SNAFU

AIN ISSA, Syria — In this abandoned desert town on the front line of the war against the Islamic State in Raqqa, local fighters are fired up by announcements in Washington that the militants’ self-proclaimed capital is to be the next focus of the war.

But there is still no sign of the help the United States has delivered ostensibly for the use of the Arab groups fighting the Islamic State, nor is there any indication it will imminently arrive, calling into question whether there can be an offensive to capture Raqqa anytime soon.

Fifty tons of ammunition air­dropped by the U.S. military last week and intended for Arab groups has instead been claimed by the overall command of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units [YPG].

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U.S. officials insist that the ammunition was received by Arab fighters .

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The question of whether Arab or Kurdish fighters get the weapons is crucial, in part because of Turkish sensitivities surrounding the United States’ burgeoning relationship with the Syrian Kurds. Turkey accuses the YPG of affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, designated a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington, and has already lodged a complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Ankara that the YPG received the weapons intended for Arabs.

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The dispute surrounding the destination of this first supply of U.S. arms under the new Pentagon strategy is just one of several latent tensions over the future shape of the battle in northeastern Syria, where the Kurdish YPG has proclaimed a self-governing Kurdish enclave called Rojava.

Among them is the question of whether Raqqa should be a target at all.

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The shift toward a Raqqa-focused strategy comes after the highly publicized collapse of the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train and equip a new Syrian army that would be dedicated to fighting the Islamic State. Syrian rebels balked at requirements that they abandon the fight against President Bashar al-Assad, and all but a dozen or so of the 130 who did receive the training were kidnapped by al-Qaeda, defected or deserted.

  WaPo