The U.S. allies who battled ISIS and kept the peace in a war-torn region are left with no help and a lost homeland
Betrayal of the Kurds has been called an American tradition — having happened, by some counts, eight times over the past 100 years. But Zuber, like most of our Kurdish hosts, understands that many U.S. soldiers and politicians were “very angry” that Trump had so abruptly forsaken them. “We know this decision comes from the man at the top,” Zuber tells us. We met him shortly after entering the conflict zone in late October, at the outset of a four-day trip to gauge the blowback of the U.S.
At the Salam Hospital in Qamishli, the de facto capital of the Kurdish-held region, I meet a Syriac Christian couple whose home and shop were leveled by Turkish-army shells. Juliet Nicola is recovering from surgery after sustaining near-fatal shrapnel injuries to her stomach and back. “The doctors say she may never walk again,” says her husband, Fadi. A separate ward houses 8-year-old girl Sara Yousef, who lost her right leg.
“We will give 100,000 more lives,” Ahmed Abawi, the cemetery manager, responds when asked how deep support for the Kurds ran in the predominantly Arab community. “In this graveyard there are Arabs, Kurds, Syrians — they all fought together like brothers,” he says. Ethnic groups have coexisted in the area for centuries, he notes. ISIS was able to exploit grinding poverty and low education; Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime had tried to sew divisions, only to abandon them to ISIS extremists.
A Kurdish intelligence official tells me that overflow from the prisons are held in schools and offices, and that all ISIS prisoners have been relocated further south from the Turkish-occupied zone. “We are protecting not just for Europe but all the world,” he says, “but our biggest priority is fighting against Turkey and protection of our nation.” Half of the personnel guarding ISIS prisoners have been pulled away since the invasion began.
Reliable information is scant, the ground dynamics fluid. Russians and Syrians are due to assume control of points along the Syria-Turkey border, but will this include the Semelka crossing, the lone exit point into Iraqi Kurdistan. SDF authorities make assurances the border will stay open. But in the new state of play, what leverage do they have? Kurdish forces are withdrawing, and so do we.
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