There are repeated suggestion from the Syrian Kurds themselves and from the Russians that the SDF is following American orders in many respects. In addition , the co chair of the PYD Saleh Muslim reportedly consulted with Brett McGurk in Iraq last week to discuss the emerging situation.
So what do we have? We have US Special Forces (until now) directing operations on the ground and those operations are now coming under fire from Turkish artillery. Liaison between Erdogan and Assad camps may have also led to the all out war that is now erupting between the US Supported SDF and the Assad Regime.
The US may have taken steps to remove their uniformed personnel from some hot spots ...... noting that it only takes one Turkish round to kill a US serviceman in the field. Such an event would have an enormous impact on the psyche of the US public ..... thus a few moves to relocate a few of the troops.
Clearly the situation is going from bad to worse but I still expect the US an Russia to mitigate some of the strategic risk . One thing for sure us that no external party (US, EU, Russia, Iran, House of Saud) actually controls proxies in this part of the world. There is no such thing as a true proxy.
