Turkey's Cross-Border Offensive Is A Harbinger Of A Much Deeper Conflict In Syria

''The Turkish attack makes the complicated political and military chess game in Syria even more complicated than before,'' wrote Patrick Cockburn, a top expert on the Middle East.

Turkey’s military offensive against the Kurdish-held northwestern Syrian enclave of Afrin will not only weaken the Kurds’ position, but may also sow the seeds of suspicion between Kurdish forces and their ally the United States, writes the veteran correspondent of the Independent.

The U.S. has said that it has never had forces in Afrin and what happens there is a Russian responsibility as there have been Russian military observers in the enclave. Nevertheless, the fall of Afrin will be taken as a sign that the U.S. does not want or is not able to defend its Kurdish allies... 

Complications are far wider. Syrian President Bashar Assad will not approve of the Turkish military entering Syrian soil, but, as Cockburn argues, there are advantages for the Assad regime if the Turkish incursion shows the Syrian Kurds that they cannot rely on the U.S. to protect them.

The pledge of a permanent U.S. military presence in Syria infuriated Mr. Erdoğan and alienated Russia, Syria and Iran – countries that believed that the new U.S. policy in Syria was a sign that Syrian Kurdish leaders had plumped wholeheartedly for an alliance with the U.S.

Cockburn agrees, with many observers, that ''In fact, it was an underestimate by the US of the fragility of the situation in northern Syria that provoked the present crisis.''

Follow his line of reasoning, which should be taken as a severe warning for a lasting crisis, in this article summing up the basics of a conflict which has a thousand faces.