Pence And Pompeo ‘Ceasefire’ Benefits Turks, Syria, And Russia, Screws Kurds, por Doug Mataconis (Outside the Beltway):
After meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for four hours in Ankara, Vice-President Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo announced a ceasefire in the ongoing Turkish offensive in northern Syria that, if successful, will give the Turks essentially everything they want while completing what many have called the betrayal of the Syrian Kurds (...)Como já escrevi noutro sítio,não se interprete este post como estar a defender que os EUA devessem intervir ao lado dos curdos contra a Turquia.
It’s worth noting that the Turks are most emphatically not calling this a ceasefire (...)
Whether you call this agreement a “cease=fire” or not is immaterial, what matters are the details, and those details leave much to be desired. Essentially what is happening here is that the Turkish military will halt its current advance for five days. During that five day period, at least two things must happen.
First, the American forces that remain in northern Syria will withdraw completely from the region. This is something that President Trump had already agreed to, of course, but the rapid advance of the Turkish forces, combined with the speed with which Syrian forces have rushed in to fill the vacuum pursuant to their new agreement with the Kurds, have placed Americans in the middle of a potential clash between the Turks and the Syrians. This agreement gives the Americans time to complete their withdrawal. Oh, and one more thing, the agreement requires us to lift the very minimal sanctions that we imposed against Turkey in the wake of the invasion.
The second thing that must happen over the next five days is the complete withdrawal of Kurdish forces from the so-called “safe zone” declared by the Turks as part of their invasion. Exactly where the Kurds are supposed to go is unclear, but possibilities include the idea that they may withdraw into Iraqi territory where the Kurds have a nearly de facto autonomous region. Whatever the case, it means that the Syrian Kurds will be forced to give up th gains they have made over the past nearly ten years of civil war, and will get nothing in return for it except for the privilege of not getting killed by Turkish forces.
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