President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of Syria radically realigns t...
ANKARA/BEIRUT - President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria radically realigns the balance of power in the country’s northeast and creates a vacuum which Russia, Turkey and Iran are racing to fill.
More than 10,000 Islamic State prisoners, including many hardened foreign jihadis whose Western governments refuse to take them back, are in prisons there, and tens of thousands of their family members are in camps.WHAT IS THE AIM OF TURKEY’S OFFENSIVE? Erdogan has said Turkey will seize a border strip running hundreds of km from Kobani in the west to Hasaka in the east and 30-35 km deep inside Syria.
Assad’s army, however, has been weakened by the attrition of prolonged conflict, and now relies heavily on Russia, Iran and Iran’s Shi’ite militia allies including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.Syria’s Kurdish groups exploited the withdrawal of government forces from the northeast at the start of the Syrian conflict to build up the institutions of autonomy and teach Kurdish language in local schools.
“Damascus needs the Kurds. The Kurds and Damascus have two things in common: enmity for Turkey and a desire not to see Sunni rebel militias ruling the northeast of Syria,” said Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.WHAT WILL BECOME OF ISLAMIC STATE?
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