Turkey attacks Kurds in northeast Syria

Turkish troops and their Syrian rebel allies attacked Kurdish militia in northeast Syria, pounding them with air strikes and artillery before starting a cross-border ground operation that could transform an eight-year-old war. The 2019 Rojava offensive, called Operation Peace Spring by the Turkish government, is an ongoing military operation conducted by the Turkish Armed Forces and Syrian National Army (SNA) against areas under the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), commonly called Rojava, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). On 6 October 2019, the Trump administration ordered American troops to withdraw from northeast Syria, where the United States had been supporting their Kurdish allies. The military operation began on 9 October 2019 when the Turkish Air Force launched airstrikes on border towns.

According to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the operation is intended to expel the SDF—viewed as a terrorist organization by Turkey due to its ties with the Kurdistan Workers Party, but considered an ally against ISIL by the United States and others—from the border region, as well to create a 30 km-deep (20 miles) “safe zone” in Northern Syria where some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey can resettle. The Turkish action was internationally condemned. As of 10 October, 60,000 civilians are displaced by the Turkish attack.

Turkey and the United States struck a deal in August 2019 after months of Turkish threats to unilaterally invade Northern Syria. The United States viewed Syrian Democratic Forces as one of its key allies in the military intervention against ISIL in Syria, while Turkey viewed the group as an extention of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which it considers a terrorist group. The agreement established the Northern Syria Buffer Zone, which aimed to dissipate tensions by addressing Turkey’s security concerns with monitoring and joint patrols, while still allowing the NES to retain control over the areas that it had under its control at that time. The agreement was received favorably by the US and SDF/NES, but Turkey was generally dissatisfied with it. Turkey’s dissatisfaction led to numerous Turkish efforts to expand the area covered by the buffer zone, secure Turkish control over parts of it, or relocate millions of refugees into the zone, with all of these efforts failing in the face of firm SDF resistance and American ambivalence.

Despite the official start of US-Turkish ground patrols, the dismantling of SDF fortifications, and the withdrawal of YPG units from parts of the buffer zone, tensions continued to rise as Turkey levied yet more demands on the SDF—all of which the SDF denied, as they felt that they had accepted a harsh compromise by permitting Turkish troops to take part in joint patrols with their American counterparts in Northern Syria.[25] Turkey’s dissatisfaction with the status quo of the agreement grew into open hostility, with the Turkish president openly posing an ultimatum against the SDF. The ultimatum was ignored by the group and Turkey declared its “deadline” to have expired at the start of October that same year.

Civilians, including many children, leave ISIS last enclave

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) expect a “fierce battle” with ISIS militants who are still holed up in the group’s last enclave in eastern Syria, Mustafa Bali, the head of the SDF media office, told Reuters.  

Battle for Islamic State’s last enclave

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have seized ground from Islamic State in a fierce battle to capture its last enclave in eastern Syria. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) began an assault against the final Islamic State enclave in eastern Syria in a bid to wipe out the last vestige of the group’s “caliphate” in the SDF’s area of operations. The enclave is close to the Iraqi border and comprises two villages, though Islamic State, also known as Isis, also still has territory in the part of Syria that is mostly under the control of the Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government. SDF official Mustafa Bali, speaking to Reuters, described the assault as “the last battle”. He later wrote on Twitter that the attack had started and the enclave would “be cleared soon”. The SDF had handled the last 10 days “patiently” as more than 20,000 civilians were evacuated from the besieged IS enclave, Mr Bali said. Senior SDF official Redur Xelil told Reuters the force hoped to capture the area by the end of February, but cautioned that IS would continue to pose “great and serious” security threats even after that.

The Battle of Baghuz Fawqani began on 9 February 2019 during the Syrian Civil War, encompassing the immediate surroundings of the Syrian town of Al-Baghuz Fawqani along the eastern banks of the Middle Euphrates River Valley in the Abu Kamal District. The battle marked the last stand of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in eastern Syria as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), assisted by American-led Coalition airstrikes, artillery, and military advisers, began their thrust into the last enclave controlled by the Islamic State in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate. Since September 2017, the Syrian Democratic Forces had been on a campaign to wrest territorial control from the Islamic State terror group in eastern Syria. The SDF’s advances were supported by American, British and French forces from the CJTF-OIR Coalition via close air support, French and American artillery, and American special forces advice and oversight.

