An estimated 1,700 Syrian Arabs have abandoned the frontlines against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) to assist the Kurds in their fight against Turkey in northern Syria as Ankara claims to have seized “nearly half” of the Afrin region.
“We have taken out around 1,700 fighters … to defend Afrin against terrorism,” declared Abu Omar al-Edilbi, a spokesman for the Arab militias, which have been fighting ISIS in eastern Syria as part of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), reports Reuters.
“We are (originally) from Aleppo and Idlib,” he added. “We had to because our families were homeless and displaced to Afrin more than three years ago. … We had to [redeploy fighters] unfortunately, and we informed our leadership that we must pull our forces.”
“After announcing the redeployment, he told Reuters in Raqqa that 700 of the fighters had already gone to Afrin in northwest Syria. They were moving from frontlines further east, where the Kurdish-led SDF seized vast territory from Islamic State militants last year with the help of U.S. jets and special forces,” notes Reuters.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and other American officials have acknowledged that the fight between the Kurds and Turkey in northern Syrian has negatively impacted the international offensive against ISIS.
On Monday, U.S. Col. Robert Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Turkey’s operation against U.S.-backed forces in Syria had distracted from the anti-ISIS offensive and led to an “operational pause” in the east.
Some ground operations carried out by the U.S.-backed SDF have temporarily stopped, indicated the colonel. READ MORE
