‘You are leaving us to be slaughtered’
THE commander of Kurdish forces in Syria has accused the United States of leaving his people to be slaughtered, and demanded to know whether Donald Trump will do anything to protect them.
Mr Trump decided to withdraw US forces from northern Syria after a phone call with the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, earlier this week. That cleared the way for a Turkish incursion — and left the Kurds to face it alone.
The US President was accused of betraying them. The Kurds have been valuable allies in the war against Islamic State, doing the bulk of the fighting and losing more than 12,000 people in the process.
Now they are under attack, and the United States is doing nothing.
CNN has obtained the US government readout from a meeting on Thursday between General Mazloum Kobani Abdi and William Roebuck, America’s Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.
“You have given up on us. You are leaving us to be slaughtered,” Gen Mazloum said.
“You are not willing to protect the people, but you do not want another force to come and protect us. You have sold us. This is immoral.
“I need to know if you are capable of protecting my people, of stopping these bombs falling on us or not.
“I need to know, because if you’re not, I need to make a deal with Russia and the regime now and invite their planes to protect this region.”
Essentially, he was delivering an ultimatum — if the United States won’t help, the Kurds will be forced to turn to someone else.