US anti-Daesh envoy visits Kurdish, Arab fighters in Syria

A delegation including senior U.S. diplomat Brett McGurk met with members of a Kurd-Arab alliance fighting Daesh (ISIS) inside Syria Saturday, Kurdish sources said Sunday. The visit appeared to be the first by a senior U.S. government official inside Syrian territory.

McGurk, who is U.S. President Barack Obama’s envoy to an international coalition fighting Daesh in Syria and Iraq, was accompanied by French and British officials, the sources told AFP.

One Kurdish source close to the meeting said a “high-level military delegation from the international coalition,” met Saturday with senior members of the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance.

The source said the talks in the Kurdish town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobani is Kurdish, covered “military plans” for the fight against Daesh.

“These meetings will have an impact on many developments that will be seen in the area,” he added, without providing further details.

The SDF is an alliance of Syrian Kurds and Arabs who are fighting Daesh with support from the U.S.-led coalition.

It is composed mostly of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), along with smaller units of Syrian and Christian fighters.

The meetings come after the YPG’s political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), was excluded from new peace talks in Geneva being organized by the U.N.

Despite cooperation between the U.S.-led coalition and the YPG in the fight against Daesh, the Kurdish militia and its political branch face fierce opposition from neighboring Turkey.

The coalition has worked closely with the YPG since it launched airstrikes in Syria in September 2014.

And that support has continued since the formation of the SDF last October, with U.S.-led air support helping the alliance seize a key dam from Daesh last month.

U.S.-based Kurdish affairs analyst Mutlu Civiroglu said McGurk’s visit appeared intend to assuage the Kurds after their exclusion from the Geneva talks.

“The goal is to ease Kurdish anger and give them reassurances that they are not being ignored and that they have a part in this process,” he said.

Kurdish sources earlier told AFP that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken had called PYD chair Saleh Muslim to discuss Washington’s view on the Kurdish issue and the peace talks.
Source: AFP