| It will be interesting to see if this program continues in the same form on President Trump's watch. I assume the Arab elements of the SDF have been quietly sharing their weapons with their Kurdish allies. |
[ALMASDARNEWS] Pentagon officials have emphasized to their Turkish partners that the US are only arming the Arab elements in the Kurdish-less Syrian Democratic Forces (SDFThe US has already begun airdropping aid to the Arab factions of the SDF to assist in their fight against ISIS in Raqqa countryside.
"Our local partners in Syria continue to converge down on Raqqa and I’m also confident that they will soon have ISIS’s so-called capital isolated," outgoing US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said on Thursday about the US support for the SDF forces.
"The isolation of Raqqa continued...our partners cleared more than 3,000 square kilometers since the start of their operations. ISIS’s days there, as well as in Iraq, are numbered," Carter added.
However it was Pentagon spokesperson Peter Cook that tried to ease the concerns of
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
"We have been supplying the SDF, specifically the Syrian Arab Coalition, for some time, with materiel support. We continue to do that, and there’s been no change," he said.
"We continue to provide that support for the Syrian Arab Coalition," he stressed.