Why the Syria's Kurdish Militia Can't Do What Washington Wants

[TomSea]

September 24, 2019 Topic: Security Region: Middle East Blog Brand: Middle East Watch Tags: SyriaKurdsMilitiaWarForeign Policy
Why the Syria's Kurdish Militia Can't Do What Washington Wants

The YPG is a bad regional partner and its chances of declaring a military victory against a regular army is rather low.
by Ali Demirdas

Despite the defeat of the Islamic State, Washington justifies weaponizing and safeguarding the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which are the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Washington officials do this because they think that the Kurdish-dominated YPG would be an effective tool to roll back the Iranian influence in the Middle East. This is the wrong approach on many levels.

Although the YPG has proven to be a valuable asset in the fight against the Islamic State, the YPG upper echelon has expressed an unwillingness to mount a fight against Iran or its proxies. Bassam Ishak, the Washington representative of the Syrian Democratic Council, a political umbrella organization to which YPG belongs, acknowledged that an all-out war with Iran will wreak havoc on Syrians. Nicholas Heras, the Center for a New American Security fellow who talked to SDF members in Syria said, “There is a deep concern within the SDF over the extent to which the United States is looking to use SDF forces as a counter to Iran in Syria.”

There is good reason for why the YPG is concerned.  From the military standpoint, despite the training and vast supply of weaponry it has received from the United States, the YPG’s chances of a military victory against a regular army is rather low. The YPG and its political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), were established in 2012 by the veterans of the PKK. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the relative success of the PKK in its attacks within Turkey was attributed to its mastery of guerilla warfare in the impassable mountains of southeast Turkey. However, having been picked by the United States to combat a nonstate actor-Islamic-State, the PKK abandoned rural guerilla warfare and adopted regular army tactics exposing its members in the Syrian flatland. It was after this change of tactic that the Turkish military began to decisively crush the PKK. In Turkey’s urban southeast in 2016 and Syria’s Afrin Province in 2018, the strategy of area “denial” cost the PKK dearly. In the same manner, Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, are likely to inflict considerable damage to the YPG without America’s air cover involved. However, bombing Hezbollah would unleash a full-scale confrontation between America and Iran, which the United States clearly looks to avoid. 

Read more at: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/why-syrias-kurdish-militia-cant-do-what-washington-wants-83041