US
Air Force to quit Incirlik, move to Syria base
DEBKAfile Exclusive
Report April 8, 2017, 7:28 PM (IDT)
New
US air bases in Syria
Several
US engineering teams are working round the clock to build a big new air base in
northern Syria after completing the expansion of another four.
They
are all situated in the Syrian borderland with Iraq, DEBKAfile’s military
forces report.
This
was going on over the weekend as senators, news correspondents and commentators
were outguessing each other over whether the US missile attack on the Syrian
Shayrat air base Friday, in retaliation for the Assad regime’s chemical attack
on Khan Sheikhoun, was a one-off or the start of a new series.
As
the White House parried those questions, the Trump administration was going
full steam ahead on the massive project of preparing to pull US air force
units out of the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, in active American use
since 2002.
Those
units were in the middle of a big moving job to the five new and expanded air
bases in Syria.
Their hub
is to be Tabqa, which is just 110km west of the Islamic State’s Syrian capital,
Raqqa.
The
other five are Hajar airport in the Rmelan region, two small air fields serving
farm transport in Qamishli, which have been converted to military us; and
a fifth in the Kurdish Kobani enclave north of Aleppo near the Syrian-Turkish
border.
Tabqa
is also becoming the main assembly-point for the joint US, Kurdish, tribal Arab
force that is coming together in readiness for a major charge on Raqqa.
When
the work is finished, the rising complex of air bases will enable America to deploy
twice as many warplanes and helicopters in Syria as the Russians currently
maintain.
The
site of the Tabqa air field was captured as recently as late March by the
Syrian Democratic Force (Kurdish-Arab fighters) which were flown in and
dropped there by the US Air Force’s Air Mobility Command.
It
was quickly dubbed “Incirlik 2” or “Qayyarah-2” after the US command center
running the Iraqi military offensive against ISIS in Mosul.
Tabqa
is designed to accommodate the 2,500 US military personnel housed at Incirlik.
Like
the Americans, the German Bundeswehr is also on the point of quitting Incirlik
and eying a number of new locations in Cyprus and Jordan.
The
Germans are pulling out over the crisis in their relations with Ankara. The
Americans are quitting because President Donald Trump wants to chill US
ties with Turkish President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan and cooperation with the
Turkish army.
The
five US bases in Syria are part of Trump’s three-pronged strategy which aims at
a) fighting Islamist terror; b) blocking Iran’s land and air access to Syria;
and c) providing the enclaves of the Syrian Kurdish-PYD-YPG with a military
shield against the Turkish army.
