A "Ceasefire" in Syrian Kurdistan, maybe?

Yesterday the news was announced that Turkey had agreed to a ceasefire in northern Syria to which the Kurds also agreed.

Putative flag of Kurdistan since 1928.

There's some indication that the Turks may have agreed to the arrangement presided over by Vice President Pence due to the Kurds proving to be much tougher to beat than the Turks had anticipated. Turkey was always going to prevail in this offensive, but it was getting bloodied more than it had figured on.  And the Turks aren't willing to acknowledge that it actually is a ceasefire so much as a temporary negotiated halt in operations.

Flag of Turkey.

The agreement gets Turkey what it wanted, a 30km extension of its frontier into Syria.  In that sense alone it is a halt, as once the Kurds remove themselves, the Turks and their Syrian militia allies will come in.  The Kurds get the opportunity to evacuate that area without molestation, hopefully (although as of typing this out fighting apparently continues).  That's not insignificant, as they were going to lose anyway, but it's not like a peaceful resolution to this dispute. The Kurds who live in that zone are now effectively refugees.

Flag of Syria.

Indeed, the entire arrangement formalizes a sort of Golan Heights status for this strip of land and hence Turkey, long term, doesn't win either.  Syria will resent it just as it has the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights.  The Kurds will not accept it either.  Turkey may have created a Syrian militia manned DMZ, but the history of such zones isn't a happy one.  Violence between Syrian militia forces and Syrian government forces are nearly inevitable, and keeping troops in a DMZ makes them targets to some degree.

Flag of Iraq.

Indeed, in terms of long term goals, Turkey may possibly be the loser.  It's created a snake in the grass with Syrian militias that are likely not reliable and its stripped away any reason for restraint that Kurdish militias who were based in Syria might have had for not going after both Syrian Islamic militias and the Turks.  And by causing the door to open back up in the region to the Damascus government, it might have found a way for Damascus to reconcile with this region of Syria. . . as long as the U.S. continues to give some support to the Kurds.  If that's the case, regional Kurdish autonomy may take a step forward.

Flag of the YPG, which was the actual Kurdish militia in Syria.  It had branded itself something else in order to provide some cover from the fact that it is the armed branch of a Kurdish political party that has rebelled in Turkey within the past fifteen years.

On Damascus, the sober Business Insider both deplored Trumps betrayal of the Kurds while also noting that a long term victory by Damascus was always inevitable.  That's correct, and we've noted that all along.  Business Insider also decried President Obama's muddled backdoor entry into the Syrian civil war which we've also criticized from the very onset.  That put the US in the unrealistic position it went into and which resulted in the betrayal of a Kurdish ally of convenience.  It'll be hard to live down, to say the least, the U.S exit came in the worst way possible, which goes back to the old Colin Powell maxim that when you go into a foreign war, you should have a plan for getting back out.