As Turkish forces continue their offensive on Kurdish-controlled Afrin, Russia's playbook there seems to call for a level field and level heads.
Russian-sponsored peace talks on Syria ended on Tuesday amid squabbles and the heckling of Russia’s foreign minister. The 1,600 participants at the Sochi congress stressed in their final statement the need to preserve Syria’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence. The statement also called for free elections, but made no mention of Syrian refugees’ participation in the election, a key demand of the opposition, which boycotted the talks, nor any reference to President Bashar al-Assad's fate. The convention resulted in the creation of a committee to draft a new Syrian Constitution. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the panel “will include those groups that were not attending the [Sochi] peace conference.” Some delegates interrupted Lavrov's address to the event on Tuesday, however, accusing Moscow of killing civilians.
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The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), have started redeploying forces in northern Syria toward the border with Turkey following Ankara’s offensive in Afrin, a US official said Tuesday. Pentagon spokesman Adrian Rankine-Galloway told the Turkish daily Hurriyet that “these movements of forces are not conducted under the direction or with the support of the [US-led] coalition.” Read More
By Isaac Kfir, The Strategist (ASPI): “The Afrin operation has highlighted the diminishing influence of the U.S. and its failure to appreciate what’s going on in the region.”
Syria is shifting from being an active conflict zone to a “gray zone,” an area of ambiguity between peace and war. Iran is taking advantage of this development by extending its influence through the war-torn country. How can the United States push back? RAND's Colin Clarke explains. Read more »
If the People's Protection Units (YPG) retreats from this region, it effectively concedes its military presence in the al-Jazira area, including Hasaka and Raqqa. However, evidently this will not occur as it appears that the mutual understanding between Turkey, Russia, and the United States will prevent this.
Read the analysis by Asaad Hanna >