The SDF launched its third and final phase of their campaign in September 2018, gradually capturing the remaining ISIL pocket of territory straddling the Euphrates river near the Iraq-Syria border. By 1 February 2019, ISIL was reduced to four square kilometers of territory, boxed in against the river. The massive exodus of civilians complicated advances, with the SDF pausing its advance for almost 10 days prior to the battle. Within the 10 days preceding the battle, over 20,000 civilians fled the enclave.  Redur Kalil, the SDF’s senior public relations officer, told

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump orders withdrawal of US troops from Syria

President Trump has ordered the withdrawal of 2,000 American troops from Syria, bringing a sudden end to a military campaign that largely vanquished the Islamic State but ceding a strategically vital country to Russia and Iran. In overruling his generals and civilian advisers, Mr. Trump fulfilled his frequently expressed desire to bring home American forces from a messy foreign entanglement. But his decision, conveyed via Twitter on Wednesday, plunges the administration’s Middle East strategy into disarray, rattling allies like Britain and Israel and forsaking Syria’s ethnic Kurds, who have been faithful partners in fighting the Islamic State. The abrupt, chaotic nature of the move — and the opposition it immediately provoked on Capitol Hill and beyond — raised questions about how Mr. Trump will follow through with the full withdrawal. Even after the president’s announcement, officials said, the Pentagon and State Department continued to try to talk him out of it. “We have won against ISIS,” Mr. Trump declared in a video posted Wednesday evening on Twitter, adding, “Our boys, our young women, our men — they’re all coming back, and they’re coming back now.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Syria’s Raqqa struggles to revive schools

More than a year since the defeat of Islamic State in Raqqa, many of the city s school buildings are lying in rubble and playgrounds are dotted with wrecked cars.  In the Syrian city of Raqqa, children wear hats, scarves and coats to guard against the winter cold as they struggle to catch up on years of lost learning in a classroom with no doors or glazed windows. More than a year since the United States and its allies defeated Daesh at Raqqa, many of the city’s schools still look like battlefields with buildings left lying in rubble and playgrounds dotted with wrecked cars. “When the crisis started, we stopped studying, the schools closed. Now we’ve come back to study and we need help. Fix the windows, doors, we’re dying of cold,” said 12-year-old Abdullah Al-Hilal at Uqba bin Nafie school.

Islamic State, which turned Raqqa into the Syrian headquarters of its self-declared “caliphate,” kept schools shut as it tried to impose its ultra-radical vision of Islam through its own education system. Since Islamic State’s defeat there in October 2017, 44 schools have reopened with 45,000 children enrolled, said Ali Al-Shannan, the head of the education council set up by civilian authorities in Raqqa. The children have lost out on five years of schooling. “Very basic” aid had allowed for some renovation work, covering only 10 percent of needs, Shannan told Reuters. The schools generally “have no doors, no windows, in addition to the sanitation systems that are in a deplorable state,” he said. At Uqba bin Nafie school, one classroom looks out onto a wrecked building, its floors collapsed on top of each other and a car flipped on its side nearby. In the yard, children stand around large pools of dirty water while others eat snacks by the crumpled wreckage of another vehicle.

 

 

 

In Idlib, Final Offensive in Syrian War May Come at Horrific Cost

On land, Syria’s government is mustering thousands of conscripts to bolster its depleted forces. At sea, a Russian naval flotilla is just offshore, ready to intervene with formidable firepower. In Idlib Province, millions of civilians are dreading what comes next. The warring sides in Syria’s long and merciless civil war are preparing for another brutal offensive, and this one may be the last. The looming assault on Idlib Province is the one the government in Damascus hopes will deliver the final military blow against the rebel fighters and their civilian supporters who rose up more than seven years ago demanding regime change. Where Syria and its Russian and Iranian allies see a chance to crush the remaining opposition, Western leaders warn of a humanitarian calamity in Idlib, where an estimated three million civilians live.

