The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) told the Donald Trump administration today that Kurdish forces had withdrawn from the Turkish border, keeping pace with a US-brokered agreement to pause Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria for at least five days.
“Today the vice president [Mike Pence] received a letter from [SDF chief] Gen. Mazlum [Kobane] notifying him that all SDF forces have withdrawn from the relevant area of operations,” Katie Waldman, a spokesperson for Pence, told Al-Monitor.
“The vice president welcomes this development and sees it as having satisfied the terms of the 17 October agreement, as pertains to the withdrawal of the YPG,” Waldman said, using the initials of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, which formed the backbone of the SDF but which Turkey considers a terror group. While the SDF was long backed by the Pentagon, the United States decided earlier this month that it would not shield the group from Turkey.
But as top US officials admitted today that the geographic parameters of the Oct. 17 deal were never set in stone, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to leave a six-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin with an agreement that would set up joint patrols between the two sides along an extensive Syrian border region to the east of the Euphrates River.
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