Qamishli, Syria: The leaders of Russia and Turkey have reached a deal that will effectively end the aspirations of Syria's Kurds to have their own self-governing entity in the country's north-east.
The deal, reached between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Sochi just hours before an existing ceasefire was scheduled to finish, seeks to disarm Kurdish military forces in Syria and oust them from the border area with Turkey.
Hundred of ordinary people demonstrated against the deal in town of Qamishli on the Syria-Turkey border on Wednesday, chanting: "Resisting is our life, fighting is our life".
A young internal security force member who called himself Raman Qamishlo, said, "We will not withdraw. We shed our blood in every part of this country, we will stay on this land".
Russian and Turkish forces will conduct joint patrols - initially with the Syrian government - to enforce their agreement.
The confusing deal appears to end the threat of a Turkish invasion of northern Syria at the cost of any hope of a Kurdish proto-state known as Rojava.
The Kurds' two remaining allies - the Syrian regime and Russia - have now turned against them and joined forces with Turkey to disarm the Kurds and remove their military capability from a large chunk of territory.
It cements the ongoing roles of Turkey and Russia in Syria, filling the void left by departing US troops after President Donald Trump abruptly ordered their withdrawal.
The Kurdish authority did not immediately respond, and it is unclear if they will choose to stand and fight, withdraw as required under the deal, or remove their uniforms and melt into the community.
The announcement says that, from midday on Wednesday, local time, Russian military police and Syrian border guards would deploy on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey, apart from the areas already captured by the Turks during the two weeks of the so-called "Operation Peace Spring", and conduct joint patrols.
The intention of the patrols is to disarm the Kurdish militia, the YPG, which Turkey accuses of being part of a terrorist group but which has acted as an effective government over the north-eastern part of Syria during the battle against Islamic State.
The YPG would be pushed 30 kilometres from the border. The agreement sets out a 150-hour, or 6??-day, time period for the YPG to be disarmed and removed.
After that time has elapsed, Syrian border guards would vacate the ground in favour of joint Russian-Turkish forces, which will patrol a 10-kilometre strip of the border.
The exception would be the region around the town of Qamishli at the far eastern end of the border, which has some of the densest Kurdish population. Russian and Turkish officials did not immediately say what the arrangement would be around Qamishli.
The agreement has thrown the international media contingent in Qamishli into confusion for the second time in two weeks, as the border with Iraq and the roads leading to it appear to be headed for control by Syrian border guards.
Together the arrangements transform the map of north-east Syria, leaving Turkey in sole control over one section in the middle of the border, while Turkey, Russia and the Syrian government will have hands in the rest.
The deployments replace US soldiers who for five years battled alongside Kurdish-led fighters and succeeded in bringing down the rule of IS across a third of Syria at the cost of thousands of Kurdish fighters' lives.
The US pullout has proven chaotic. It ran into a new hitch when neighbouring Iraq said on Tuesday that American forces did not have permission to stay on its territory. The Iraqi announcement seemed to contradict US Defence Secretary Mark Esper, who a day earlier said the forces leaving Syria would deploy in Iraq to fight IS.
Presidents Putin and Erdogan announced their agreement after six hours of talks and poring over maps of Syria at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
"I believe that this agreement will start a new era toward Syria's lasting stability and it being cleared of terrorism. I hope that this agreement is beneficial to our countries and to our brothers in Syria," Erdogan said.
But the deal is inherently unstable - even ignoring the role that angry, armed Kurds embedded in the community might play.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has vowed to reunite all the territory under Damascus' rule. On Tuesday, Assad said he was ready to support any "popular resistance" against Turkey's invasion.
Erdogan is "a thief", Assad told troops during a visit to the north-western province of Idlib. "He stole the factories and the wheat and the oil in cooperation with Daesh [Islamic State] and now is stealing the land."
"We are in the middle of a battle and the right thing to do is to rally efforts to lessen the damages from the invasion and to expel the invader sooner or later," Assad said.
Idlib is next to a border enclave that Turkey captured several years ago in another incursion.
With AP
