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(CNN) - The commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces led by the Kurds told a senior US diplomat: "They will leave us to be killed", demanding to know if the United States will do something to protect the Syrian Kurds while Turkey continues its military operation aimed at the allied Kurds of the United States in Syria.
“They have given us up. You are leaving us to be killed, ”General Mazloum Kobani Abdi told the deputy special envoy of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, William Roebuck, at a meeting on Thursday, according to a document inside the United States Government that has been obtained exclusively by CNN.
“They are not willing to protect people, but they don't want another force to come to protect us. They have sold us. This is immoral, ”added Mazloum.
- Turkey is attributed city control to northern Syria
He insisted that the United States help stop the Turkish attack or allow the Syrian Democratic Forces to reach an agreement with the Assad regime in Damascus and its Russian supporters, allowing Russian fighter jets to impose an air exclusion zone on the northeast from Syria, thus denying Turkey the ability to carry out air strikes. The United States does not want the Kurds to turn to the Russians, administration officials say.
“I need to know if they are able to protect my people, to prevent these bombs from falling on us or not. I need to know, because if they don't, I have to make a deal with Russia and the regime now and invite their planes to protect this region, ”said Mazloum.
Turkey launched its raid threat for a long time in Syria after President Donald Trump ordered that a small contingent of approximately 50 US troops be withdrawn from the border area amid the belief that a Turkish raid was imminent. Before that, as a confidence-building measure with Turkey, the United States convinced the Kurds to dismantle their defensive fortifications along the border and push back their fighters. The United States said Turkey had accepted the agreement that sought to avoid unilateral Turkish military action.
An American military vehicle patrols a road near the city of Tal Baydar in the countryside of Hasakeh province in northeastern Syria on October 12.
The senior members of the Trump administration have insisted that Turkey would have invaded regardless of whether American troops had stayed and that the United States has not abandoned Syrian Kurds; however, the United States government has not yet taken steps to stop the Turkish incursion.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Friday that the United States is not abandoning its Kurdish allies, although it made it clear that the US military will not intervene in the fight.
"We are not abandoning our Kurdish partner forces and US troops remain with them in other parts of Syria," Esper told reporters at the Pentagon.
“We remain in close coordination with the Syrian Democratic Forces that helped us destroy the ISIS physical caliphate, but I will not place the members of the US service in the middle of a long-standing conflict between the Turks and the Kurds, that’s not why we are in Syria, ”said Esper.
- "The Americans sold us," say the Kurds who protect the US base in Syria
In an interview with The Tennessean on Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration "has incredibly supported Kurds" and that they have been good partners in the United States. "I am very sure that this administration will continue to support these people who have been good friends of the United States of America," he said.
Trump signed an executive order on Friday giving the Treasury Department "very important new sanctions authorities" against Turkey for its actions in Syria, but the United States has no immediate plan to use them, said Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin.
The Treasury statement had said that Trump's threat of sanctions was intended to deter Turkey from actions that included "the indiscriminate attack of civilians, the attack of civil infrastructure, the attack of ethnic or religious minorities."
Trump, who has a well-established affinity for authoritarian leaders, invited Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House in November.
- Chaotic scenes in northern Syria while people flee for their lives amid Turkey's military offensive
Mazloum told Roebuck on Thursday that “I have been stopping for two days to go to the press and say that the United States abandoned us and that I would like them to leave our areas now to be able to invite Russian planes and the regime to take the control of this airspace. Either they stop bombing our people now or they move away so we can let the Russians in. ”
Roebuck told Mazloum "not to make immediate decisions," saying he would communicate the messages of Kurdish leaders to the State Department and that the United States was working to stop Turkey's offensive and start a ceasefire.
CNN contacted the State Department and the White House on Saturday for comments.
Asked what message the United States was communicating to the SDF led by the Kurds, the president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said on Friday that “we encourage them not to overreact at this point, and try to placate things in order to allow some sort of diplomatic resolution to some of this. "
Several US military and defense officers. UU. Who have talked to CNN expressed their dismay about how the Trump administration has handled the situation.
An American official said it is well known that some senior US military officials are furious about the way the Kurds have been treated.
Another senior US defense official told CNN: "We are seeing the second largest NATO army attack one of our best anti-terrorist partners."
A US official familiar with the situation in Syria told CNN that there is a growing concern that Turkey's operation in Syria has grown with ambition and that Ankara seeks to control an area that extends from the Iraq border to areas in the northwest from Syria that are already under Turkish control, an area inhabited mainly by Kurds and other minorities. Turkish officials had previously communicated to the US that the scope of the operation was more limited, focusing on the area where the now extinct safe zone between the US would be located. and Turkey
The official said Friday's artillery attacks near US troops around Kobani are evidence that Turkey is operating beyond the areas it had indicated to the United States.
Kurdish ForcesRecep Tayyip Erdogan
