Today, Explained - Leaving Syria (and the Kurds)

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

Turkey is sending troops and tanks to its border with Syria hours after President Trump announced he would be removing US forces from the nation. Syrian Kurds feel betrayed and ISIS is watching. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is that moment where the podcast you listen to regularly mentions the holidays, even though it's still early October. But listen, folks, we're in it together. This holiday, you can give the gift of hands-on learning with KiwiCo. KiwiCo is offering you the chance to get your first month for free. Check out KiwiCo.com slash explained to learn more. So Sunday, there's a call between Turkish President Recep Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump. This call ends up being the instigator of what turned out to be 24 hours of absolute insanity. Erdogan basically says, hey, I want my troops to go into northern Syria. Then the White

House puts out a very late statement on Sunday night as I'm trying to go to sleep. And what we see is the White House say is like, look, the Turks are going to come into northern Syria. We're going to remove our troops and everything's going to be great. And the world goes nuts. First thing Monday morning, as there's widespread confusion about what the heck just happened, you have even Republicans that are going after Trump for this decision. And it's not, you know, usual critic Mitt Romney. It's Lindsey Graham, who's usually an advocate for both Trump and keeping wars going. This impulsive decision by the president has undone all the gains we've made, thrown the region into further chaos.

Iran is licking their chops. And if I'm an ISIS fighter, I've got a second lease on life. And you've even got Mitch McConnell. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said a withdrawal would be precipitous and, quote, increase the risk that ISIS and other terrorist groups regroup. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it, quote, a deeply disturbing development. And so even after losing Democrats and Republicans, it seemed, if you listen to Pat Robertson, that Trump had lost God himself, saying that The president of the United States is in danger of losing the mandate of heaven. And if you thought Trump couldn't possibly come back from losing God,

he also lost his own administration. He started with the Pentagon saying that this was a very small movement of some troops out of northern Syria. Then you have a senior administration official do a background call with reporters saying, oh, again, very small operation. We do not support the Turkish invasion in Syria. And so when all the cards were on the table at the end of the day, when everyone's trying to figure out what this policy is, I think it's worth noting that Trump had even tweeted out what looked like a retraction of his own government's policy. And what he says is important. As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off-limits,

I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey. I've done before, he puts in parentheses. They must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families. The U.S. has done far more than anyone could have ever expected, including the capture of 100% of the ISIS caliphate. It is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory. And then in all caps, the USA is great. Alex Ward, you're one of the hosts of the Worldly podcast. You report on defense for Vox.

So there's a thousand troops in Syria, 50 that the president's planning on moving. The other 950 aren't going anywhere? As of now, based on the administration's own comments, it does not look like it. They're just the 50 that you mentioned are being relocated to not get in the middle of a Turkish Kurdish crossfire. And we think of wars crossfire. We're thinking of hundreds, if not thousands of troops. Why are these 50 troops enough to lose the mandate of heaven? Why is this enough to lose Trump's Republican base and his support in the Senate even?

So one is what they feel is an abandonment of a major ally. I don't think anyone would say that the U.S. owed Syrian Kurds helping us fight against ISIS for the past couple of years. The U.S. does not owe them a perennial forever backing, but they deserved a smart withdrawal, at least some sort of transition to help them secure themselves, to make sure that nothing bad would happen to them, and that just kind of packing up and leaving is just an abandonment of friends and also just against sort of U.S. values and code. The other issue here is what could happen. It's worth noting that even though 50,

even up to 100 troops in northeast Syria is not a lot, they are effectively a tripwire. Because if they are there, then the Turks don't really move into that region because they worry about killing American troops or involving them in the fight. This isn't the first time Trump signaled to Turkey or anyone else that he wants to get out of Syria. So even back in December, Erdogan and Trump spoke. Erdogan was like, hey, I want to take over that part of Syria. And Trump was in December, Erdogan and Trump spoke. Erdogan was like, hey, I want to take over that part of Syria. And Trump was like, all right, we're all out. All 2000 troops at the time are gone. The Pentagon walked that back. So we have Trump who already wants to remove U.S. troops from Syria completely. And you have the Turks who for a long time have threatened to move into northern Syria in order to what it says

