Small Wars Journal

The Turks Have Taken Afrin. Let’s Not Let Manbij Fall Next.

Sun, 03/18/2018 - 8:40pm

The Turks Have Taken Afrin. Let’s Not Let Manbij Fall Next. By David Ignatius – Washington Post

The seizure of the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin on Sunday by Turkish forces is a rerun of one of modern history’s saddest recurring themes: The Kurds struggle for survival while their friends among the great powers stand aside and watch.

The Kurds’ plight is especially painful for U.S. military commanders, because the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been America’s key ally in defeating the Islamic State in Syria. U.S. commanders fear that the decisive gains won against the jihadists since 2014 may be slipping away as the SDF leaves the Islamic State front in eastern Syria to combat the Turkish assault on Afrin in the northwest.

Seeing the photographs of pro-Turkish Islamist militiamen strutting about the center of Afrin on Sunday, it seemed eerily possible that jihadist allies of the Islamic State were back in control in northern Syria, thanks to our “NATO ally” Turkey…

Read on.