The commander of Syria’s largest Kurdish militia has accused the United States of abandoning its Kurdish allies in Syria, key partners in America’s fight against the Islamic State, and warned of a resurgence by the Islamic State amid political uncertainty in Syria.
Kurdish forces played an essential role in helping the United States and other countries battle the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. In the years since, as Syria languished in a protracted civil war, the Kurds, with U.S. backing, operated prisons filled with fighters accused of being ISIS terrorists, managed massive camps of displaced people and established an autonomous civil government in northern Syria.
But in recent days, as rebels elsewhere in the country toppled the Assad regime, plunging the country into a new and precarious position, the Kurds, who control northeastern Syria, have come under assault by militant groups backed by Turkey, a longtime adversary. In clashes in Manbij and Kobani their forces have been attacked by fighters aided by Turkish drones and air power.
As the fighting has intensified between the Kurds and Turkey-backed groups, the main Kurdish militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces, said it had to divert fighters from defending the prisons that house accused ISIS members to positions on the front lines.
“This leaves a vacuum behind that can be taken advantage by ISIS and other actors,” the S.D.F.’s top general, known by the nom de guerre Mazlum Kobani, said early on Wednesday.
Over 9,000 ISIS fighters are housed in over 20 S.D.F. facilities throughout Syria, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, chief of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said in a statement in September.
General Kobani said Washington’s failure to stop Turkey and its proxies from attacking the Kurds had endangered the peace U.S. forces had fought to establish.
“We and the Americans liberated this city together,” Gen. Kobani said of Manbij. The battles there against ISIS, he added, cost “lots of souls and lives.” . But when the Turkish-backed rebel groups began their assault on Kurdish forces there last week, he said, “there was no firm position from the U.S. side” to offer help.
The Kurds have been instrumental partners for the United States in fighting ISIS, an Islamist terrorist group bent on establishing a global caliphate, for more than a decade. But Turkey views armed Kurds so close to its border as a threat. For decades Turkey has fought Kurdish separatists, who seek to carve out an independent country.
America’s divided allegiances between their Turkish and Kurdish allies have been expressed in recent comments by U.S. officials.
The U.S. has an interest in defeating ISIS, John Kirby, the White House National Security Communications Advisor, said at a news briefing on Tuesday and “that means partnering with the Syrian Democratic Forces.”
But he added, “the Turks have a legitimate counterterrorism threat,” for which they “have a right to defend their citizens in their territory against terrorist attacks.”
“Where those two goals overlap or potentially conflict,” Mr. Kirby said, “we will have and look, as we have, we will have the appropriate conversations with the with the Turks about how both those outcomes can be achieved.”
The Department of Defense on Wednesday did not immediately comment on Gen. Kobani’s suggestion that the U.S. was abandoning its Kurdish allies. On Tuesday, ahead of a U.S.-brokered truce in the city of Kobani, General Kurilla visited American and Kurdish forces in Syria and met with Gen. Kobani.
Gen. Kobani said that no U.S. troops had been involved in the recent fighting and that U.S. military support was limited to some drone observation and acting as intermediaries between the S.D.F. and other groups, to ensure the evacuation of civilians from areas with fighting.
On Wednesday, SDF, said it had agreed to a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in the city of Manbij, which included that the group’s forces would be withdrawn. According to a war monitoring group, this withdrawal ends more than eight years of the group’s control of the city.
The United States did not immediately confirm its role.
“There is no American decision to protect the areas we liberated together from ISIS,” Gen. Kobani said in a translated interview. The expansion of fighting in northern Syria between armed Kurdish and Turkish-backed groups, has put the United States and Turkey — two NATO allies — at odds.
In 2019, President Trump withdrew U.S. forces from posts near the Turkish border, leaving the Kurds more vulnerable to attack, but about 900 American troops remain in Syria, working with the Kurds.
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