wants to establish a safe zone between Syria and the Turkish border. So far, the U.S. has been successful in holding them off. It seems now that either Trump is allowing them in or the Turks basically said we're coming in no matter what. And now the U.S. is getting out of the way. You mentioned the political backlash up top. but what about Trump's military staff? How do they feel about it? From what we know so far, they were blindsided by this decision. You saw, for example, Joe Fotel, the former general who was the leader of CENTCOM, which is the U.S. organization that oversees military operations in the Middle East. He came out and thought that this was a bit of a careless decision. Even Brett McGurk, who was the special envoy for ISIS in the

Obama and Trump administrations and resigned over the December withdrawal, also lambasted this move. For a president to make a major decision, which involves matters of war and peace, immediately after a foreign leader call, I think is almost historically unprecedented, because there's no consultation with the national security team, with military commanders. And that is just unacceptable if you're the commander in chief. This is the most solemn obligation for a president. And what he did last night just threw this entire policy process into disarray and left our people out there totally exposed. And remember that former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis resigned last December over the similar move. So there's always been this kind of anger at this decision.

And the fact that it's yet again being done in a surprise fashion, of course, must make U.S. military folks just completely insane. Have the Kurds in Syria responded at all publicly? In some instances, we've heard from Syrian Kurds that they feel stabbed in the back, that they have been betrayed, that they were not made aware of this decision. And I don't blame the Syrian Kurds, again, who have just been fighting with U.S. troops to defeat ISIS for so long to kind of go like, why are you packing up and leaving? And if you're going to, you didn't even really tell us like what's going on. I mean, at one point there were U.S. troops at outposts and then like the next day they just started to leave. It's not just like a symbolic leaving, and really tell us? Like, what's going on? I mean, at one point, there were U.S. troops at outposts. And then like the next day,

they just started to leave. It's not just like a symbolic leaving. It's an actual abandonment. How bad is this relationship between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Syria? It's pretty bad. So at a 30,000 foot level, you need to know that Turkey

and Kurds have been at each other's throats for so long. And so if you are Erdogan, you kind of have started to believe in the narrative is that basically all Kurds are terrorists. What comes next? I mean, it feels like the president doesn't quite know what he's about to do right now. Look, if Turkey does what people anticipate it will do, it will start to kill U.S. partners in the fight against Syria. Those are the Syrian Kurds. If that happens, then Trump is already on record, as are some of his allies in Congress, to start sanctioning Turkey,

in which case the U.S. will have put itself in the middle of two allies that are fighting each other, one of them being a NATO ally, the other one its main partner in the fight against ISIS. So even though Trump is right in noting that the U.S. has helped retake 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate that took over Iraq and Syria. ISIS is still around. You know, there are about 11,000 ISIS detainees scattered throughout like 30 or so makeshift prisons in the country, and they are guarded by our allies, the Syrian Kurds. Should they be moved, right, you could imagine that those 11,000 ISIS fighters escape, perhaps join the ranks again and start unleashing chaos in the region. There's just so much danger here. People are worried, you know, why is everyone freaking out about 50 or so troops? But it does seem that

those troops served as a tripwire to make sure that the situation didn't get worse. They put a lid on this, you know, jar of madness, and the lid, it seems, has come off. After Alex and I spoke Tuesday morning, Turkey announced it would continue with its military operation in northeastern Syria. In what looks like a direct response to President Trump, the vice president of Turkey said the country would not be, quote, controlled by threats.

