TWO months after Turkish tanks flanked by Syrian insurgents wrested it from Islamic State (IS), the border town of Jarablus, in Syria’s north, is slowly getting back on its feet. Schools have reopened. Aid has begun to trickle into the area, as have thousands of people from neighbouring villages and some 7,700 Syrian refugees returning from Turkey. “Finally we have enough food,” says Aminah Hardan, a young mother of nine who arrived in Jarablus from Aleppo in early 2013, only to watch IS take over the city months later. The militants, she says, once asked her husband to whip her for not wearing a niqab. Since the Turks rolled into town, she has swapped it for a yellow headscarf.
For years, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has urged his Western allies to help him carve out a buffer zone in Syria’s north to provide refugees with a haven and anti-regime insurgents with a bridgehead. He now has what he wished for. With Turkish troops and their Syrian proxies in control of an area stretching from Jarablus to Azaz, some 90km (55 miles) west, Mr Erdogan has killed two birds with one stone. He has pushed IS...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2eePHnL
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