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Syria
A Turkish military convoy parks near the town of Batabu on the highway linking Idlib to the Syrian Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, March 2, 2020. Photo: Aaref Watad / AFP
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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – James Jeffrey, the US special envoy for Syria, told reporters in Ankara on Tuesday that Washington is prepared to provide its NATO ally Turkey with munitions to support its operation against Syrian regime forces in Idlib.
Washington has also announced a $108 million humanitarian aid package for the war-torn country.
Jeffrey and Kelly Craft, the US ambassador to the United Nations, met with Turkish officials in Ankara on Monday to discuss the latest developments in Idlib. They also traveled to Hatay province on the Turkey-Syria border to assess the humanitarian situation.
“Turkey is a NATO ally. Much of the military uses American equipment. We will make sure that equipment is ready and usable,” Jeffrey told reporters.
The US envoy for Syria, who speaks Turkish, is known for his close ties with Ankara and his attempts to persuade the Pentagon to deploy Patriot surface-to-air missiles to Turkey.
However, both the Department of Defense and the State Department have resisted Jeffrey’s call.
US-Turkey relations took a battering in 2019 when Ankara purchased Russia’s S-400 missile defense system – a rival to the US Patriots and a system Washington says is incompatible with NATO hardware.
US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Monday that Washington is not prepared to provide Turkey with air support to protect its forces on the ground in northern Syria.
Humanitarian aid
In a rare visit to Syria-Turkey border, Jeffrey and Craft met with humanitarian workers and the White Helmets, a civil defense volunteer force which has performed search and rescue operations in opposition-held areas of Syria.
“Grateful to shake the hands of the brave men and women of the #whitehelmets. These are ordinary people doing extraordinary things to save the lives of Syrian victims of Assad’s brutality,” Craft said in a tweet.
The US ambassador to the UN had earlier announced an additional $108 million in humanitarian assistance to Syria.
“The Trump administration is pleased to announce today an additional $108 million in US humanitarian assistance for the people of #Syria. The US has led the way, donating more than $10 billion since the start of the crisis,” she tweeted on Monday.
The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 following a brutal regime crackdown on anti-government protests, has displaced millions of Syrians and send millions more into exile in neighbouring and western countries.
In December, the Russian-backed Syrian regime launched a new offensive against the armed opposition in Idlib – the last rebel holdout.
Damascus has recapturing more than a hundred towns and villages and seized control of a vital strategic highway.
According to UN figures, more than 900,000 civilians have been displaced since the operation began, many of them seeking sanctuary near the Turkish border.
Idlib escalation
Operation Spring Shield is Turkey’s fourth operation in Syria since beginning its direct engagement in the conflict in 2016.
Violence has escalated in recent days between the Russian-backed regime forces of Bashar al-Assad and opposition-supporter Turkey.
Regime forces began attacking Turkish military observation posts established in Idlib under the 2018 Sochi de-confliction deal with Russia. Moscow and Ankara now accuse one another of undermining the deal.
The situation escalated further last week when regime warplanes killed dozens of Turkish soldiers.
Ankara retaliated, shooting down two Syrian Su-24 jets and killing hundreds of regime troops.
Max Hoffman, associate director of national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, believes “a major sustained conventional war” between Ankara and Damascus is unlikely “beyond the hundreds of strikes and casualties we’ve already seen”.
READ MORE: Operation Spring Shield: How far will Turkey’s latest Syria offensive go?
This is because “neither side has the interest in a formal, drawn out conventional war, and the regime does not have the resources to sustain such a fight”, he told Rudaw on Monday.
“Russia will seek to calm things down eventually, and Ankara’s primary goal is to reduce violence and the accompanying displacement, so it has no interest in a long conflict,” he said.
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