Syria's Kurds decry Trump's troop withdrawal announcement

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: The Guardian

The Kurdish-led force that has done most of the ground fighting against Islamic State in its strongholds in Syria has condemned the White House decision to withdraw US troops from the country.

The decision will allow an Islamic State revival and threaten the battle in eastern Syria, with “dangerous implications for international stability,” the Syrian Democratic Forces said.

The SDF, the US-led coalition’s main military partner on the ground, are being threatened with a cross-border offensive from Turkey, which sees them as indistinguishable from Kurdish Workers’ party militants inside Turkey. US support for the SDF has strained ties between the two allies.

“The war against Islamic state has not ended and the Islamic State has not been defeated,” the SDF statement said. Any withdrawal would also “create a political and military vacuum in the area, leaving its people between the claws of hostile parties”, it added.



Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/20/syria-kurds-trump-troop-withdrawal-isis-turkey

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UK's junior defence minister:

Link to tweet

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

1. Kurds have good reason to be afraid. Turkey has an old history of genocide.

The Armenian Genocide was strongly denied by Turkey, and still is. But, Trump, for reasons unknown, seems very impressed by Erdogan and by Putin, both of whom want the U.S. to stop interfering with their militaries in Syria.

So we're leaving.

[watoos]

2. The word of the U.S. is no good under Trump.

We promised the Kurds we would stick by them, not desert them if they would help us fight ISIS.
Turkey wants to slaughter the Kurds, and will, once we leave. Erdogan has been a thorn in Trump's side by releasing the tapes of the Khadoshi murder by Saudi Arabia. SA gave a lot of money to Trump and wants the Khadoshi murder to go away. Enter Trump. He will give Turkey what they want, hell he is even considering giving them Gulen, in return Turkey will keep quiet about the Khadoshi murder which will make Saudi Arabia happy.

Everyone wins but the Kurds.

[Maeve]

3. It is easy to forget WHY we went to Syria

We had a troll telling us "Let the Syrian people decide"--it's a CIVIL WAR, it began as the government against the people and Assad is believed to have used chemical weapons in that fight. ISIS joined the anti-govenment side, but are in it for themselves. We have been fighting with the other rebels and against IS. Russia is on Assad's side. Pulling out now will most likely cede the battle to Assad and the Kurds will once again bear the brunt of his wrath.

That said, 45 made the decision without consulting anyone in the military and appears to be playing his usual game of "SQUIRREL!!!"

This link is a little out-dated but gives a good history: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/16979186

[Eugene]

4. Kurdish Fighters Discuss Releasing 3,200 ISIS Prisoners

Source: New York Times

Kurdish Fighters Discuss Releasing 3,200 ISIS Prisoners

By Hwaida Saad and Rod Nordland
Dec. 20, 2018

BEIRUT — America’s Kurdish allies in Syria are discussing the release of 3,200 Islamic State prisoners, a prominent monitoring group and a Western official of the anti-Islamic State coalition said Thursday, a day after President Trump ordered the withdrawal of all American troops from the country.

Top officials of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led and American-supported militia fighting the Islamic State in eastern Syria, met Wednesday to discuss the option of releasing about 1,100 Islamic State fighters and 2,080 relatives of the group’s members, according to Rami Abdul Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory on Human Rights.

Mostapha Bali, the spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., denied there was any discussion of releasing prisoners from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “Any news coming from such sources is not reliable and is not coming from us,” he said.

But a Western official from the United States-led coalition fighting in Syria, which includes more than a dozen countries, confirmed that such discussions had taken place.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/world/middleeast/isis-syria-prisoner-release-trump.html