‘AMERICA IS RUNNING AWAY’
U.S. pullout helps create chaos in Syria.
BEIRUT — The crowd hurled potatoes that thudded on the sides of the hulking U.S. armored vehicles. “What happened to Americans?” one man shouted in English up at the sole U.S. soldier visible on the back of a vehicle. The soldier stared silently straight ahead, away from the show of fury.
It was yet another indignity in a U.S. withdrawal that has been carried out over the past two weeks with more haste and violence than expected — and which may now be partially reversed.
The turmoil was only in part because President Donald
Trump’s Oct. 13 order to leave was so abrupt. It also seemed there had been little U.S. preparation for how to deal with a subsequent invasion by Turkey, though Ankara had been threatening it for months. And when it did strike, Turkey hit more widely across northeastern Syria than anticipated and was startlingly aggressive, seemingly trying to shove U.S. soldiers out of its way. Turkish artillery fire and Turkish-backed fighters came dangerously close to three American positions, U.S. and Kurdish officials said.
On Monday, a U.S. convoy was passing down an avenue in the Kurdish-dominated city of Qamishli, apparently on the way out of Syria, when it caught the brunt of residents’ anger and frustration at the American military that was once their closest ally and was now abandoning them.
“Like rats, America is running away,” one man shouted in Arabic at the vehicles, shown in a video put out by the Kurdish news agency.
One armored vehicle, its American flag flying on the back, reversed down the street and popped onto the sidewalk, apparently searching for a way around the angry men stomping toward it, jabbing their fingers in the air and shouting insults.
Now, the whole rationale Trump put forward for the retreat — to get American troops out of the Mideast and “endless wars” — is in doubt.
Rather than leaving the region, the withdrawing troops will deploy in neighboring Iraq to fight the Islamic State group, which many warn could get new life from the Syria turmoil. Some U.S. forces are still in eastern Syria, helping Kurdish fighters protect oil fields. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday he was discussing keeping them there.
Trump surprised even his own military on the ground when he agreed to remove U.S. soldiers working with Kurdish-led forces near the border on Oct. 6.