Trump defends Syria pullout
Republicans accuse President of turning back on US allies
US President Donald Trump has cast his decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East, even as Republican critics and others said he was sacrificing a US ally and undermining American credibility.
Trump declared US troops would step aside for an expected Turkish attack on the Kurds, who have fought alongside Americans for years, but he then threatened to destroy the Turks’ economy if they went too far.
Even Trump’s staunchest Republican congressional allies expressed outrage at the prospect of abandoning Syrian Kurds who had fought Isis (Islamic State) with American arms and advice. It was the latest example of Trump’s approach to foreign policy that critics condemn as impulsive, that he sometimes reverses and that frequently is untethered to the advice of his national security aides.
“A catastrophic mistake,” said Representative Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican leader. “Shot in the arm to the bad guys,” said Senator Lindsey Graham.
Trump said he understood criticism from fellow GOP leaders but disagreed. He said he could also name supporters, but he didn’t.
Pentagon and State Department officials held out the possibility of persuading Turkey to abandon its expected invasion. US officials said they had seen no indication that Turkey had begun a military operation by yesterday.
Trump, in remarks to reporters, appeared largely unconcerned at the prospect of Turkish forces attacking the Kurds, who include a faction he described as “natural enemies” of the Turks.
“But I have told Turkey that if they do anything outside of what we would think is humane . . . they could suffer the wrath of an extremely
decimated economy,” Trump said.
In recent weeks, the US and Turkey had reached an apparent accommodation of Turkish concerns about the presence of Kurdish fighters, seen in Turkey as a threat. American and Turkish soldiers had been conducting joint patrols in a zone along the
border. As part of that work, barriers designed to protect the Kurds were dismantled amid assurances that Turkey would not invade.
Graham said Turkey’s Nato membership should be suspended if it attacks into northeastern Turkey, potentially annihilating Kurdish fighters who acted as a US proxy army in a five-year fight to eliminate Isis’ so-called caliphate. Graham, who had talked Trump out of a withdrawal from Syria last December, said letting Turkey invade would be a mistake of historic proportion and would “lead to Isis re-emergence”.
This all comes at a pivotal moment of Trump’s presidency. House Democrats are marching forward with their impeachment inquiry into whether he compromised national security or abused his office by seeking negative information on former Vice-President Joe Biden, a political rival, from Ukraine and other foreign countries.
As he faces the impeachment inquiry, Trump has appeared more focused on making good on his political pledges, even at the risk of sending a troubling signal to American allies abroad.
“I campaigned on the fact that I was going to bring our soldiers home and bring them home as rapidly as possible,” he said.
The strong pushback on Capitol Hill prompted Trump to recast as well as restate his decision, but with renewed bombast and self-flattery. He promised to destroy the Turkish economy “if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits”.
An official familiar with what was said during a phonecall between Trump and Erdogan on Monday said the Turkish President was “ranting” at Trump, saying the safe zone was not working and that Turkey couldn’t trust the US military to do what was needed. And in reaction, Trump said the US wanted no part of an invasion and would withdraw troops.
US involvement in Syria has been fraught with peril since it started in 2014 with the insertion of small numbers of special operations forces to recruit, train, arm and advise local fighters to combat Isis.
Trump entered the White House in 2017 intent on getting out of Syria.
Trump defended his latest decision, acknowledging in tweets that “the Kurds fought with us” but adding that they “were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so”.
Among the first US personnel to move were about 30 American troops from two outposts who would be in the immediate area of a Turkish invasion.
It’s unclear whether others among the roughly 1000 US forces in northeastern Syria would be moved, but officials said there was no plan for any to leave Syria entirely.
For Syria’s Kurds, the abrupt US pull-back from positions in northeast Syria carries a sharp sting, reviving the community’s memories over being abandoned in the past by the Americans and other international allies on whose support they had pinned their aspirations.
The Kurdish-led forces have been the United States’ partner in fighting Isis (Islamic State) for nearly four years. Now the pull-back exposes them to a threatened attack by their nemesis, Turkey.
Turkey wants to carve out a zone of control across northern Syria along its border, a strip that would run through part of the heartland of the Kurdish minority where they have carved out a degree of self-rule amid Syria’s civil war.
Over the past century, Kurds have gotten close to setting up their own state or autonomous regions, only to have their dreams shattered after being abandoned by world powers. Here’s a look at that past:
Who are the Kurds?
The Kurds are an ethnic group numbering some 20 million people spread across four nations — 10 million in Turkey, 6 million in Iran, 3.5 million in Iraq, and a little over 2 million in Syria. They speak an IndoEuropean language, related to Iran’s Farsi, and are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.
The 191,000sq km Kurdish area arcs through a mountainous zone from southeast Turkey to northwest Iran. They’re divided not only by borders but by tribal, political and factional splits that the regional powers have often used to manipulate them.
History of struggle and betrayals
With the Ottoman Empire’s collapse after World War I, the Kurds were promised an independent homeland in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. But the treaty was never ratified, and “Kurdistan” was carved up. Since then, there have been almost continuous Kurdish rebellions in Iran, Iraq and Turkey.
Two events have been burned in the Kurds’ memories as betrayals by Washington. In 1972, the US helped arm an Iraqi Kurdish insurrection against Baghdad. It did so on behalf of Iran, then led by Washington’s ally, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who hoped to pressure the Iraqi Government in an ongoing border dispute. Three years later, the shah signed a border agreement with Baghdad and shut off the weapons pipeline. Then-Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani pleaded to US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for support, but the American help ended. The Iraqi Government crushed the Kurdish rebellion. Iraq’s Kurds rose up again in the 1980s with Iranian backing during the Iran-Iraq war. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s army waged a brutal scorched-earth campaign, using poison gas and forcibly resettling up to 100,000 Kurds in the southern desert.
The second event came in 1991, after the US-led Gulf War that liberated Kuwait from Iraqi forces. Then-President George H. W. Bush called on Iraqis to rise up against Saddam. The Kurds in the north and Shia in the south revolted, and Saddam responded with a brutal crackdown. While Bush had not explicitly promised support, Kurds and Shia felt left in the lurch.
Still, a US-enforced no-fly zone over northern Iraq helped ensure a degree of Kurdish autonomy. After Saddam’s fall in 2003, Washington ensured Iraq’s new constitution enshrined that autonomous zone. But the US has drawn the line against Kurdish independence.
In Syria, everything to lose?
Syria’s Kurds have hoped for full autonomy in the northeast corner of the country where their population is concentrated. Damascus has not allowed it, and Turkey is vehemently opposed to it.
Still, they gained a degree of autonomy unthinkable before the war, including teaching their own language at schools, setting up their own police force and controlling an administrative council that runs day to day affairs.
The US found in the Kurds an effective partner on the ground to fight Isis. Armed by the US and backed by American troops and firepower, the Kurdish-led forces finally put an end to Isis’ territorial hold — at the cost of thousands of Kurds killed in years of fighting.
But the alliance raised friction between the US and Turkey. Ankara views the main Syrian Kurdish militia, which is linked to Kurdish insurgents in Turkey, as a terrorist group.
Turkey sent troops into Syria in August 2016 and seized an area along the western end of the border. It later overran the key enclave of Afrin, leading to the displacement of tens of thousands of Kurds. Kurds now fear the same will happen on a larger scale if Turkey seizes the rest of the zone it seeks.