Syria". On 5 April, a civilian council was formed in the town of Sarrin under the auspices of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, of Manbij people who had fled when the Islamic State took over. The council consisted of Arabs, Kurds, Syrian Turkmen, and Circassians, and was created to administer Manbij after its capture. When international media interest in ethnic issues surged after the start of the offensive, Sheikh Farouk al-Mashi, an Arab former member of the Syrian parliament and designated co-chairman of the Manbij City Council, stated: "I have a Syrian ID, and Kurds have a Syrian ID. Let those people who talk against us in Turkey and Europe come here and fight ISIS. Why this distortion in media about problems between Kurds and Arabs?" Kurdish fellow co-chairman Salih Haji Mohammed stated: "In our social contract, we say we want to have good relations with neighboring countries like Turkey. Any country that does not interfere in Manbij and our areas, we will have good relations with." On 31 May, the US announced that they would support the offensive and send supporting troops to the area. A US official stated that "Syrian Arab fighters would be the ones to stabilize and secure it once Islamic State is gone". The same day the offensive started, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) stated "most of the fighters were from the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) militia". However, the next day, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that around 3,000 SDF fighters were joining the operation and that some 2,500 of them were Arabs, while around 450 were from the YPG. Furthermore, two coalition spokesmen reiterated Arab fighters were leading the offensive, while Kurdish forces were in support, and one stated the reports that were suggesting the offensive was Kurdish-led were inaccurate. Another report stated, per local activists, that 60 percent of the attacking force were Arabs from Manbij. This was also confirmed by a MMC commander, who said that 60 percent of the attacking force were Arabs and 40 percent Kurds, Turkmen and other ethnic groups, while an SDF fighter gave his perspective as "we have Arabs, Kurds, nobody knows how many exactly, we all work under the SDF-forces". The offensive The SDF capture the eastern countryside On 31 May 2016, the Syrian Democratic Forces launched the offensive for the "Manbij Pocket" (al-Shahba) region, with small numbers of