Former Pentagon official: Turkey supports members of al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria

Washington – North-Press Agency
Hadeel Oueiss

Michael Rubin a former Pentagon researcher and former Pentagon official has said that the US-backed Islamist groups, have shifted to more radical groups over time, and the US support has begun to stop.

Rubin told North-Press that the Turkish-backed groups are specifically extremist groups that include al-Qaeda members and former militants of the Islamic State, which leads to a radical and long-term dispute between the Turkish army and the US forces.

The Intercept newspaper has quoted: "We've witnessed in the last presidential debate of the Democratic Party a clear contradiction towards Syria. Some of those who demanded and supported the arming of the Syrian opposition and the rebels against the regime of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, of whom we see, today, criticizing these groups and their actions in northeastern Syria; whereas major newspapers which defended those rebels, such as New York Times, are now calling them extremist fighters and criminals."

The newspaper added that major decision-makers of the US Pentagon, the US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is demanding accountability for the Turkish-backed armed groups and the Turkish government for committing war crimes.

Rubin said: "Although Erdogan has won Trump in his current battle in Syria, Trump is not an absolute president like Erdogan in Turkey, as Trump cannot stop the conclusions of the Department of State, the U.S. Intelligence Department, the Pentagon and the ensuing strategies hostile to the Turkish-backed extremist groups."

Speaking on Fox News yesterday, the U.S. General Jack Kaine described President Trump's steps toward northeastern Syria as a betrayal and a strategic mistake, and that the Pentagon would have a lot of tasks to do to avoid its consequences, especially that abandoning Arab and Kurdish allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who lost more than 11,000 of their fighters in the battle against the Islamic State, in which 6 US soldiers were killed, would be in favor of extremism and enemies of the United States. Therefore, if there was any threats from that region to the US interests, it would be broader and more influential.

At a press conference attended by North-Press in Washington yesterday, Sam Brownback the US ambassador for religious freedoms said that he met with the foreign minister of Iraqi Kurdistan and he was informed about the abuses by the Turkish-backed groups towards religious and ethnic minorities in northeastern Syria.