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Clashes intensify between U.S.-backed groups in northern Syria

 
Turkish troops head to the Syrian border, in Karkamis, Turkey. Syrian rebels, backed by Turkish airstrikes, made major gains Sunday in northern Syria, expelling Kurdish-led forces.
Turkish troops head to the Syrian border, in Karkamis, Turkey. Syrian rebels, backed by Turkish airstrikes, made major gains Sunday in northern Syria, expelling Kurdish-led forces.
Published Aug. 29, 2016

BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a new escalation that further complicates U.S. involvement in the Syrian war, Syrian rebels pressed deeper into the northern part of the country on Sunday, seizing territory with the aid of Turkish airstrikes.

The rebels, with Turkey's help, last week took the border town of Jarabulus from the Islamic State — an incursion supported by the United States. But the rebels are now advancing into territory controlled by Syrian Kurds.

The new fighting pits two U.S.-backed Syrian forces against each other: rebel groups aided by the CIA and allied intelligence agencies, and Kurdish-led militias that work with the Pentagon under an umbrella group called the Syrian Democratic Forces. The United States has considered the Kurdish-led militias its most reliable partner on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State.

The United States has in recent days appeared to rebalance its support for the Kurdish militias with its backing of the Syrian rebels and Turkey, a NATO ally. The Turks consider the Syrian Kurdish militias their enemy and are intent on keeping them from taking over an unbroken stretch of land along the border.

As part of that rebalancing, the United States warned the Kurds last week that they should return to the eastern side of the Euphrates River, essentially asking them to cede control of areas they had seized recently from Islamic State fighters.

But it is unclear what the United States will do if its allies continue to fight each other.

The offensive on Sunday was on the western side of the Euphrates, including in the villages of Jib al-Kousa and Amarna, where the airstrikes hit. The Kurdish-led militias said that they had left the area, but that groups aligned with them remained in charge. The Syrian rebels, however, said the Kurdish militias had not left and had started the fight by attacking a Turkish tank.

It was not the first time the U.S.-backed groups had clashed — they have bitter differences over the possibility of Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria — but their battles could be the most consequential yet, occurring at a volatile time in the multisided five-year conflict.

The most powerful Syrian Kurdish party is reeling from what its supporters see as an American betrayal after the United States gave the green light for Turkey to send tanks and allied rebels into northern Syria last week.

Turkey sees a chance to curb the growing power of the Syrian Kurdish party, which it says is indistinguishable from the PKK, a Kurdish insurgent group that Turkey is battling at home and considers a terrorist organization. But Turkey is also in the midst of a delicate partial rapprochement with the Syrian government's main ally, Russia, which is watching to see how far Turkey will go in backing the rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

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All of that is happening as Russia and the United States seek to lay out parameters for joint military action against extremist groups, including the Islamic State, and a road map to peace.