Opinion | Turkey is playing with fire in northern Syria - The Washington Post

“These strikes person already placed the ISIS ngo astatine risk,” said Col. Joseph Buccino, spokesperson for U.S. Central Command, which oversees the region. “One of the strikes deed wrong 130 meters of U.S. personnel, truthful American forces are astatine risk. Any hold of these attacks volition thrust up that risk,” Buccino told maine successful an email.

Mazloum, arsenic helium is known, said that an hr earlier our conversation, a Turkish drone had fired connected the SDF information station astatine the al-Hol exile camp, which houses families of Islamic State fighters. He said helium didn’t cognize whether immoderate of the residents of the campy escaped, due to the fact that a Turkish drone was inactive loitering implicit the camp, and it was intolerable for U.S. and SDF forces determination to survey the harm safely.

Mazloum said SDF forces are besides “at hazard close now” arsenic they effort to support information astatine 28 makeshift prisons successful bluish Syria wherever astir 12,000 captured ISIS fighters are housed. After a January prison break astatine the Hasakah prison, much than 3,000 of these detainees escaped, and it took much than a week to seizure astir of them and regain control.

Turkey’s rationale for attacking the Syrian Kurds is its assertion that the SDF, and Mazloum personally, are affiliated with the militant Kurdish militia known arsenic the PKK, which they contend was liable for a Nov. 13 violent bombing successful Istanbul. Mazloum told maine his forces had nary engagement successful the onslaught and had expressed sympathy for the victims. As for the complaint that helium was personally affiliated with PKK terrorism, helium said, “these are conscionable excuses” and that helium had been moving intimately with U.S. and conjugation forces for much than 8 years.

Northern Syria is simply a weaponry that Turkey, done its reckless actions, seems determined to detonate. When I visited the al-Hol campy successful April with Centcom commandant Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, it housed astir 56,000 people, an estimated 70 percent of them nether 18. We toured the Hasakah prison, too, and information seemed fragile, adjacent without Turkish bombers overhead.

Mazloum said the Turkish battle began connected Monday with an onslaught connected a conjugation basal successful Hasakah, wherever U.S. Special Operations forces assistance bid the SDF. I visited that basal successful April, too, and saw the combat concern betwixt the United States and the Syrian Kurds that shattered ISIS. The Kurdish-led militia paid a dense terms successful that campaign, with 12,000 fighters killed, Mazloum reminded maine connected Wednesday.

Mazloum said that helium expects Turkey to soon statesman a crushed battle successful bluish Syria, seeking greater power of Manbij and Kobani, 2 areas liberated from ISIS by the United States and its SDF partners astatine large cost. He said that the United States has an “ethical work to support the Kurds from being ethnically cleansed from this region.” He urged U.S. officials to unit Turkey to de-escalate its attacks earlier determination is simply a disaster.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke connected Wednesday with his Turkish counterpart and warned the Turks against attacking restricted zones astir U.S. troops. But a Pentagon authoritative said determination was “no motion that [the Turks] are acceptable to de-escalate.” As the Turkish subject battle successful bluish Syria begins to destabilize the U.S.-led coalition’s fragile power implicit the murderous remnants of the Islamic State, a tenable idiosyncratic begins to wonder: What benignant of an state is this?