Russia-Turkey deal establishes ‘safe zone’ along
Turkish border and there will be joint Russia-Turkey
military patrols
By Pepe EscobarOctober 23, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" - The
negotiations in Sochi were long – over six hours –
tense and tough. Two leaders in a room with their
interpreters and several senior Turkish ministers
close by if advice was needed. The stakes were
immense: a road map to pacify northeast Syria,
finally.
The press conference afterwards was somewhat
awkward – riffing on generalities. But there’s no
question that in the end Russian President Vladimir
Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip
Erdogan managed the near impossible.
The Russia-Turkey deal establishes a safe zone
along the Syrian-Turkish border – something Erdogan
had been gunning for since 2014. There will be joint
Russia-Turkey military patrols. The Kurdish YPG
(People’s Protection Units), part of the rebranded,
US-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces, will need to
retreat and even disband, especially in the stretch
between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, and they will have
to abandon their much-cherished urban areas such as
Kobane and Manbij. The Syrian Arab Army will be
back in the whole northeast. And Syrian territorial
integrity – a Putin imperative – will be preserved.
This is a Syria-Russia-Turkey win-win-win – and,
inevitably, the end of a separatist-controlled
Syrian Kurdistan. Significantly, Erdogan’s spokesman
Fahrettin Altun stressed Syria’s “territorial
integrity” and “political unity.” That kind of
rhetoric from Ankara was unheard of until quite
recently.
Putin immediately called Syrian President Bashar
al Assad to detail the key points of the memorandum
of understanding. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov
once again stressed Putin’s main goal – Syrian
territorial integrity – and the very hard work ahead
to form a Syrian Constitutional Committee for the
legal path towards a still-elusive political
settlement.
Russian military police and Syrian border guards
are already arriving to monitor the imperative YPG
withdrawal – all the way to a depth of 30 kilometers
from the Turkish border. The joint military patrols
are tentatively scheduled to start next Tuesday.
On the same day this was happening in Sochi,
Assad was visiting the frontline in Idlib – a de
facto war zone that the Syrian army, allied with
Russian air power, will eventually clear of jihadi
militias, many supported by Turkey until literally
yesterday. That graphically illustrates how
Damascus, slowly but surely, is recovering sovereign
territory after eight and a half years of war.
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Who gets the
oil?
For all the cliffhangers in Sochi, there was not
a peep about an absolutely key element: who’s in
control of Syria’s oilfields, especially after
President Trump’s now-notorious tweet stating, “the
US has secured the oil.” No one knows which oil. If
he meant Syrian oil, that would be against
international law. Not to mention Washington has no
mandate – from the UN or anyone else – to occupy
Syrian territory.
The Arab street is inundated with videos of the
not exactly glorious exit by US troops, leaving
Syria pelted by rocks and rotten tomatoes all the
way to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they were greeted by a
stark reminder. “All US forces that withdrew from
Syria received approval to enter the Kurdistan
region [only] so that they may be transported
outside Iraq. There is no permission granted for
these forces to stay inside Iraq,” the Iraqi
military headquarters in Baghdad said.
The Pentagon said a
“residual force” may remain in the Middle
Euphrates river valley, side by side with Syrian
Democratic Forces militias, near a few oilfields, to
make sure the oil does not fall “into the hands of
ISIS/Daesh or others.” “Others” actually means the
legitimate owner, Damascus. There’s no way the
Syrian army will accept that, as it’s now fully
engaged in a national drive to recover the country’s
sources of food, agriculture and energy. Syria’s
northern provinces have a wealth of water,
hydropower dams, oil, gas and food.
As it stands, the US retreat is partial at best,
also considering that a small garrison remains
behind at al-Tanf, on the border with Jordan.
Strategically, that does not make sense, because the
al-Qaem border between Iran and Iraq is now open and
thriving.
The map above shows the position of US bases in
early October, but that’s changing fast. The Syrian
Army is already working to recover oilfields around
Raqqa, but the strategic US base of Ash Shaddadi
still seems to be in place. Until quite recently US
troops were in control of Syria’s largest oilfield,
al-Omar, in the northeast.
There have been accusations by Russian sources
that
mercenaries recruited by private US military
companies trained jihadi militias such as the
Maghawir al-Thawra (“Army of Free Tribes”) to
sabotage Syrian oil and gas infrastructure and/or
sell Syrian oil and gas to bribe tribal leaders and
finance jihadi operations. The Pentagon denies it.
Gas pipeline
As I have argued for years, Syria to a large
extent has been a key ‘Pipelineistan’
war – not only in terms of pipelines inside
Syria, and the US preventing Damascus from
commercializing its own natural resources, but most
of all around the fate of the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas
pipeline which was agreed in a memorandum of
understanding signed in 2012.
This pipeline has, over the years, always been a
red line, not only for Washington but also for Doha,
Riyadh and Ankara.
The situation should dramatically change when the
$200 billion-worth of reconstruction in Syria
finally takes off after a comprehensive peace deal
is in place. It will be fascinating to watch the
European Union – after NATO plotted for an “Assad
must go” regime change operation for years – wooing
Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus with financial offers
for their gas.
NATO explicitly supported the Turkish offensive
“Operation Peace Spring.” And we haven’t even seen
the ultimate geoeconomic irony yet: NATO member,
Turkey, purged of its neo-Ottoman dreams, merrily
embracing the Gazprom-supported Iran-Iraq-Syria
‘Pipelineistan’ road map.
Pepe Escobar
is correspondent-at-large at
Asia Times.
His latest book is
2030. Follow him on
Facebook.
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==See Also==
US official warned Syrian Kurdish leader not to talk to
Assad or Russia in heated meeting
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