ISIS SET LOOSE
DON PULLS LAST U.S. TROOPS AND FIENDS ESCAPE
President Trump ordered the withdrawal of almost all remaining U.S. forces from Syria on Sunday, a shocking development as ISIS terrorists’ affiliates and family members reportedly escaped jail amid Turkey’s chaotic invasion in the north.
The commander-in-chief ’s sanction of Turkey’s attack opens up the way for “many radicalized ISIS fighters” to potentially find their way to the States, “increasing the number of terrorists and would-be terrorists,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday.
“For New Yorkers, this action a world away delivers a deep worry here at home because we, more than anyone after 9/11, know terrorism can begin as a tiny cell from as far as 7,000 miles away and then metastasize into a domestic attack on our doorstep,” he said in a statement.
“Our partnership with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) not only contained ISIS, but helped ensure the security of Americans right here in New York, and now we have taken a giant step back,” he added.
Kurdish leaders Sunday said they had no choice but to turn to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad — who’s been propped up despite years of civil war by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Iranian regime.
“An agreement has been reached with the Syrian government — whose duty it is to protect the country’s borders and preserve Syrian sovereignty — for the Syrian Army to enter and deploy along the Syrian-Turkish border to help the SDF stop this aggression” by Turkey, SDF said in a statement quoted by The Washington Post.
Hundreds of affiliates of the Islamic State — the ultraviolent terrorist group whose “caliphate” was largely destroyed by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces — escaped from a camp for displaced people Sunday, according to news reports.
An unknown number of “sleeper cells” of terrorists attacked Kurdish guards who’d been securing the Ain Issa camp as Turkish-backed mili
tias invaded the region, according to The Guardian newspaper, citing a Kurdish official.
The newspaper reported 700 children of ISIS fighters and 249 women panicked, rioted and scared off other guards at a holding camp, enabling the prisoners to to escape.
Ain Issa, about 20 miles south of the Turkish border, was home base to the Kurdish administration governing northern Syria. Recent years have seen Kurdish authorities maintain a degree of autonomy from the government in Damascus, which has been accused of major war crimes.
The latest jailbreak came after five ISIS militants reportedly escaped a Kurdishrun prison and terrorists claimed responsibility for a bombing on Kurdish-held turf Friday.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Kurds were fleeing south as the Turkish invasion entered its fifth day Sunday.
Turkish-backed militias have reportedly taken control of highways that were previously used to supply U.S. forces.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Sunday that Trump has ordered most of the 1,000 U.S. troops in northern Syria to evacuate, following an initial withdrawal of 50 members of armed forces last Monday.
“We have American forces likely caught between two opposing, advancing armies and it’s a very untenable situation,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“I spoke with the president last night, after discussions with the rest of the national security team, and he directed that we begin a deliberate withdrawal of forces from northern Syria.”
Trump continued his series of outlandish statements about the situation, crowing Sunday, “We have become a far greater Economic Power than ever before, and we are using that power for WORLD PEACE!”
In his abrupt announcement of U.S. withdrawal from helping Kurdish forces, Trump last week tweeted, “Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out.”
Prominent Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have slammed Trump’s decision to abandon Kurdish allies to the mercy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who openly despises the ethnic group. Ankara has been fighting Kurdish separatists within Turkey’s borders for years.
But isolationist-inclined Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) offered a defense of Trump on Sunday, saying, “Turkey was coming in one way or another.”
The blasé remark came in spite of the fact that Kurdish forces did the heavy lifting in the fight against ISIS, which conquered wide swaths of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and 2015. After ISIS terrorists staged a brutal attack in Paris in November 2015, an international coalition began bombing the group’s Middle Eastern territory, with Kurdish forces fighting grueling battles on the ground.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Bronx, Westchester), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, decried Trump’s move to withdraw the troops, saying, “I can think of nothing more disgusting in all the years I’ve been in Congress than what this President is allowing to happen with the Kurds.
“They have been our loyal and faithful allies for so many years, and after this, who again would trust the United States to be an ally of them? … Nobody,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”