Trump’s Syria retreat

As Turkey launches a ground offensive against the Kurds

Donald Trump continued his single-handed effort to destroy the reputation of the US as a reliable ally or patron by walking away from Syria in what some are calling a betrayal of the Kurds. Local Kurdish militias, of course, have been among the key forces in beating back the IS. Trump’s defence — nonsensical as always — was that the Kurds did not support the US during the Normandy invasion in WWII. The fact — that Turkey did not either — seems irrelevant for him. While Turkey claims that it only wants to take control of Syrian territory near its own borders so that it can resettle refugees there, the troubled relationship between the Turkish state and its own Kurdish population draws much suspicion to the claim.

Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford is on record saying that the Obama Administration recognised the problems which backing the Kurds would raise with regard to the relationship with Turkey, but President Obama knew that beating the IS was the priority. He also noted that the Kurdish militias had been using the protection offered by the alliance with the US to set up a Kurdish state in the regions they control, which was never part of the deal with the US and is sure to worry Turkey. But the Kurds’ lack of a state is not through their own fault, per se. It was the western allies that shut out the Kurds as they carved up the Middle East after WWI. The Kurds are not Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi, or Syrian, and yet over 30 million of them are spread across these four countries alone. Syria, incidentally, only has a population of around 19 million.

The US may claim that the IS is defeated, but then, so were the Taliban in Afghanistan and al Qaeda in Iraq, according to the US administration at the time. A job half done is a job not done, but who will explain this to President Trump? The truth is that the mission is far from accomplished, and withdrawing support for the Kurds, who were critical to weakening the IS, will only allow the terrorist group to rise again.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2019.

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