The first patrol together, integrated by nine armored vehicles and sobrevolada by drones, surveillance, booted without flags from either of the two countries in the population of Derbasiye, as confirmed the ministry of Defence in Ankara and Moscow. The Turkish Government aimed to establish a safety zone of 32 kilometres wide along 450 kilometres of border, but the reality of the forces deployed on the ground it is imposing limits. The agreement signed in Sochi is already reduced to a band of a maximum of 10 kilometres wide the scope of action of the joint patrols, which were also banned access to the kurdish city of Qamishli, one of the largest in the northeast syrian.
The Turkish Army only controls a territory located along 120 kilometers of the border between the towns of Tel Abyad and Ras Ain, where focused fighting against the militia of the Units of Protection of People (YPG) in kurdish), in a territory traditionally inhabited by sunni arabs. Troops loyal to president Bashar al-Assad and his allies russians now dominate the rest of the line dividing the kurds occupied since 2012.
Before the joint patrols undertaken his mission, a convoy of armored vehicles americans were deployed Thursday around the town close to the border of Qhataniyah, located about 50 kilometres east of Qamishli, where Washington’s troops had been withdrawn three weeks ago. As confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO that has informants on the ground, military vehicles, waving the flag of the united STATES, were accompanied by militants of the Democratic Front Sirius (FDS, in which the YPG are hegemonic), as shown by images obtained by international news agencies. The route of this convoy of the US concluded in Remeilan, 20 km to the west of Qhataniyah.
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Rami Abdel Rhaman, director of the Observatory, told France Presse from the United Kingdom that “the presence of the us tries to prevent the forces of Moscow and Damascus to move into the east of Qamishli. “It’s not going to be the only time that the americans patrol through here,” said a military source kurdish to Reuters. A small part of the oil wells of Syria are located in precisely the northeastern kurdish.
the U.S., meanwhile, has completed its deployment in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, where are the 75% of the oil reserves of the country, estimated at over 2,500 million barrels. “These military operations of repositioning do not conflict with the other forces operating in the region”, said the u.s. colonel Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the international coalition against the Islamic State, in relation to the presence of convoys from the U.S. at the northern border. Two hundred us soldiers accompanied by a dozen armoured fighting gunships M2A2 Bradley have settled already next to the large deposits of the east “in coordination with allies of the FDS”, stressed the quoted spokesperson armed forces, “to defeat the last remnants of ISIS”.
last Tuesday, expired the term given by Turkey for the withdrawal of kurdish militias in syria, which Ankara calls terrorists, more than 30 kilometers of the common border. While both Russia and the USA argue that the YPG have complied with the agreement in Sochi, the president Erdogan says that the fighters kurds still remain in points of the border region. Ankara intends to reinstall in the northern territory of Syria to a part of the 3.6 million refugees, has hosted more than eight years of war in the neighboring country.
The friction between so many contenders in the fray on a territory is very restricted it seems inevitable. Syrian rebels supported by the Turkish Army faced off on Tuesday, syrian troops in Tel Hawa, in the vicinity of Ras el Ain, and captured 18 government soldiers. The prisoners were delivered Thursday in the border military police Russian by a patrol of the Turkish.
Convoy of forces of the USA, Thursday in Qahtaniyah, in northern Syria. DELIL SOULEIMAN AFP
In an extensive television interview, the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, admitted on Thursday night that he preferred not to consider Turkey as an enemy. “Turkey has intervened temporarily in Syria at the request of Russia and Iran,” he said. The ultimate goal of the Government, he recalled, remains to restore the authority of the Damascus areas controlled by the kurds.
While the eruption of war in Syria continues to be active –and to reinforce the presence of international forces– in the north and east of the country, representatives of the Government and the opposition have met for the first time in Geneva this week in a negotiating forum sponsored by the United Nations. The so-called Constitutional Council Syrian –body of 150 members composed of equal parts by delegates of the Government, the opposition and civil society– has received the mandate to agree on a reform of the Constitution that can facilitate the holding of elections plural.
The opposing sides in the war came to gather together for a photo together in previous rounds of negotiations, but had not been engaged until now in direct talks without intermediaries. The dialogue process started in Geneva in 2012 has been marked by successive failures, before the impossibility of reaching a consensus on the permanence of the president Assad in power.
Russia and Iran, allies of Syria, and Turkey, which supports a part of the opposition, driving the constitutional reform with the aim of opening the door to a negotiated settlement to the conflict. The UN has finally agreed this middle way, which aims at a political victory of Damascus and its allies against the rebellion, already defeated on the field of battle.
The endorsement of the mediator for United Nations for Syria, Geir Pedersen, validates the negotiation to a civil war endless. Regardless of the outcome –Assad warned in his last televised interview that “the elections will be held under the supervision of the State”– the Government of Damascus, it is essential for any formula of legitimation in the international community. It is the only option to circumvent the economic sanctions from the outside and tackle the herculean effort of rebuilding a Syria that is torn, with half of the population expelled from their homes and with the stigma of half a million dead in the collective memory.
