Abandoning the Syrian Kurds: A Betrayal of Friends, Allies, and Our Values
By: Funk For Congress
Tags: Syria, Trump, Kurds, ISIS, Turkey

Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) head a convoy of U.S. military vehicles in the town of Darbasiya next to the Turkish border, Syria April 28, 2017 (Reuters/Rodi Said/File Photo)

I’m a veteran of the Syrian Conflict. In 2018, I served in the northeastern corner of what had become a segmented war-torn country. It was my last deployment to combat and the most informative and rewarding experience of my military career. We were executing what will go down in history as the most effective and successful example of an unconventional warfare campaign ever conceived and executed.

We were there to destroy ISIS, but the geopolitical environment was complex. To our southwest, we had Syrian forces backed by the Kremlin that wanted us gone. They tried unsuccessfully on multiple occasions to forcibly push us back. To the southeast, we had the remnants of the ISIS caliphate clinging to the false hope that their religious dystopia would continue. They were weak, but still controlled large swathes of land.. To our east, were Iraqi and US forces tasked with stabilizing regions formerly held by ISIS. To our north and northwest, was Turkey.While supposedly a NATO ally, they actively sought our departure. Along the Turkish border, their military was responsible for almost daily demonstrations of aggression, firing at US forces, Syrian allies, and even civilians. In the middle of this quagmire were roughly 2,000 US service members supporting a largely Kurdish force of tens of thousands. They were our allies. They lived, slept, ate, trained, fought, and died alongside us. They were the real blood sweat and tears of the fight against ISIS. We enabled them with technology and airpower, but it was their tenacity and desire that beat ISIS back.

We were there to support the fight to destroy ISIS while aiding in the establishment of a stable and civil society. We were a force that had experienced the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan, seasoned and experienced,for once we wanted to see things get done right the first time. The Kurdish people were happy to have our help. We had truly liberated them from the horror of violent religious extremism. They saw a path to autonomy, liberty, and prosperity, but the cracks in the hope and the fear of abandonment began to appear while I was still there.

It started with the Turkish bombing and invasion of Kurdish Afrin. The Turks have a long-running animosity if not outright hatred for the Kurds. The Kurds seek self-rule, and the Turks oppose that, not only to maintain territory and resources, but also because they see the Kurds through the lens of ethnocentric superiority. These issues were exacerbated by the resurgence of Turkish nationalism and the far-right fascist, their current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Our Kurdish brothers were forced to stop fighting ISIS when Afrin was besieged, turning their attention to fighting the forces of Erdogan. For the first time in my life, I saw Special Forces Officers drawing defensive graphics on maps outside of an academic environment. The war we had been tasked with fighting was put on hold because our Kurdish allies were busy fighting our NATO ally.Suddenly, the Kurds were besieged byU.S.-made warplanes. The twisted irony and frustration was not lost on any of us in our joint operations center. We were forced to review reports of atrocities, war crimes, and human rights violations committed by our “allies” against our allies putting American forces in a no-win position.

Not long after that, President Trump froze aid to Syria and then blurted out that we were leaving the country. This sudden policy shift occurred soon after we had prepared a brief showing our objectives were to stabilize a post ISIS Syria. We needed to take action to prevent a vacuum of power from forming. Instability and lack of basic civil services would create a breeding ground for insurgency. Somehow, however, our five-time draft deferment coward in chief found another opportunity to demonstrate his cowardice and aversion to creating long term American prosperity.

The fear of the locals was clear. We read about it in reports, heard about it from our front line operators, and saw it in the faces of those we worked with at our base. ISIS had not even been completely destroyed yet, and we were talking about pulling out? These men and women had already endured so much. Now they were trapped, surrounded by adversaries who, at best sought dominion over them and at worst wanted to bring about their extermination. Yet, our President chose to ignore the mistakes of the past, and turn his back on our most vulnerable allies.

After Afrin fell, the push against ISIS began again, but with less vigor. Our allies had no incentive to hurry. We were liberating largely Arab territory now, and the quicker they cleared the ground for us, the sooner they knew they’d be fending for themselves . I was in Syria from February until June of 2018. In the time since I left, Defense Secretary Mattis resigned, citingPresident Trump’s insistence that we abandon the Kurds and the implications of that decision as the catalyst for his sudden departure.

The Kurdishmen and women are our friends. They trusted us. They fought with us. They bled and died alongside us. The Kurds are the closest thing we have in the Middle East to an ally that holds the same values as we do. They abhor violent religious extremism. Their institutions are secular. While they are a majority Muslim country, their women are empowered to govern and to serve as equals the battlefield. Their women are fierce warriors and damn good fighters. For the Kurdish people, fighting religious despots like ISIS is akin to killing former slave masters, they refuse to be subjugated again.

Fear mongering xenophobes like to advance the notion that moderate and secular Muslims don’t exist, yet here they are. We cannot turn our backs on them in favor of a fascist, like Erdogan. Has our President no shame? Does he not care that we are leaving our brothers and sisters to be slaughtered? Trump is choosing to empower a man, Erdogan, that is a known supporter of violent religious extremism, empowering him to subvert the liberties of his own people and massacre and ethnic minority that holds and shares the values that our country was founded on.

This fight is personal to me, and to other American servicemen and women that worked alongside the brave Kurdish people to achieve the common goal of ridding the world of ISIS. We have stood by and done nothing while these good people were slaughtered in the past, and I fear the same will happen again.

We were once treated like liberators, but will now go down in history as nothing more than opportunistic sellouts. Who needs enemies when you have friends like the Trump administration and his lapdogs in Congress that support his cowardice? We must change our course. We must put reason and ethical decision making back at the forefront of who we are less we lose all credibility and authority. We can and must do better.