“It's going to probably work,” Trump said of the ceasefire his vice president brokered in a televised cabinet meeting on Monday. “But if it doesn't work, you're gonna have people fighting like they've been fighting for 300 years. It’s very simple.”
Turkey launched a ground incursion into northern Syria on October 9 with the goal of pushing Kurdish forces in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) away from the border and establishing a so-called safe zone where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to settle as many as two million Syrian refugees now sheltering in Turkey.
US Vice President Mike Pence met Erdogan in Ankara on Thursday and secured a five-day pause in the fighting during which time the SDF is to withdraw from two border towns, after which Turkey will commit to a full ceasefire.
Trump said neither side would have committed to any agreement if there had been no military clash. “If shooting didn't start for a couple of days, I don't think the Kurds would have moved. I don't think frankly you would have been able to make a very easy deal with Turkey,” said Trump. “I think when it started for a few days, it was so nasty that when we went to Turkey and when we went to the Kurds, they agreed to do things that they never would have done before the shooting started.”
He added that they are “close” to securing a final deal, but refused to insert American soldiers in between the historic foes, saying several times: “We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives.”
European members of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS) have condemned Trump’s withdrawal from Syria that effectively abandons their Kurdish allies. On Monday, Germany’s Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called for an international security zone on the Syrian border, German media reported. She is expected to present the proposal at a NATO meeting later this week.
US forces withdrew from Syria and arrived in the Kurdistan Region on Monday, drawing the ire of Kurds on both sides of the border. Kurds in Qamishli pelted a departing American military convoy with tomatoes. In Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region where Kurds take pride in the fact that Americans have never come under the same threats they experience elsewhere in Iraq, protesters hurled stones and insults at the armoured vehicles.
Kurds in #Kurdistan Region’s Erbil city throw rocks to retreating U.S. soldiers from northern Syria, “Fuck you” repeatedly heard. pic.twitter.com/OIaaLCFBcK
— Rudaw English (@RudawEnglish) October 21, 2019
Trump appeared to be unaware of today’s events, insisting “We’ve a good relationship with the Kurds.”
'We've secured the oil’
A small number of US troops will remain in Syria, near the southern border with Jordan and to secure oil fields.
“We’ve secured the oil… I’ve always said if you’re going in, keep the oil. We want to keep the oil,” he said.
Oil and gas fields in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province are under the control of the SDF. Trump hinted at the possibility of making some deal to share oil revenues with the Kurds.
“We'll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, they'll have some cash flow. Maybe we'll get one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly. But they'll have some cash flow, which they basically don't have right now,” he said.
