Over the weekend the Pence-Pompeo ceasefire appeared to hold. As Reuters reports, "On Sunday, the SDF said they had withdrawn from the border town of Ras al Ain under the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal, but a spokesman for Turkish-backed Syrian rebels said the withdrawal was not yet complete." Turkey has promised to resume its offensive tomorrow unless all Kurdish forces are gone.
Which raises the question, Gone from where? Presumably from "[A] rectangular piece of territory that is bounded by the towns of Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain on Syria’s border with Turkey, and runs south to a main highway in territory Mr. Kobani’s forces control, by Tuesday night." Mazlum Kobani, leader of the Syrian Kurdish forces, says they're already gone, but he promises trouble if Turkey plans to cleanse the area of Kurds and repopulate it with Syrian Arab refugees. At the same time, Iran is on record opposing the establishment of a dozen Turkish observation posts (a.k.a., military bases) in the cleansed area.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper went on record today saying that U.S. troops would stay in northeast Syria to "protect" the oil fields from a defeated Islamic State, laying to rest any notion that a U.S. withdrawal would be complete. A U.S. convoy of 30 Humvees was observed exiting Syria and entering Iraq at the Sumel crossing. What's that, maybe 150 troops?
The question here is has the Trump administration convinced the Kurds to give up on that rectangular piece of territory bounded by Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain. For now, it appears so. Erdogan meets with Putin tomorrow. We should know more in the next 36 hours.
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