Roj Peshmergas due in Syria soon: Kurdish officer

By Idris Okuducu

ERBIL, Iraq

A Kurdish military officer said on Tuesday that Syrian Peshmergas under the command of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil, northern Iraq, will soon return to Syria.

Bedel Bendi, one of the commanders of the Syrian Peshmerga or Roj Peshmerga, an armed group mainly formed by Syrian Kurds trained in the KRG, stated that the Peshmergas will enter northern Syria within one or two days.

The statement was published on the official website of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Masoud Barzani, former KRG president.

Bendi made no mention of remarks by James Jeffrey, U.S. envoy to Syria, who said on Monday that there is a deployment of the "Peshmerga across the border, that was done with our understanding and the understanding of the SDF, that is one of the various steps being taken.”

The U.S. has worked with the SDF, a group dominated by the terrorist YPG/PYD/PKK, to fight Daesh, against Turkey's objections that working with one terror group to defeat another makes no sense.

"We don’t have permanent relations with sub-state entities," Jeffrey had said, adding that the U.S. supports the SDF with the specific goal of fighting Daesh.

Muslim Mohammad, a Syrian member of the KDP, told Anadolu Agency on Monday that under the cover of the U.S., some Roj Peshmerga commanders held a secret meeting with the terrorist PYD in northern Syria and discussed the return of the Syrian Peshmergas.

The Syrian Peshmergas, who have been getting training in military camps in northern Iraq's Erbil and Dohuk areas since 2012, are believed to have 8,000 members. Roj Peshmergas are commanded by the KRG’s special forces.

The PYD/PKK had previously blocked Syrian Peshmergas from returning to Syria due to their close ties with Erbil. They had taken part in a series of military operations against Daesh in the Iraqi province of Mosul and along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

The YPG and PYD are both Syrian branches of the terrorist PKK, a terrorist group which has taken some 40,000 lives in Turkey.

The Syrian Peshmergas are also known as the armed forces of Syria’s Kurdish National Council, affiliated to the Syrian National Coalition, a coalition of opposition groups in the Syrian civil war.