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.



French, Algerian Ties ‘Back to Normal’, France Says after Talks

This handout photograph released by French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) shows France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot (L) being received by Algeria's President Abdelmajid Tebboune in Algiers on April 6, 2025. (French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs / AFP)
This handout photograph released by French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) shows France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot (L) being received by Algeria's President Abdelmajid Tebboune in Algiers on April 6, 2025. (French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs / AFP)
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French, Algerian Ties ‘Back to Normal’, France Says after Talks

This handout photograph released by French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) shows France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot (L) being received by Algeria's President Abdelmajid Tebboune in Algiers on April 6, 2025. (French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs / AFP)
This handout photograph released by French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) shows France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot (L) being received by Algeria's President Abdelmajid Tebboune in Algiers on April 6, 2025. (French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs / AFP)

France's foreign minister said on Sunday that ties with Algeria were back to normal after he held 2 1/2 hours of talks with Algeria's president following months of bickering that have hurt Paris' economic and security interests in its former colony.

Ties between Paris and Algiers have been complicated for decades, but took a turn for the worse last July when Macron angered Algeria by recognizing a plan for autonomy for the Western Sahara region under Moroccan sovereignty.

A poor relationship has major security, economic and social repercussions: trade is extensive and some 10% of France's 68 million population has links to Algeria, according to French officials.

"We are reactivating as of today all the mechanisms of cooperation in all sectors. We are going back to normal and to repeat the words of President (Abdelmadjid) Tebboune: 'the curtain is lifted'," Jean-Noel Barrot said in a statement at the presidential palace in Algiers after 2 1/2 hours of talks.

His visit comes after a call between President Emmanuel Macron and his counterpart Tebboune on March 31, during which the two agreed to a broad roadmap to calm tensions.

French officials say Algiers had put obstacles to administrative authorizations and new financing for French firms operating in the country.

Nowhere was that felt more than in wheat imports. Traders say the diplomatic rift led Algerian grains agency OAIC to tacitly exclude French wheat and firms in its import tenders since October. OAIC has said it treats all suppliers fairly, applying technical requirements.

Barrot said he had specifically brought up the difficulties regarding economic exchanges, notably in the agrobusiness, automobile and maritime transport sectors.

"President Tebboune reassured me of his will to give them new impetus," Barrot said.

Beyond business, the relationship has also soured to the point where security cooperation stopped. The detention by Algiers in November of 80-year-old Franco-Algerian author Boualem Sansal also worsened the relationship.

He has since been sentenced to five years in prison. Barrot said he hoped a gesture of "humanity" could be made by Algiers given his age and health.

With Macron's government under pressure to toughen immigration policies, the spat has fed into domestic politics in both countries.

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has called for a 1968 pact between the two countries that makes it easier for Algerians to settle in France to be reviewed, after Algiers refused to take back some of its citizens who were ordered to leave France under the "OQTF" (obligation to leave French territory) deportation regime.

Barrot said Retailleau would soon go to Algiers and that the two sides would resume cooperation on judicial issues.

The relationship between the two countries is scarred by the trauma of the 1954-1962 war in which the North African country, which had a large settler population and was treated as an integral part of France under colonial rule, won independence.