Long before the US pulled out, Kurds in Syria were keeping back channels to Russia and Assad wide open

Associated Press

• Despite their longtime partnership with the US, Kurdish fighters in Syria were wary of abandonment.
• Those fighters opened a backchannel with Russia and the Syrian government in 2018 and used it this weekend to form a new alliance.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — When Syria's Kurdish fighters, America's longtime battlefield allies against the Islamic State, announced over the weekend that they were switching sides and joining up with Damascus and Moscow, it seemed like a moment of geopolitical whiplash.

But in fact, the move had been in the works for more than a year.See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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