No the Kurds are not happy
by digby
Referring to Kurds living along Turkish border in Syria, Trump says of Turkey, "they had to have it cleaned out." pic.twitter.com/W8J7IFctO3— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019
And how could they be?
Abandoned by the U.S., Kurdish forces are doubly angry at who is seeking to replace them: Turkish-allied Syrian fighters the United States had long rejected as extremists, criminals and thugs.”
“The United States had encouraged its Kurdish allies to dismantle their defenses in northern Syria, saying it would make it easier to assure Turkey that the Kurds posed no threat. So in recent months, according to three American officials involved, the Kurds blew up tunnels and destroyed trenches, leaving themselves vulnerable as the United States promised that it would have their back.
Now, a week after President Trump’s decision to pull American support from them, the sense of betrayal among the Kurds, trusted allies now being forced to flee under assault from Turkey, is matched only by their outrage at who will move in: Turkish soldiers supported by Syrian fighters the United States had long rejected as extremists, criminals and thugs.“These are the misfits of the conflict, the worst of the worst”, said Hassan Hassan, a Syrian-born scholar tracking the fighting. ‘They have been notorious for extortion, theft and banditry, more like thugs than rebels — essentially mercenaries’.
The sudden empowerment of Turkish-backed Syrian militias is yet another swift turnaround in Syria’s eight-year-old war, and it was unleashed by President Trump’s decision to pull United States troops out of the way for a Turkish military incursion.
The deadly battles since have not only cracked the partnership between a Kurdish-led militia and the United States and allowed the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian backers to advance. They have also given new leeway to Syrian fighters once considered too extreme or unruly to receive American military support.
The fighting in northeastern Syria has now pitted against each other two forces that have played very different roles in Syria’s war.
On one side is the Kurdish-led militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces that the United States partnered with to fight the Islamic State. Until last week, the S.D.F. was the United States’ only significant ally left in Syria, although Turkey saw the group as terrorists for its links to a Kurdish guerrilla organization that has fought the Turkish state.
On the other side are Turkey and a group of Syrian militias it is counting on to do most of the on-the-ground fighting.
Grandly misnamed the Syrian National Army, this coalition of Turkish-backed militias is in fact largely composed of the dregs of the eight-year-old conflict’s failed rebel movement.
Early in the war, when the United States still hoped that Mr. al-Assad would fall, the military and the C.I.A. sought to train and equip moderate, trustworthy rebels to fight the government and the Islamic State.
A few of those now fighting in the northeast took part in those failed programs, but most were rejected as too extreme or too criminal. Some have expressed extremist sensibilities or allied with jihadist groups. The majority, though, have no clear ideology and turned to Turkey for a paycheck of about $100 a month.
Some have documented records of looting property, displacing civilians and committing other abuses during earlier Turkish-backed incursions into Syria. Fighters for many of the groups routinely chant racist slurs against the Kurds, Syria’s largest ethnic minority, calling them atheists or pigs.
Within days of Mr. Trump’s assent to the Turkish-backed latest advance, human rights groups accused the militias of indiscriminate attacks on residential areas and killing civilians, including a prominent Kurdish politician.
‘They are basically gangsters, but they are also racist toward Kurds and other minorities’, said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. [….]
‘The extent of our betrayal over the last year has been so immoral that it has shaken me to my core’, said one diplomat working on Syria, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of punishment for speaking out. ‘We have turned everyone in Syria against them and now we are dismantling our once-ally, bit by bit, and feeding the pieces to their enemies’.
As the Islamic State shrank, losing its last patch of territory in March, some Trump administration officials said publicly that the roughly 2,000 United States troops in Syria would remain, not just to prevent a jihadist resurgence, but to pressure Iran to leave the country and Mr. al-Assad to make political concessions.
The S.D.F.’s leadership understood those to be long-term projects that could keep American forces in Syria for years, and agreed to an American demand that they freeze talks with Mr. al-Assad’s government, an American foe.
The United States also sought to quell Turkish anger over the United States’ partnership with the Kurds and the new power it gave them in Syria. This summer, Washington put in place a plan aimed at convincing Turkey the Syrian Kurds were not a threat that included requiring the Kurds to blow up tunnels, dismantle berms and dig up ammunition caches put in place to prepare for a potential Turkish attack.
The Syrian Defense Forces ‘removed all defenses from the border region (at US request) on assurance that Turkey would NOT attack’, Brett McGurk, the former special envoy for the coalition fighting against ISIS, wrote last week on Twitter. [….]
Many of the Kurds’ commanders opposed the program, fearing that it would expose their defenses and leave them vulnerable. But the leader of the S.D.F., Mazlum Kobani, reassured them that they could trust the United States to guarantee their safety, according to two United States officials.
But when Turkey attacked last week after Mr. Trump pulled United States troops out of the way, the Kurds’ vulnerabilities became clear. [….]
As the battle escalated and the United States swiftly pulled its troops out of the way, the Syrian Kurdish leadership scrambled to find new allies and reached out to Damascus, but not from a position of strength. [….]
On Friday, there were conflicting reports on whether the Syrian Kurdish fighters had begun withdrawing from the border area. But United States and Turkish officials expected that the Turkish-backed militias accused of abuses in other parts of Syria would soon take over the contested zone.
‘We are turning areas that had been controlled by our allies over to the control of criminals or thugs, or that in some cases groups were associated or fighting alongside Al Qaeda’, said Ms. Stroul, of the Syrian Study Group. ‘It is a profound and epic strategic blunder’.”