TURKEY’S assault on the Syrian Kurdish community of Afrin continues. It represents a further and very dangerous escalation of military interventions by Nato powers in Syria.

Turkey’s claimed objective is to establish a 20-mile deep buffer zone along southern border with Syria. 

This would involve the violent annexation of a significant area of Syrian territory, untold suffering for the mainly Kurdish population and, if successful, expelling the existing inhabitants further south into the area currently controlled, with US support, by the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG.