This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/21/residents-of-syrian-city-pelt-retreating-us-troops-with-potatoes
The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Syrian residents pelt retreating US troops with food and insults | |
| (about 3 hours later) | |
| Pelted with fruit and hounded by insults, the American military’s exit from Syria was very different from its time on the ground. The remnants of the US presence in the north-east of the country made an ignominious departure on Monday, driving through towns that had welcomed them for the past four years. | |
| The regional capital of Qamishli, a hub of cooperation between US officers and Kurdish officials throughout the war against Islamic State, was among the least hospitable spots on the road out. As US battle trucks, sporting large American flags, made their way through town and headed towards Iraq, groups of locals threw rotting fruit and vegetables at them, cursing soldiers that only two weeks ago many in the region had considered to be their protectors. | |
| The US convoy of roughly 100 armoured vehicles and lorries competed with a new wave of refugees as it made its way to the border, passing cars full of families crammed with their possessions. They too were leaving for Iraq, where the uncertainty of exile awaited. | |
| The departing Americans, on the other hand, are set to regroup in Iraq’s Kurdistan region before returning home – their mission to safeguard a still-volatile region dramatically cut short by their commander-in-chief, who abruptly decided earlier this month to abandon allies who had been at the vanguard of the fight against Isis ahead of a Turkish assault. Trump said in the White House on Monday that the US had never given a commitment to the Kurds to stay in the region “400 years” to protect them. | |
| “People are angry, and they have every right to be angry with the way Americans left them on the battlefield,” said Khalil Omar, 56, a shopkeeper, in Qamishli. “They are angry because they feel like they are tricked and taken for a fool for these past years. | |
| “We sent our children with them to fight Isis, and they abandoned us. Betrayal is hard to get over, and I hope we’ll remember this for the future. America knows the people who are murdering people on the roads very well, but they chose to turn a blind eye, and now they are walking away from all of it. True friends don’t walk away in hard times.” | |
| Until Turkey launched its offensive there on 9 October, the region was controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which comprises militia groups representing a range of ethnicities, though its backbone is Kurdish. | |
| Since the Turkish incursion, the SDF has lost much of its territory and appears to be losing its grip on key cities. On 13 October, Kurdish leaders agreed to allow Syrian regime forces to enter some cities to protect them from being captured by Turkey and its allies. The deal effectively hands over control of huge swathes of the region to Damascus. | |
| That leaves north-eastern Syria divided between Syrian regime forces, Syrian opposition militia and their Turkish allies, and areas still held by the SDF – for now. | |
| On 17 October Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, agreed with US vice-president Mike Pence, to suspend Ankara’s operation for five days in order to allow Kurdish troops to withdraw. | |
| Before the SDF was formed in 2015, the Kurds had created their own militias who mobilised during the Syrian civil war to defend Kurdish cities and villages and carve out what they hoped would eventually at least become a semi-autonomous province. | |
| In late 2014, the Kurds were struggling to fend off an Islamic State siege of Kobane, a major city under their control. With US support, including arms and airstrikes, the Kurds managed to beat back Isis and went on to win a string of victories against the radical militant group. Along the way the fighters absorbed non-Kurdish groups, changed their name to the SDF and grew to include 60,000 soldiers. | |
| For years, Turkey has watched the growing ties between the US and SDF with alarm. Significant numbers of the Kurds in the SDF were also members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) that has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for more than 35 years in which as many as 40,000 people have died. The PKK initially called for independence and now demands greater autonomy for Kurds inside Turkey. | |
| Turkey claims the PKK has continued to wage war on the Turkish state, even as it has assisted in the fight against Isis. The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US, the UK, Nato and others and this has proved awkward for the US and its allies, who have chosen to downplay the SDF’s links to the PKK, preferring to focus on their shared objective of defeating Isis. | |
| Turkey aims firstly to push the SDF away from its border, creating a 20-mile (32km) buffer zone that would have been jointly patrolled by Turkish and US troops until Trump’s recent announcement that American soldiers would withdraw from the region. | |
| Erdoğan has also said he would seek to relocate more than 1 million Syrian refugees in this “safe zone”, both removing them from his country (where their presence has started to create a backlash) and complicating the demographic mix in what he fears could become an autonomous Kurdish state on his border. | |
| Nearly 11,000 Isis fighters, including almost 2,000 foreigners, and tens of thousands of their wives and children, are being held in detention camps and hastily fortified prisons across north-eastern Syria. | |
| SDF leaders have warned they cannot guarantee the security of these prisoners if they are forced to redeploy their forces to the frontlines of a war against Turkey. They also fear Isis could use the chaos of war to mount attacks to free their fighters or reclaim territory. | |
| On 11 October, it was reported that at least five detained Isis fighters had escaped a prison in the region. Two days later, 750 foreign women affiliated to Isis and their children managed to break out of a secure annex in the Ain Issa camp for displaced people, according to SDF officials. | |
| It is unclear which detention sites the SDF still controls and the status of the prisoners inside. | |
| Michael Safi | |
| Two weeks after Donald Trump’s decision the impact continues to ricochet across the battlefields of the Kurdish north and into the region beyond. | |
| Kurdish forces attacked by the Turkish military said they had completed a withdrawal from a “safe zone” near the Turkish border. Meanwhile, Turkey, which had declared a ceasefire that is set to expire on Tuesday night, said it was setting up observation posts in a swathe of Syria it has commandeered in a short intensive fight to oust Kurdish militias from the frontier area. | |
| The Turkish move drew the ire of Iran, an ally of the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, whose forces are slowly returning to the region, as part of a deal brokered to slow the Turkish push. | |
| “We are against Ankara’s establishing of military posts in Syria,” the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, said. “The issues should be resolved by diplomatic means.” | |
| The sudden departure of the Americans, the retreat of the Kurds and the advance of Turkey and its Arab proxies have made for a heady two weeks in one of the Middle East’s most volatile corners. | |
| Washington’s departure from north-eastern Syria leaves only a small contingent of US forces in the country – all based in a desert outpost in the country’s south-east, where their focus has increasingly turned away from Isis to Iran. In the vacuum created by the Isis rampage across both sides of the Iraq-Syria border, Iran has emerged as a prominent actor, shoring up supply lines into Syria and Lebanon, which have helped secure Assad in power. | |
| “With these events today, we are just hopelessly exposed,” said a senior US diplomat, who declined to be named. “Everyone knows what this represents to our enemies – and that is a historical capitulation.” | |
| In Iraq’s Kurdish north, where its leaders have remained allies of the US throughout the post-Saddam years, what to make of Washington’s new footing and how to deal with the aftermath is a pressing concern. In the Kurdish capital, Erbil, people are wondering whether they too could be cast aside. | |
| “We can’t do it to them too,” said the US diplomat. “Not even the current administration would go for that. Surely.” | |
| Additional reporting: Mohammed Rasool | |
| Syria | Syria |
| US military | US military |
| Kurds | Kurds |
| Middle East and North Africa | Middle East and North Africa |
| Donald Trump | Donald Trump |
| Turkey | Turkey |
| news | news |
| Share on Facebook | Share on Facebook |
| Share on Twitter | Share on Twitter |
| Share via Email | Share via Email |
| Share on LinkedIn | Share on LinkedIn |
| Share on Pinterest | Share on Pinterest |
| Share on WhatsApp | Share on WhatsApp |
| Share on Messenger | Share on Messenger |
| Reuse this content | Reuse this content |