The Associated Press reported today that Turkey is amassing troops, armored cars, and tanks along its border with Syria. If you're a Kurd, chances are you're feeling betrayed by the United States right now, and it might feel like deja vu. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm. That's in a minute on Today Explained. We talk about KiwiCo on the show every once in a while,

but not often enough do I talk about what these crates actually look like specifically. There's a bunch of different crates for all of the different age groups out there. There's a panda crate for babies, the eureka crate for kids that are 14 and over. Each of these boxes comes in the mail with all the supplies you need for that month's project, plus detailed kid-friendly instructions. KiwiCo projects are available via these flexible monthly subscriptions or for individual purchase. You can find out more at kiwico.com slash explained. I've given personally a KiwiCo gift to a next-door neighbor who's around the age of six years old. He was a big fan. I talked to a slightly older young man named Desmond from time to time. He's a big fan. And one time I gave a KiwiCo crate to a grown person. And you know what? He was kind of entertained by it too. KiwiCo.com slash explain. Check it out.

A couple things you need to understand about the Kurds. They're from Kurdistan, which is a region, not a country. The region spans Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. It's got something like 30 million people with their own culture, language, and identity. The United States has called on these people for help several times. And according to Bilal Wahab, who's a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Kurds are used to being disappointed by the United States. So the United States looked at Kurds as tools or as a variable in the relationship with these four countries where you outlined where

the Kurds live. So, for example, when Abdul Karim Qasim was Iraq's president in 1958, 1963, and when he was not in compliance, the United States armed the ongoing Kurdish resistance against him and also eventually supported a coup against him. The streets of ancient Baghdad become the scene of a short but decisive revolution that topples the pro-communist government of Premier Abdel Karim Qasim. A six-man military junta seizes power on a holy day. And within hours, the premier, who reportedly had executed 10,000 people is himself shot. But when the new government started more compliance, then the United States stopped the aid to the Kurds.

Not only that, but also provided the Iraqi government with napalm, which later were used to graze some of the Kurdish towns. In the 70s, Iraq was getting closer and closer to the Soviet orbit. So again, Nixon and Kissinger at the time armed the Kurdish resistance against the Iraqi government. Then Shah and Saddam were put together, mediated by the United States, and they agreed. And with the agreement, the United States and the Shah of Iran pulled off the support from the Kurdish uprising. And that basically put an end to it. And Kurds defined that as the first American betrayal of the Kurds. But that was also the first time that the United

States clearly supported and used the Kurds as a tool of its foreign policy in the region. And so it sounds like in that situation, the Kurds may have felt betrayed. Why wasn't that the end of the relationship? Because regardless of how the United States, you know, treated the Kurds, it was always better than the way that Saddam Hussein, for example, treated them or the Turkish government or the Iranian government, for that matter, or the Syrian government. And against these dictatorships and these brutal regimes, there was no recourse, but some outside force. Saddam Hussein wouldn't be fearing the Kurds,

but he would fear an international outbreak. And that's why, whether they liked it or not, the Kurds were always eager to let the world know of their suffering, of their grievances, get their messages across. That was the only way out. In the 1980s, if you want to go down that memory lane, Saddam Hussein committed genocide against the Kurds. But at the time, the United States didn't really pay much attention to that because Iraq was helping a US strategy in curbing Iranian influence and making sure the Iranian Islamic revolution doesn't spread. So the Kurds paid the price for that. And how does that change once Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait

and we go to war in Iraq in the early 90s? That was the moment when the fate of the Kurds somehow shifted dramatically. Saddam Hussein's genocide, now that he's a bad guy and invaded Kuwait, also became one of the reasons and justifications of why the United States went to war in 1991 against Saddam Hussein. While the world prayed for peace, Saddam prepared for war. And that opened the first window of opportunity for Iraqi Kurds to engage in self-governance, short of a government and a state with a trapping of currency and international recognition. But three provinces, about 3 million at the time of Kurds, were freed from Saddam Hussein's rule

and control because the United States and the United Nations provided a safe haven for the Kurds where Iraqi troops were not allowed to come into the Kurdish area. And then that experience has been nurtured at times, ignored at times, and on and off. Does the self-governance that the Kurds established in northern Iraq after Operation Desert Storm last into the next Iraq War, the Iraq War of George H.W. Bush's son? That's a good question. With post 9-11 and Bush 43, the Kurdish question came back to the fore, again, as part of justification for why Saddam Hussein's regime must be toppled. And that gave the Kurdistan region and the Kurdish Peshmerga an elevated stature and position in U.S. foreign policy and the post-invasion planning.

