Alwaght- The US has approved arms supply to Kurdish YGP militants in Syria ignoring fierce opposition from NATO-member Turkey.
Reports say the White House on Tuesday ratified supplying arms to Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters to reportedly support an operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from ISIS.
A Trump administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not disclose how soon arms would start being delivered to the Kurdish militants, who Ankara sees as an extension of PKK militia waging an insurgency on Turkish soil.
This comes just days after reports emerged that ethnic Kurds are planning to occupy large parts of northern Syria with US support in move that violates the country’s sovereignty.
Hediya Yousef, in charge of the federalism project for the self-declared autonomous “democratic federation of north Syria”, which has expanded from the Kurdish region of Rojava to include considerable Arab territory, told Britain’s Observer newspaper that, “Arriving at the Mediterranean Sea is in our project for northern Syria, it’s a legal right for us to reach the Mediterranean.”
When asked if that meant asking the US for its political backing to achieve a trading route to the sea once they had helped eradicate ISIS terrorists from north Syria, Yousef said: “Of course.”
Senior figures have also indicated that the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), a 50,000-strong collection of fighters dominated by the YPJ Kurdish militia, is preparing to occupy Raqqa after eradicating ISIS before pushing deeper along the Euphrates valley, and seizing the city of Deir ez–Zor from the Takfiri group.
Last December, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that the Syrian constitution doesn’t allow for federalism and that the federal structures created by the Kurds in northern Syria “are temporary.”
