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The United States is setting up "observation posts" along the border between Turkey and Syria in order to remain focused on the defeat of Islamic State militants in Syria, said on Wednesday. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
The observation posts would not require the sending of additional American troops to Syria, Mattis told the press. The Pentagon claims to have about 2,000 soldiers in Syria.
The United States has long complained that tensions between Turkey and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), including the YPG's Kurdish Syrian militia, have sometimes slowed progress in the fight against militants. Islamic State.
The purpose of the observation posts is to ensure that Turkey and the SDF remain focused on removing the last bastions of the Islamic State.
"We are setting up observation posts at several locations along the Syrian border, on the northern Syrian border, because we want to be the people who call the Turks and warn them if we see anything coming out of the area in which we operate, says Mattis.
"The goal is to ensure that the people we fight in the Euphrates Valley (in the middle of the valley) are not trained, so that we can crush what's left of the geographical caliphate" said Mattis, referring to areas controlled by the Islamic State.
Turkey has been exasperated by Washington's support for the YPG, which it sees as an extension of the clandestine Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is leading a decades-long uprising on Turkish soil.
ISIS is still present in eastern Syria in a pocket east of the Euphrates River near the Iraqi border.
The administration of President Donald Trump hopes that the fight against the Islamic State, its support for northeastern Syria, supported by the United States, will end in a few months, but an American diplomat recently said that the forces Americans would remain to ensure the "enduring defeat" of the militant group.