And the U.S. made sure that the Kurds would be rewarded by having a seat at the table. And the Kurds ever since have been called an ally of the United States in its policy in Iraq and perhaps even the wider region. And obviously, this becomes more important during the war against ISIS. Right. How exactly does the United States approach the Kurds in Syria in order to get them to help fight ISIS? Ironically, it's almost similar. Syrian Kurds come to prominence not as part of a U.S. strategy or a plan or some contingency planning, but the Kurds of Syria, the YPG, the main fighting arm of the Syrian Kurds, they proved themselves as good fighters, as resilient, by defending the town of Kobani when ISIS attacked that city.

For more than four months, Syrian Kurdish and ISIL fighters have faced off in an intensive street-to-street, building-to-building battle for Kobani. And while the Kurds were proving themselves, you know, fierce and effective fighters, the U.S. effort at working with the Free Syrian Army and training anti-Assad Arab forces was abysmal. It was a necessity and a policy shift at the time to work with the Kurds because on the one hand, the U.S. was still war fatigue from Iraq. President Obama was keen of not starting another war. So boots on the ground was the taboo word around Washington, D.C. So looking for proxies, looking for someone who's effective in fighting ISIS, the Kurds were the obvious choice and the U.S. went with the Kurds.

Now, what did the U.S. lose by doing this? It lost Turkey. It completely angered Ankara because Ankara sees the YPG, the leading fighting group in Syria and Kurdistan, as an offshoot, if not a subgroup of the PKK. The PKK is a Turkish Kurdish group that's been fighting the Turkish military since 1984, and Turkey considers them a terrorist group. And the United States also designated PKK as a terrorist group, and so did the European Union. So then how does the United States work with, you know, the YPG, which it needs to fight ISIS without, you know, angering Turkey that much? And the answer to that question is still brewing, as happened in the news of the past 24 hours. You said earlier that the Kurds keep coming back to the United States

because there's always someone in the region who will do them worse. Does that still stand after the past 24 hours of this back and forth with Donald Trump and Republicans and his own administration? Yes. And that's why every time the U.S. changes its position a little bit, the Kurds jump back into the arms of the United States. Because what is the alternative to the United States as far as the Kurds go? Well, it's A, the Assad regime.

So do you want to go with that regime that, by the way, has been killing its own citizens since 2011? The other alternative is Russia. Should the Kurds go and get protection from Russia? Well, they had protection from Russia because the town of Afrin was under the Russian sphere of influence.

And when the Turkish military wanted to invade Afrin, what did Russia do? So be my guest. How about Iran? Well, not only is Iran helping the Assad regime with the massacre that's going on in Syria, but also Iran is not all that kind to its own Kurdish citizens inside Iran. So they look around, even if they think rightly that the Trump administration is betraying them, and some of them said, you know, Trump is stabbing us in the back, they really have no other choice. There is no one who can protect them from an invading Turkish military other than the United States.

And all the United States needs to do is just stay there because Turkey won't be fighting any base that has an American flag flying. So the cost of protecting the Kurds, at least in the eyes of the Kurds, is not all that high. But the benefit to them is tremendous because it's not only survival, but they believe that the U.S. owes them that. Dr. Bilal Wahab was born and raised in Iraqi Kurdistan. He's now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the District of Columbia, where he focuses on governance, energy, the economy, and Kurdistan. Thank you.