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On May 31, director of US Joint Staff Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie warned that any attack by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) against the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) would be a “a bad policy.”
“Any interested party in Syria should understand that attacking US forces or our coalition partners will be a bad policy,” Lt. Gen. McKenzie said at the Pentagon, according to The National.
Lt. Gen. McKenzie also said that the status quo around the al-Tanaf area near the Syrian-Iraqi border remains unchanged and refused to put any timeline on US presence in the war torn country.
“We are there [in al-Tanaf]. Nothing has changed … The maintenance of that deconfliction zone [with Russia] is important and we would view very gravely any actions that tended to change that,” said Gen. McKenzie.
Lt. Gen. McKenzie’s warning was a clear response to a recent statement of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, in which he said that the Damascus government will use force to liberate the areas under the control of the SDF, if the political process fails.
A spokesman for the SDF, Kino Gabriel, also responded to al-Assad’s statement by saying that a military solution “is not a solution that can lead to any result”.
“Any military solution, as far as the SDF is concerned, will lead to more losses and destruction and difficulties for the Syrian people,” Gabriel said in a voice message to the Reuters news agency.
Local observers believe that the US threats are very serious, as the US-led coalition already responded by force to two attacks of the SAA and its allies on positions of the SDF in Deri Ezzor on February 7 and April 29.