Many of the noncombatants now in Idlib fled there from other parts of Syria, escaping the brutality of the government forces of President Bashar al-Assad. Tens of thousands were bussed there as part of surrender deals with the government. The impending government offensive against what are believed to be about 30,000 rebel fighters is a “perfect storm coming up in front of our eyes,” said Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy to Syria. Turkey, too, is expressing grave concern about an attack, worried it will bear the brunt of the humanitarian and security fallout. The country has troops on the ground in Idlib, with the aim of separating Syrian and rebel forces, and its soldiers could be caught in the middle of an attack. Turkey also is already hosting more than three million refugees from the civil war, and with an economic crisis and growing resentment against those Syrians already in the country, it does not want any more.

Courtesy : New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The long road to Raqqa

The Raqqa offensive (codenamed Operation Wrath of Euphrates), is an ongoing military operation launched by the Syrian Democratic Forces against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Raqqa Governorate, with the goal of isolating and eventually capturing the Islamic State’s capital city, Raqqa. Another one of the main goals is to capture the Tabqa Dam and the nearby city of Al-Thawrah. The offensive has also been dubbed the Battle to End All Battles in the War on ISIL. The offensive is concurrent with the Turkish anti-ISIL Battle of al-Bab, the Battle of Mosul in Iraq, the Battle of Sirte (2016) in Libya, the Palmyra offensive (December 2016) launched by ISIL, and a reignition of fighting in Deir ez-Zor’s siege.

The White Helmets of Syria (Syrian Civil War)

The White Helmets, officially known as Syria Civil Defence is a paid volunteer civil defense organisation that currently operates in parts of rebel-controlled Syria. The White Helmets should not be confused with the Syrian Civil Defence Forces which have been a member of the ICDO (International Civil Defence Organization) since 1972, unlike the White Helmets.

The rescue teams that later became SCD emerged in late 2012, when the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad began to lose significant amounts of territory to the Free Syrian Army in the Syrian Civil War. This led to a shift in tactics in which Syrian government forces began to target opposition-held civilian communities with systematic and indiscriminate surface-to-surface and aerial bombardment by the Syrian Army and the Syrian Arab Air Force. In response, small groups of civilian volunteers from affected communities, particularly in Aleppo and Idlib, self-formed to assist neighbors injured in bombardment or trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings. Very quickly, training, funding and support from a broad, international array of partners – including donor governments in Europe, the US and Japan; the Turkish AKUT Search and Rescue Association; and a variety of NGOs, private individuals, public fundraising campaigns, and charities – became a key factor in the development of the organisation.

Local and provincial councils joined with ARK’s stabilisation consultant and ex-British Army Officer, James Le Mesurier, and AKUT to create the first training programme in early 2013. ARK would facilitate entry of volunteers to Turkey, where they would be trained by AKUT. Early training courses include trauma care, command and control and crisis management. Over the next two years, the number of independent civil defense teams grew to several dozen as graduates of the early trainings such as Raed Saleh established new centers; the national organisation of SCD was founded on 25 October 2014 at a conference of independent teams. 

SCD has grown to be an organization of over 3,000 volunteers operating from 111 local civil defence centers across 8 provincial directorates (Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Hama, Homs, Damascus, Damascus Countryside, and Daraa). In October 2014, these self-organised teams came together and voted to form one national organization: Syria Civil Defence. As of January 2017, the SCD claims to have rescued over 80,000 people since they began to keep count in 2014 from the effects of the civil war. According to The Economist, approximately one in six SCD have been killed or badly wounded, “many by “double-tap” Russian and Syrian airstrikes on the same site as they search for bodies.” The SCD was nominated for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize and was a recipient of the 2016 Right Livelihood Award, the “Alternative Nobel Prize”.  

On 14 December 2016, as the Syrian Armed Forces were recapturing eastern Aleppo, Raed Saleh requested safe passage of SCD operatives to rebel controlled countryside around Aleppo. Syria Civil Defence joined the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Independent Doctors Association and the Violations Documentation Center to accuse Russian forces of war crimes in eastern Aleppo, jointly submitting a report to the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.

