Mick Hartley

This, from Anne Speckhard, strikes me as being one of the clearest expositions of the current Kurdish situation – with respect to Trump's betrayal, Erdogan's mendacious claims of clearing the area of terrorists, and of the differences between the various Kurdish factions. And not forgetting, of course, the huge debt we all owe to the Kurds for their battles against ISIS:

On October 9, with a “nod” from President Trump – given via Twitter – the Turkish military began an all-out aerial bombardment and invasion of Northeastern Syria, purportedly to clear the area to create a terrorist-free safety corridor and resettle over one million of the over four million Syrian refugees currently straining the Turkish system. This occurred despite the fact that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) already were doing a good job of controlling the area and that there was no publicly available data that the SDF, despite being predominantly Kurdish-led and staffed, had allowed any PKK terrorist activity attacking Turkey to occur from inside their territory.

The PKK, whom the Turks continue to confuse with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), have their headquarters in the Qandil mountains in Iraq, not Syria. The YPG and YPJ, who make up the major part of the SDF, are the Kurds who fought valiantly to defeat ISIS territorially and to save the Yazidis from being genocidally killed on Sinjar Mountain. After incorporating minorities into their ranks, the YPG transitioned into the SDF, which currently controls the northeast of Syria. While many Rojava officials leading inside the SDF sympathize with the larger Kurdish project and revere PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan for uniting the Kurds and for his visions of bottom-up governance, they state that they do not allow PKK to be active in their territory, and there is no clear evidence that they do.  […]

Meanwhile, the Syrian Kurds who, since 2015, had U.S. military backing and air support to fight ISIS have been, and are currently, suffering from Turkey falsely labeling them as terrorists while they are in actuality the strongest and bravest force that fought and defeated the most heinous terrorist killers yet seen to date. In serving as U.S. “boots-on the-ground” to fight ISIS, the YPG and YPJ lost 12,000 fighters, saving us from losing many U.S. troops in the fight against ISIS. […]

There is no need for this current Turkish military incursion. Turkey has not put forward any credible evidence that the PKK is mounting attacks into Turkey from Syria, where it is clear the PKK is a Turkish problem that they have themselves failed to adequately address. Turkish academics admit that the PKK routinely recruits in Turkey and we know that Turkey was engaged in negotiations with the PKK two years ago, which have now failed. These are totally domestic issues requiring resolution at home, not in Syria. If refugees are to be resettled that also needs to occur in a planful and nonviolent manner.

Our SDF allies are completely able to enforce the peace in their territory and have been doing so for a few years now. That we would acquiesce to Turkish demands and “fake news” accusing our best allies of being terrorists, without any evidence produced that the PKK is active in these zones, and allow this violence to occur harming our reputation and our allies is a shame to all of us. It costs us no American lives to offer airpower and protection to our Kurdish allies who fought valiantly to protect us all from ISIS.

While at some point the U.S. will have to back out of Syria, we are committed to Iraq for the longer term and our troop and air power are mainly situated there, decisions which are unlikely to change, so the costs are low at present to reverse this disastrous decision.