The Pentagon’s top ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria declared a general mobilization on Sunday as jihadi militants and their Turkish-backed allies began moving against them in northern Syria in parallel with an offensive on Hama further south following their stunning ejection of Syrian regime forces from Aleppo.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its civilian arm known as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syrian (DAANES) announced the mobilization amid ongoing clashes between its forces and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in and around Aleppo, saying Turkey and its “mercenaries” were seeking to “occupy Syria, divide its lands and eliminate the hopes of the Syrians.”
The Kurdish group accused Turkey of using the militants to destroy their fledgling para-statelet where some 900 US Special Operations soldiers are deployed against the Islamic State.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that the United States was “watching the situation carefully” as SNA factions wrested control of several areas seized by the SDF, including the Aleppo airport, and disrupted a corridor the Kurds had established between areas under its control and Aleppo in the initial days of the blitzkrieg that is being spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaida offshoot that has long posed the biggest threat to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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