Alwaght- Syrian government forces reportedly are set to enter the country's Kurdish-controlled northern region of Afrin, where has been under Turkish aggression since January 20.
Reuters cited on Sunday a senior Kurdish official as saying that Syrian Kurdish forces and the Damascus government have reached an agreement for the Syrian army to enter the Afrin region to help repel a Turkish offensive.
On January 20, Turkish military along with the Ankara-backed Syrian militant group Free Syrian Army launched the so-called Operation Olive Branch against Kurdish militia forces in Syria's Afrin district after the US announce a plan to work with the Kurdish militias to set up a 30,000-strong border force near Turkish soil, a move that infuriated Ankara. Ankara views the US-backed Kurdish YPG militias as a terror organization and the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). The latter has been fighting for an autonomous region inside Turkey since 1984.
Badran Jia Kurd, an adviser to the Kurdish-led administration in northern Syria, told Reuters army troops would deploy along some border positions and could enter the region within the next two days.
Several conflicting reports have been coming from Syria, suggesting either success or failure of alleged negotiations between Damascus and the Kurdish People Protection Units (YPG) fighters. The negotiations were reportedly aimed at getting help from the Syrian government to repel the ongoing Turkish offensive on the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin.
Even if a deal came into force it would still rest on shaky foundations, Jia Kurd admitted. He said it was hard to predict how long the deal would hold, since it does not sit well with either side.
"We don’t know to what extent these understandings will last because there are sides that are not satisfied and want to make (them) fail,” he said without elaborating.
It comes just a few days after media reports indicated there were negotiations between Kurdish militias and the Syrian government, which had stalled. The Syrian government reportedly withdrew from the talks after Kurds refused to lay down their weapons in return for military assistance, an RT Arabic correspondent reported on Thursday, citing a military source. Several other networks, including Arab TV network Al Mayadeen and Sputnik, ran reports based on their own sources saying that the deal had been secured, without providing any details of the conditions.
Speculation about a more active role for Damascus in the Afrin confrontation arose back in January, when the Kurdish self-administration urged Damascus to protect Syrian sovereignty by sending troops to Afrin. Last Monday, YPG commander Sipan Hamo said that he would have “no problem” with the Syrian Army intervening in the conflict to drive away the Turkish forces.
