths teacher Tareq Ibrahim.

Mayor Ghassan Daibes echoed his point.

"For a Christian community to survive, there must be stability, security and decent living conditions. It's a reality, not a call for emigration," he said.

"But I´m speaking from lived experience: Christians used to make up 30 percent of the population in Palestine; today, they are less than one percent.

"And this number keeps decreasing. In my own family, I have three brothers abroad -- one in Germany, the other two in the United States."

Catholic priest Father Elias Tabban insists the hard times his congregation has been going though have deepened their faith.

Catholic priest Elias Tabban adopted a more stoical attitude, insisting his congregation's spirituality had never been so vibrant.

"Whenever the Church is in hard times... (that's when) you see the faith is growing," Tabban said.