Feb 5, 2019

As Turkey and the Syrian Kurds lobby the Donald Trump administration on rival visions of a safe zone in northern Syria, a new proposal to deploy 10,000 Arab and Kurdish fighters to man it has prompted fresh speculation that a deal may be on the table.

Saudi Arabia’s Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported today that US, Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish officials “welcomed” a plan from Syrian opposition leader Ahmad Jarba, a Sunni Arab tribal leader, to deploy between 8,000 and 12,000 fighters near the border. They would be drawn from his “elite forces” as well as Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish peshmerga fighters allied with Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani.

This constellation would ostensibly replace the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the United States’ main ally in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) in northern Syria. Turkey has been nagging Washington to scotch the alliance because of the YPG’s links to Kurdish rebels fighting the Turkish army who are formally designated as terrorists by both Ankara and Washington.

Why it matters: President Trump’s decision to withdraw the more than 2,000 US troops deployed in YPG-dominated areas has triggered a race between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds to milk as much out of Washington as they can. For Turkey, the priority is that the YPG be disarmed and tossed aside. The Kurds for their part insist that Turkey not be permitted to invade more of their territory, as it keeps threatening to.

The Saudi report quoting western diplomatic sources comes a day before foreign ministers of the 79-member global coalition against IS gathers in Washington for their periodic huddle. The leak appears calculated to encourage the notion that Trump’s Syria team is succeeding in striking an arrangement that would check Iran’s influence, isolate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and keep the Turks and the Kurds out of Russia’s orbit.