New conflicts threaten Syria after ISIS defeat
Sheen Ibrahim's track record fighting ultra-hardline militants explains U.S. President Donald Trump's policy of arming Syrian Kurds like her as he seeks to eradicate Islamic State. It also highlights the risks, according to Reuters.
Taught by her brother to fire an AK-47 at 15 and encouraged by her mother to fight for Syrian Kurdish autonomy, she says she has killed 50 people since she took up arms in Syria's six-year-old civil war, fighting first al Qaeda, then crossing into Iraq to help Kurds there against Islamic State. Now 26, she leads a 15-woman unit hunting down the hardline group in its global headquarters Raqqa, speeding through streets once controlled by the militants in a pick-up truck as fellow fighters comb through ruined buildings for booby traps.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, have taken several parts of the northern Syrian town since their assault began this month.
This week US Defense Secretary James Mattis said Washington may arm the SDF for future battles against Islamic State while taking back weapons it no longer needs.
The plan is the "headline" of a still-unfinished stabilization plan for Syria by the Trump administration, said a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The risk is that it causes new instability in a war in which outside powers are playing ever larger roles.
The US-YPG relationship has infuriated Syria's northern neighbor Turkey, a NATO ally which says the YPG is an extension of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, designated terrorist by both Ankara and Washington for its insurgency against the Turkish state.
Turkey has sent troops into Syria, partly to attack Islamic State, but also to keep the YPG, which controls Kurdish-populated areas of northern Syria, from moving into an Arab and Turkmen area that would give it control of the whole frontier.
On Wednesday Ankara said its artillery had destroyed YPG targets after local Turkish-backed forces came under attack.
Turkey has recently sent reinforcements into Syria, according to the rebel groups it backs, prompting SDF concern it plans to attack Kurdish YPG forces. The SDF warned on Thursday of a "big possibility of open, fierce confrontation".
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