About one year after President Donald Trump had shocked the Kurds and the rest of America’s allies in the Middle East and Europe announcing he was pulling his troops out of Syria, on Saturday, Central Command chief General Kenneth McKenzie announced that 500 US troops are resuming operations against the Islamic State.
“Now I’ve got about 500 US personnel generally east of the Euphrates river east of Deir al Zor up to Hasaka, northeast all the way up into extreme northeast Syria,” McKenzie told reporters in Bahrain, and added: “It is our intention to remain in that position working with our SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) partners to continue operations against ISIS down the Euphrates river valley where those targets present themselves.”
Speaking of pulling out of Syria and coming right back, on Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkish troops had seized thousands of weapons given by the US to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria, Rudaw Media Network a media group in Iraqi Kurdistan, reported.
“They run and we chase them,” Erdogan boasted. “We have entered all of their hideouts. They wanted to establish a terror state in northern Syria. Did they make it? Between 32 and 33 thousand truckloads of weapons were given to them from somewhere. We have found the whereabouts of their depots and we are now collecting them.”
According to Rudaw, the United States supplied the YPG-dominated SDF with light arms, combat training, and air support during the fight against ISIS in Syria, beginning in 2014.