SitRep: White House Stalls, Turkey Attacks; China and Russia Build Virtual Fences

War stories. Officials at the Pentagon thought they had a deal with their Turkish counterparts for a joint operation to take the Islamic State-held town of Jarablus. But while the White House dragged its feet on making a decision, the Turks moved, catching Washington off guard and adding a new strain on an already frayed relationship. The Wall Street Journal provides a insider tick-tock of the on-and-off talks between the two countries over the past year, which culminated in the unilateral Turkish move, thrusting hundreds of Syrian rebels over the border and setting off violent clashes with U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG fighters.

On Monday, U.S. officials walked a diplomatic tightrope, making clear that while Washington supported the Turkish effort to clear Jarablus of ISIS, it would also continue to back the Kurds in their fight against the terror group.

President Barack Obama’s deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes said Monday that while the U.S. “has supported the Turkish effort to clear Jarablus of ISIS fighters,” there are limits. “We do not support, and we would oppose, efforts to move south and engage in activities against the [mostly Kurdish] Syrian Democratic opposition which we have supported.” Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters at the Pentagon Monday that “we’ve called on both sides to not fight with one another, to continue to focus the fight on ISIL”

Boom. The Turkish military said that U.S. warplanes hit two ISIS targets near Jarablus Tuesday, a day after Washington said it would pull air support if the Turks continued to push south toward Manbij, which is occupied by American allies from the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Weighing in. French President Francois Hollande isn’t having any of it. During a speech on Tuesday he criticized Turkey’s “contradictory” push into Syria while warning Moscow not to become a “protagonist” in the war. The “multiple, contradictory interventions carry the risk of a general inflammation” of the already horrific five-year civil war, he said.

Talking through the problem. In a sign of how important the relationship is the Washington, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford called his Turkish counterpart on Sunday, and Carter said he’ll meet with Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik next week. While on a trip to China for Group of 20 meetings, President Barack Obama will also meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Sept. 4 for the first time since the failed military coup in July. Obama dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to Ankara last week to meet with Erdogan, a visit which followed a visit by Dunford to help soothe relations.

Syria for Syrians. The Turkish intervention using Syrian proxies shows again how outside powers — Turkey, the United States, and Russia — have thrust themselves directly into the fighting, using local militias to pursue their interests. And the Syrians aren’t blind to that fact. One Turkish-backed rebel told the New York Times, “everyone is pursuing their own interests, not Syria’s…the problem is the same everywhere in Syria.”

Safety check. As American-made bombs from American-made Saudi jets continue to kill civilians in Yemen, a group of congressmen are trying to halt a $1.5 billion arms deal with the kingdom. FP’s John Hudson has a copy of a letter that a bipartisan group of 60 lawmakers will send to President Barack Obama Tuesday calling for a halt to the sale of tanks and other weapons until Congress can debate the package. The group is concerned that the request was sent to the Hill during the August recess, which takes away much of the 30-day window for debate.

The reason for the letter is pretty clear: “This military campaign has had a deeply troubling impact on civilians,” wrote the lawmakers. “Just in the last several days, a Saudi airstrike on a school in Yemen killed 10 children – some as young as 6-years-old – and a Saudi airstrike on an MSF hospital in Yemen killed 11 people.”

Do fences make good neighbors? The Institute for the Study of war is out with another handy map showing where Moscow has placed its most advanced missile defense systems, creating a virtual wall stretching from Syria to its frontier with Finland.

The Cold War for control of the electromagnetic spectrum in the South China Sea is also heating up, warns the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. China has placed a series of radar installations across man-made islands in the South China Sea, buttressing the military’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. But the installations may also be useful in jamming enemy radars, as reports of interference with the satellite uplinks of American Global Hawk surveillance drones last year suggest. For its part, the U.S. has also deployed EA-18G Growler aircraft to the Philippines, which capable of conducting electronic attack operations.

Good morning and as always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley

Buy American

Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar is in the middle of a three-day visit to the U.S., a good chunk of which he’ll spend talking to the U.S. defense industry. The two countries have been working on a series of deals for jet engines, helicopters, technology transfers and a key logistics agreement for several years, some of which are starting to happen.

The minister will attend a meeting Tuesday sponsored by the U.S.-India Business Council along with about 25 defense firms, including giants Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Textron, Defense News reports. Boeing will get some extra attention when Parrikar stops by a Boeing facility near Philadelphia that is churning out CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopters that India purchased last year as part of a $3.1 billion order for 22 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and 15 Chinooks.

China

A suicide bomber attacked the Chinese embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan early Tuesday, according to the New York Times. The attack wounded three local Kyrgyz citizens employed by the embassy. Kyrgyz authorities say the bomber was a Uighur, a Central Asian ethnic group. Uighur Muslims living in China’s Xinjiang province have pushed for independence and some groups, like the Turkistan Islamic Party, have taken to terrorist violence in order to advance a separatist agenda.

Syria

Russia’s introduction of airpower to Syria a year ago has helped stem the bleeding for the Assad regime, but it hasn’t been decisive in winning back the city of Aleppo from rebels, Reuters reports. One Russian defense ministry source tells the wire service that the failure to completely subdue rebels has left Russian policy in Syria adrift, complaining that coordination with Iran is “not at the required level” and that Moscow has been “running around in a circle” since September of last year. Russian officials had hoped that the push to retake Aleppo would be decisive, with the introduction of more Hezbollah ground troops and the use of a base in Iran to facilitate heavy bombers, but rebels managed to withstand the onslaught and even counterattack.

An investigation by the Guardian finds that U.N. aid organizations have paid millions of dollars to groups and individuals within the Assad regime’s inner circle, leading to accusations that it’s effectively become an instrument of the government. In a number of instances, the U.N. gave money to individuals and organizations under international sanctions or who had been accused of corruption. Some worry that the money spent on nominally humanitarian aid program may be diverted towards military purposes. The World Health Organization, for example, paid $5 million to support a blood bank run by the regime despite fears within the organization that blood supplies would be used by the Syrian military.

The Islamic State

The Islamic State’s loss of Jarablus and Manbij, two strongholds in Syria, has prompted the intelligence community to conclude that the group is now officially on the back foot, the Los Angeles Times reports. Fighters for the Islamic State reportedly retreated after putting up little resistance in the two cities, and analysts believe that the losses will be a further gut punch to morale within its ranks. Nonetheless, officials still caution that the group will likely remain capable of inspiring terrorist attacks around the world despite its loss of territory.

Colombia

One of South America’s longest running conflicts appears to be at an end as Colombia’s left-wing FARC has agreed to a comprehensive ceasefire with the government in Bogota. Under the terms of the peace agreement, the FARC, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, will pursue its agenda through formal politics rather than violence. The half century long war between the group and the Colombian government has claimed over 260,000 lives.

Cybersecurity

The Russian intelligence-linked hackers behind the breach at the Democratic National Committee also targeted a handful of Washington, DC think tanks, according to a scoop from Defense One. The attacks were detected by the threat intelligence firm CrowdStrike, which provides security for the five think tanks hit in the campaign. CrowdStrike wouldn’t name its affected clients, but the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Defense One that it was among those breached in the attacks.

Photo Credit: Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images