October 6, 2019, the day Donald Trump tweeted his impulsive decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Northern Syria, will be a day that will live in infamy for the many Kurds, our allies, living along the border with Turkey, who were abandoned without notice and, overnight, left to be slaughtered.
These Kurds were our allies, who essentially did our bidding and engaged in most of the fighting against ISIS, losing almost 11,000 fighters in the process, while we lost 5. They lived in enclaves in Northern Syria, especially around the Syrian town of Kobane, when ISIS launched an assault in September of 2014. Paraphrasing an opinion piece by Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn): With our logistic support, we convinced the Kurds to fight and defeat ISIS; subsequently, we urged them to dismantle their defenses, promising to protect them; and then we green-lighted the Turkish troops in, giving them the ability to wipe them out. "Positively sinister."
Twenty-five to thirty-five million Kurds live in a mountainous region, straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Armenia. They compose the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but they were never able to develop a permanent state. They do make up a distinctive community, united by race, culture and language. Although they adhere to a number of religions, the majority are Sunni Muslims. After World War I, in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, the western allies made provisions for establishing a Kurdish state. However, three years later, in the Treaty of Lausanne, which set the boundaries for modern Turkey, Kurdish statehood was eliminated.
Since this episode, animosity between the Turkish state and the country's Kurds, who constitute 15-20% of its population, continued to fester. Kurdish uprisings during the 1920s and 1930s were quelled, reducing the Kurdish minority to "persona non grata" status. The use of Kurdish language was restricted and their ethnic identity denied. In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a militant and political organization based in Turkey and Iraq. Since 1984, this organization has been involved in armed conflict with the Turkish state, with the aim of achieving an independent Kurdish state. Ever since, the Turkish government has labeled the PKK a terrorist organization. Since its inception, 40,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousand were displaced. In 2013, a ceasefire was agreed to. However, this collapsed in July 2015 after a suicide bombing near the Kurdish town of Suruc, blamed on ISIS, killed 33 young PKK members. The organization accused the authorities of complicity and attacked Turkish soldiers and police. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continued to stage aggressive attacks an Kurdish residents ever since, while eying a "safe zone," devoid of Kurds, on the Syrian side of the border. What kept him from a full-blown invasion of the area and exterminating its population was the alliance between U.S. forces and resident Kurds. Until now.
President Trump reportedly had a telephone conversation with Mr. Erdogan on the night before he ignorantly unlocked the border. Our military was caught flat-footed, incredulous and ashamed. Three days later, on the Wednesday following the Sunday announcement, Turkey launched "Operation Peace Spring" with a full-blown assault on coalition positions, rapidly left undefended by U.S. troops. Hundreds of thousands Kurds were forced to flee with the little they were able to carry, hundreds ended up being slaughtered by Turkish troops and Syrian fighters allied with them. All of this supported by aerial bombardments of civilian targets. Meanwhile, secure safekeeping of tens of thousands ISIS fighters and adherents, corralled in camps and prisons across Northern Syria, could no longer be insured.
Responses, even from the president's supporters, came swift and furious. Majority Leader Mitch McCormick, in an op-ed posted in the Washington Post, blasted the president's decision to withdraw as "a grave mistake," which, "will leave the American people and homeland less safe, embolden our enemies, and weaken important alliances." Lindsey Graham ripped into Trump stating: "This impulsive decision by the president has undone all he gains we've made, thrown the region into chaos. Iran is licking their chops. And if I'm an ISIS fighter, I've got a second lease on life. I hope I'm making myself clear how shortsighted and irresponsible this decision is in my view." And former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley lamented: "We must always have the backs of our allies. Leaving them to die is a big mistake."
Mr.Trump, in the mean time, retorted defensively: "If Turkey does anything that I, in my great unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy the economy of Turkey." A few days later, after the Russians had moved into our positions, and after Putin and Erdogan had agreed on how to carve up the spoils, Trump eliminated all sanctions he threatened to impose earlier, and Erdogan demanded that the United States hand over Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Kurdish-led forces in Syria, suggesting "after all, we have an extradition treaty with America."
Our military forces, supposedly "coming home," were, instead, sent to secure oil fields. The latter announcement prompted a former senior American official to call it a reflection of a "shocking ignorance" of history and geography, and evoked an appropriate headline in Vanity Fair: "Screw the Kurds, Save the Oil." (Oct. 25, 2019).
Trump has blood on his hands. He does not seem to care. He appears to get a rush from the power to destroy the lives of many by a single tweet, while being blindly supported by sycophants chiming in that his act reflected the best solution to our problems in the Middle East, which, after all, aren't our problems. Where have we heard this before?
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