Syria: Russia Shames US Into Defending Its Kurdish Proxies From Erdogan

For  a week now US troops have been prancing around Kurdish-held northern Syria trying to make themselves as visible as possible. The reason is simple. They’re doing it to visibly own the Kurdish-dominated SDF militias as their military allies and prevent Turkish military from unleashing on them.

The funny thing about it however is that Americans only begun protecting the Kurds after Russian and Syrian troops had moved to do so.

In a Russian-brokered deal a week ago the Kurds gave up a number of villages on their most exposed western positions to the Syrian army which moved in between the Turks and the Kurds. A symbolic Russian mission to Kurdish-held Manbij soon followed.

Now you also have Americans parading around which should preclude Turks from striking from the north, but really the bulk of the work had already been done by the government army which has already paid a dear price for it.

Americans need the Kurds to serve as their ground army against ISIS but are enormously slow at offering any amount of political support against NATO Turkey in return.

So slow that the decisive move was left to Damascus and the Russians, and the US stepping up support may not have happened at all without Moscow and Assad acting first and forcing the Americans to copy them or risk losing the Kurds.

PHOTO: Russian soldier wearing #YPG patch – @warsmonitoring pic.twitter.com/gI0JyNgNrN

— Gissur Simonarson 🇮🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (@GissiSim) March 10, 2017

https://twitter.com/MmaGreen/status/839865226929532929

SDF is technically in rebellion against Russian-backed Damascus yet it was its battlefield rivals who offered help (at a price) before did Americans — its principal battlefield backers.

US truly is the most rotten ally one can have.