SCD’s stated mission is “to save the greatest number of lives in the shortest possible time and to minimize further injury to people and damage to property.” Their work covers the 15 civil defense tasks as laid out in international humanitarian law (IHL); the bulk of their activity in Syria consists of urban search and rescue in response to bombing, medical evacuation, evacuation of civilians from danger areas, and essential service delivery. The most prominent role of SCD was rescuing civilians from strikes with barrel bombs, improvised explosive devices dropped from by SAAF helicopters. Following the intervention of Russia in Syria on September 30, 2015, much of the work of SCD has been responding to attacks by Russian Air Force attack aircraft. As well as providing rescue services, SCD undertakes repair works such as securing damaged buildings and reconnecting electrical and water services, clearing roads, teaching children about unexploded ordnance hazards, as well as firefighting and winter storm relief. Sometimes described as the most dangerous job in the world, SCD operations involve risk from a wide variety of war-zone threats. 159 White Helmets have been killed since the organization’s inception. As of 2015, SCD had an annual budget of $30 million provided by a mix of state donors and public fundraising. Volunteers who work full-time receive a $150 monthly stipend.

Russian forces in Aleppo

The Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War began in September 2015 after an official request by the Syrian government for military help against rebel and jihadist groups. The intervention initially consisted of air strikes fired by Russian aircraft stationed in the Khmeimim base at targets primarily in north-western Syria, against militant groups opposed to the Syrian government, including Syrian National Coalition, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in the Levant) and the Army of Conquest. Besides, Russian military advisors and special operations forces were stationed in Syria. Prior to the intervention, Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War had mainly consisted of supplying the Syrian Army.

Shortly after the operation began, Russian officials were cited as saying that, apart from fighting terrorist organisations such as ISIL, Russia′s goals included helping the Syrian government retake territory from various anti-government groups that are labelled by the U.S. and its coalition as ″moderate opposition″, a broader geopolitical objective being to roll back U.S. influence. In his televised interview broadcast on 11 October 2015, Russian president Vladimir Putin said the military operation had been thoroughly prepared in advance; he defined Russia′s goal in Syria as “stabilising the legitimate power in Syria and creating the conditions for political compromise”  According to the U.S. State Department, the Russian government has also been concerned that “if the government fell, that there would be chaos and that would allow terrorist groups to consolidate”, a claim which the Russian government has been using to justify their intervention.

The intervention has produced significant gains for the Syrian government, including the recapture of Palmyra from ISIL in March 2016 and according to the U.S. State Department, one year after the start of their intervention the Russians “have succeeded in bolstering the [Syrian] regime."In early January 2017, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov said that, overall, the Russian aviation had carried out 19,160 combat missions and delivered 71,000 strikes on "the infrastructure of terrorists”.

Russian ambassador shot dead in Turkey

Russia’s ambassador to Turkey was shot dead in front of a crowd at a posh art gallery in the capital Ankara as the angry gunmen screamed “don’t forget Aleppo”. Police later killed the assailant on Monday night, Turkish station NTV reported.

The assailant was a 22-year-old off-duty police officer who worked in Turkey’s capital, said Ankara’s Mayor Melih Gokcek. After the initial shot, the attacker approached Karlov as he lay on the ground and shot him at least one more time at close range, according to an AP photographer at the scene. He also smashed several of the framed photos on exhibition, but later let the stunned guests out of the venue, according to local media. The spectacle of Karlov’s assassination by a member of the Turkish security forces at a photography exhibit meant to highlight Russian culture reinforced the sense of unease over the region’s conflict and complex web of alliances and relationships.

Several media outlets reported a gunfight later ensued after Karlov was shot. Local broadcaster NTV television said at least three people were wounded and were taken to the hospital. Mayor Gokcek told reporters outside the exhibition centre the “heinous” attack was aimed at disrupting newly re-established relations between Turkey and Russia. Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone about Monday’s attack. “On behalf of my country and my people I once again extend my condolences to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the friendly Russian people,” said Erdogan.  

‘Don’t forget Aleppo’

The assailant referenced the situation in Aleppo after he shot the ambassador in the back. “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria,” the attacker said in Turkish after gunning down the ambassador, as seen on a video shared by Turkish media from the scene. “Whoever took part in this cruelty will pay the price, one by one… Only death will take me from here,” the man said while holding a pistol. He then continued in Arabic, saying: “We are the descendants of those who supported the Prophet Muhammad, for jihad.” Diego Cupolo, a photojournalist in Ankara, told Al Jazeera there were about 100 armed soldiers in camouflage and police officers at the scene, along with armoured fighting vehicles.