In his phone conversation with Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, Donald Trump said that the US will stop arming the Kurdish militia in Syria. The promise mostly referred to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), whom Ankara considers affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a designated terrorist group in Turkey.
In his interview with Sputnik Radio, Shlomo Brom, a senior research associate at the Israeli-based Institute for National Security Studies, former director of the strategic planning division of the Israeli army commented on the promise, suggesting that it will be hard to deliver on, "because the Kurds are actually the only credible force on the ground in Syria that is available to the US."
Hence, he pointed out, if the US wants to remain an actor in Syria, it "needs the Kurds."
The researcher further suggested how Washington could possibly evade delivering on the issue. He stressed that the US President promised to halt its military aid to the YPG, who, along with other ethnic militias, form the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
"The US might play between the YPG and the SDF. They will continue supplying weapons to the SDF and stop supplying weapons directly to the YPG. But they don't have any control on the weapons once they are inside the SDF," Shlomo Brom surmised.
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What the researcher also pointed out is that judging by the long time which it took the US State Department and the Department of Defense to respond to Trump's promise, the US leader apparently has made it without consulting with these two institutions.
"It is another demonstration of the confusion and the lack of orderly process in the Trump administration," he opined, concluding that it provides more proof that the US does not have a clear strategy for Syria.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Abdulaziz Yunus, who is in charge of the foreign affairs of the SDF, revealed to Sputnik Turkiye that Washington and its coalition have never stopped supplying them with arms and have sent "hundreds of trucks" loaded with weaponry to the districts of Deir ez-Zor, where they are currently operating.
