Turkey’s invasion of north-east Syria, faciliated by the Withdrawing US troops and abandoning Kurdish allies will only embolden Islamic State militant group.
The consequences of U.S President Donald Trump’s decision last Wednesday to pull his country’s troops out of northeast Syria are chillingly apparent.
Kurdish fighters who helped defeat Islamic State militant group (Isis) are under attack from invading Turkish forces, risking a resurgence of ISIS. They accuse the US of abandoning them in spite of previous promises of protection and want the region’s airspace closed to Turkey’s warplanes.
At least 26 civilians were killed on Sunday in northeastern Syria as Turkey and its proxies stepped up their offensive against Kurdish forces, a war monitor said.
Among the casualties were 10 people killed in a Turkish air strike that hit a convoy of vehicles carrying civilians and journalists, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Another 104 fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — the de facto Kurdish army in the region — have also been killed, according to the Observatory.
The UN says the violence has forced 130,000 people to flee their homes.
Local Kurdish militias, of course, have been among the key forces in beating back the IS. Trump’s defence nonsensical as always was that the Kurds did not support the US during the Normandy invasion in WWII. The fact that Turkey did not either seems irrelevant for him. The terrifyingly indiscriminate Turkish artillery barrages and air strikes directed at towns and villages in Kurdish-held areas along the border shame those who ordered them. Turkey President Erdogan claims that his forces are only targeting terrorist is given the lie by the rising toll of civilian deaths and injuries. Aid agencies have evacuated. Hospitals have closed. The UN says about 100,000 people have fled so far. With Turkey rejecting calls to halt the offensive, it could all get much worse.
The US may claim that the IS defeated, but then, so were the Taliban in Afghanistan and al Qaeda in Iraq, according to the US administration at the time. A job half done is a job not done, but who will explain this to President Trump?
Both sides regard the decision as a betrayal of the Kurdish forces, which fought alongside US troops against Islamic State militants. As soon as the US decided to pull out, the much anticipated offense was launched by the Turkish forces in the Syrian Kurdish region, Rojava.
There are persistent reports that the ISIS is regrouping. Trump and Erdoğan have potentially assisted this process. Who could blame Kurdish fighters, with their homes under attack, if they abandoned the detention camps and went to resist the invader?
The international community is at fault, too, for failing to establish a process for bringing Isis terrorists to justice. To address this problem, they should consider the creation, under UN auspices, of an international criminal tribunal for counter-terrorism.
Sadly, as the entire history of the Syrian war suggests, the chances of such international collaboration actually happening are all but non-existent.  Pity the people of northern Syria, bombed and blasted from their homes by a ruthless autocrat who should, if there were any justice, face a war crimes tribunal. It seems there is no helping them. What an outrage. No wonder the world is in such a mess. The Kurdish forces betray by U.S and the truth is that the mission is far from accomplished. The president trump has to listen to the advice and keep American troops engaged withdrawing support for the Kurds, who were critical to weakening the Islamic State, will only allows the terrorist group to rise again.