The war in Syria has become even more complex.
Turkey launched a military intervention in Syria on Wednesday, sending tanks across the border and launching air strikes.
Turkish-backed rebels reportedly captured the town of Jarablus, in northern Syria, from ISIS. U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels, however, had already been fighting for months to retake the town from the self-declared Islamic State.
Vice President Joe Biden made it clear that the U.S. supports Turkey’s new military incursion. Speaking at a press conference during a visit in the Turkish capital Ankara, Biden told Kurdish rebels to retreat, warning them “they cannot — will not — under any circumstance get American support if they do not keep that commitment.”
The U.S. is effectively on both sides in the conflict. It backs Turkey, which is fighting Kurdish rebels, yet it also supports the Kurdish rebels, which have been one of the most effective forces battling ISIS in Syria.
Media reporting on the story has been somewhat misleading. Headlines of major news outlets described Turkey’s incursion as a fight against ISIS, leaving out the fact that Turkey’s offensive is just as much of an attack on the very same Kurdish rebels defeating the so-called Islamic State.
The New York Times titled its story “Turkish Military Begins Major Offensive Into Syria in Fight Against ISIS.” It later noted, however, that Turkey’s intervention “also seemed as much about containing the territorial ambitions of Syrian Kurdish militias, which Turkey sees as its primary enemy in the conflict and which were poised to move against Jarabulus.”
CNN’s report carried the headline “Turkey sends tanks into Syria to battle ISIS,” but it later pointed out, citing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that “Turkey’s incursion into Syrian territory is part of a larger effort to battle not only ISIS but also Kurdish fighters in northern Syria that Ankara opposes.”
Likewise, a Wall Street Journal article declared “U.S. Joins Turkish Forces to Launch Push Against Islamic State in Syria.” This same piece nevertheless reported that Turkey’s goal is also to “rein in U.S.-backed Kurdish militants.”
The Syrian government, which has welcomed Russian and Iranian military intervention, condemned the Turkish incursion as an act of “aggression” and “blatant violation” of its sovereignty.
The U.S. on the other hand, which backs rebels trying to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad, supported Turkey’s military offensive — thereby opposing the Kurdish rebels it has backed for months.
In early August, U.S.-backed Kurdish forces liberated the border town of Manbij from ISIS. Just after ISIS was defeated, nevertheless, Turkey warned the Kurdish rebels that they must retreat from the area. On Monday, Aug. 22, the Turkish military fired artillery 20 times at them.
For months the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, a militia primarily of Kurdish Syrians that’s aligned with the leftist Democratic Union Party, or PYD, had been fighting ISIS in an attempt to seize Jarablus. Last year President Erdogan had reportedly declared a red line, warning the Kurdish rebels it would attack if they took the town over.
The U.S. support for Turkey’s new military intervention might appear to be a sudden volte-face, but Washington has played a kind of double game in the catastrophic war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced more than half of Syria’s population and left much of the country in ruin.
Within Syria, the U.S. is fighting two sides in the same war. The CIA has spent billions of dollars training and arming rebels who are fighting the Syrian government. At the same time, the Pentagon is supporting primarily Kurdish rebels who are fighting the Islamic State.
Most of the Kurdish fighters are leftist, feminist and secular, whereas the bulk of the opposition to the Syrian regime is at this point Islamist. Both of these U.S.-backed forces have, at times, fought each other.
The U.S. Department of Defense opposes supporting antigovernment rebels in Aleppo because many are affiliated with Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate and other extremist groups. The CIA, on the other hand, supports these Islamist rebels, arguing, as The Daily Beast put it, that “alliances of convenience in the face of a mounting Russian-led offensive have created marriages of battlefield necessity, not ideology.
