US officials say the timetable for Donald Trump's withdrawal [11] of all 2,000 troops from Syria has been extended from 30 days to four months. The statements came a day after Trump met with his ally Sen. Lindsay Graham, a critic of the withdrawal order, who was apparently instrumental in getting the president to blink—amid the predictable irruption of blustering [12] and face-saving [13] tweets. The New York Times [14], in reporting the policy shift, states: "Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned in protest over Mr. Trump's decision, said that leaving Syria in 30 days would jeopardize the fight against the Islamic State, betray its Syrian Kurdish-Arab allies on the ground, and cede the eastern part of the country to the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies." But the leadership of the Kurdish autonmous zone [11] of Rojava in Syria's east see a more imminent threat from Turkey, which is preparing [15] to cross the border to expunge the revolutionary Kurdish forces. Residents of the Rojava town of Kobane, near the border, have launched a "human shield" encampment to block any incursion by Turkish forces. At the border village of Qeremox, the unarmed encampment was organized by Kobane's autonomous administration, and has been joined by international supporters. (EA Worldview [16], ANF [9])
Just as international outrage helped call a halt [17] to Bashar Assad's plan to invade rebel-held Idlib [11] province in September, it now seems to have called a halt to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's plan to invade Rojava. This buys some time for the revolutionary forces, at least. The challenge is to exploit this window to rebuild Arab-Kurdish unity against the Assad deictatorship and the meddling foreign powers alike.
