Trump's generals wonder: What comes after Raqqa?
A senior US official says Turkish bombing of Syrian Kurdish forces is adding a new level of complexity to US efforts to defeat the Islamic State and retake Raqqa.
WASHINGTON — A senior US counterterrorism official says there is “no magic bullet” to resolve the growing rift between the United States and Turkey over the US use of Syrian Kurdish forces to liberate Raqqa from the Islamic State.
Retired Lt. Gen. Terry Wolff, the deputy special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, spoke April 26 at a forum organized by the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, a day after Turkey bombed Kurdish fighters in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq and in northeastern Syria. At about the same time Wolff spoke, Turks skirmished with Kurds in Hatay on the Turkish-Syrian border.
The US-led coalition is counting on the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces to retake Raqqa, the capital of IS' shrinking caliphate. However, that force is dominated by members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which both Turkey and the United States regard as a terrorist group.
Turkey infuriated the Trump administration by failing to coordinate its latest attacks with the United States and giving only the most minimal of warning. US forces were only 6 miles away from the bombing in Sinjar, which killed about 20 members of the YPG and a half dozen peshmerga, forces of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government that is at odds with the PKK and nominally allied with Turkey.
