US commanders planning for the withdrawal of US troops from Syria are recommending that Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State be allowed to keep US-supplied weapons, four US officials said, a move that would likely anger NATO ally Turkey.
Three of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the recommendations were part of discussions on a draft plan by the US military.
It was unclear what the Pentagon would ultimately recommend to the White House.
Discussions were still at an early stage inside the Pentagon and no decision had yet been made, the officials said.
The plan would be presented to the White House in the next few days, with US President Donald Trump making the final decision.
The Pentagon said it would be “inappropriate” and premature to comment on what would happen with the weapons.
“Planning is ongoing, and focused on executing a deliberate and controlled withdrawal of forces while taking all measures possible to ensure our troops’ safety,” said Commander Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman.
The White House did not comment.
Trump last week ordered a complete withdrawal of US troops from Syria, prompting James Mattis’ resignation as US secretary of defense.
The US officials said Trump’s decision has upset US commanders, who view his it as a betrayal of the Kurdish YPG militia, which has led the fight to eradicate the Islamic State from northeastern Syria.
Ankara views the YPG as an extension of a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey, and has threatened to launch an offensive against the YPG, raising fears of a surge in violence that could harm hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The US told the YPG that they would be armed by Washington until the fight against the Islamic State was completed, one of the US officials said.
“The fight isn’t over. We can’t simply start asking for the weapons back,” the official said.
The proposal to leave US-supplied weapons with the YPG, which could include anti-tank missiles, armored vehicles and mortars, would reassure Kurdish allies that they are not being abandoned.
However, Turkey wants the US to take the weapons back, so the commanders’ recommendation, if confirmed, could complicate Trump’s plan to allow Turkey to finish off the fight against the Islamic State inside Syria.
The Pentagon keeps records of the weapons it has supplied to the YPG and their chain of custody, but the US officials said that it would be nearly impossible to locate all of the equipment.
“How are we going to get them back and who is going to take them back?” one of the officials asked.
The debate over whether to leave weapons with the YPG coincides with US National Security Adviser John Bolton’s visit to Turkey and Israel next week for talks on Syria.
In May last year, the US started distributing arms and equipment to the YPG for an offensive against Raqqa, the de facto capital of the self-declared caliphate, which the Islamic State overran in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Washington told Ankara that it would take back the weapons after the defeat of the Islamic State, which has lost all but a few slivers of territory in northeastern Syria.
“The idea that we’d be able to recover them is asinine. So we leave them where they are,” a US official said.
A person familiar with discussions of the US’ withdrawal plan said that the White House and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would oppose the proposal to allow the YPG to keep its US-supplied weapons.
The recommendation “is a rejection of Trump’s policy to withdraw from Syria,” said the person, who asked not to be further identified.
Turkey has said that weapons supplied to the YPG have in the past ended up in the hands of its Kurdish separatists, and described any weapon given to the insurgents as a threat to Turkey’s security.
A telephone call between Trump and Erdogan led to the decision to withdraw all US forces from Syria.
In the call two weeks ago, Trump had been expected to deliver a standard warning to the Turkish president over his plan to launch a cross-border attack targeting US-backed Kurdish forces in northeast Syria, US officials said.
Instead, in the course of the conversation, Trump reshaped US policy in the Middle East, handing Turkey the job of finishing off the Islamic State in Syria.
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