The United States has reportedly used militants from the PKK-affiliated Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) to infiltrate the Syrian regime's intelligence mechanism, the Mukhabarat, to spy on Assad supporters, Russia, and Iran.
According to the Turkish language daily, Habertürk, the infiltrators also kept tabs on the Syrian regime's policies.
The report claimed that a former YPG terrorist, who was detained by the regime forces, confessed that the U.S. "turned the YPG into an entity to gather intelligence on the regime."Habertürk claimed that it has obtained documents detailing the YPG terrorist's confession. The authenticity of the documents was reportedly confirmed by local sources close to the YPG.
"The U.S. does not want boots on the ground so it used the YPG in Raqqa. To avoid a YPG-Russia alliance, it supplied us with weapons. In return, they wanted us to remain under their control and that's what happened," the YPG terrorist reportedly said during an interrogation.
The U.S. currently has more than 300 spies in the Mukhabarat, which has been infiltrated over the past four years, and around 80 of them were sent to Afrin in the past three months, ahead of Turkey's Operation Olive Branch, the report claimed.
Washington has been backing the YPG, under the umbrella group Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in its fight against Daesh in Syria. The move has severely strained ties between Washington and Ankara, two NATO allies.
The U.S. has ignored the links between the PKK and the YPG while Turkey has repeatedly urged it to stop supporting one terrorist group to stop another.
