Turkey: Game on?
Either Turkey gave us some guarantees without a meeting, or the Kurds in Syria just found out how mercurial American support can be. According to NBC, the withdrawal of US troops from Syria has already begun, even though John Bolton had insisted that it wouldn’t take place at all without protection for American allies in the anti-ISIS coalition:
An American military official says the U. S. has started the process of withdrawing troops from Syria pic.twitter.com/V17E7B136g
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 11,2019
The U. S.-led military coalition in Syria has begun the process of withdrawing troops from Syria, a U. S. military official said Friday, declining to comment on specific timetables or movements.
Col. Sean Ryan, spokesman for the coalition fighting the Islamic State group, said the U. S. started “the process of our deliberate withdrawal from Syria.”…
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict in Syria through a network of activists on the ground, said the withdrawal began Thursday night.
It said a convoy of about 10 armored vehicles, in addition to some trucks, pulled out from Syria’s northeastern town of Rmeilan into Iraq.
Both NBC and CBS point out that this appears to contradict messaging from both Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
