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THE United States will continue arming Syrian Kurdish separatists after the defeat of Isis, Defence Secretary James Mattis said yesterday.
His comments to reporters travelling with him to Germany for tomorrow’s summit of Nato defence ministers contradict his Turkish counterpart, who said last week that Mr Mattis had told him the opposite in a letter.
Defence Minister Fikri Isik said the Pentagon chief had promised to take back the heavy arms and vehicles the US had provided to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) once the Isis stronghold of Raqqa is captured.
The SDF is dominated by the Kurdish separatist YPG, a sister organisation of Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Mr Mattis claimed yesterday that the US has made it clear all along “we’re going to equip them for the fight.
“If they have another fight and they need, you know, the light trucks that they’ve been using … we’ll get them that.”
Mr Mattis did not specify what “other fight” he meant, but last week the SDF clashed with Syrian forces trying to relieve the Isis siege of Deir Ezzor — with the US shooting down an air force plane that was bombing Isis positions.
And a Syrian government source accused the SDF of seeking to cut off the water supply to Aleppo, Syria’s second city, on Monday.
The source said the guerillas had blocked the flow from the upper Euphrates dam to the Khafsah pumping station, which the army captured from Isis earlier this year.
The same day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov there was new evidence that the US was playing an “extremely dangerous game” by “taking the heat off” al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front forces fighting the government.
