The Kurdish Tragedy: What America Can Learn From Its Foreign Policy Fumbles in Iraq by Ryan Gardiner - The National Interest
Although the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) proved a vital partner in fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and its territory has served as a rare oasis of stability in a war-torn country, the October 2019 American pullout from the northern Syrian border region brought to bear the unrealistic notion of an enduring American partnership with the SDF and the unclear nature of the U.S. presence. Given what we already know, it is surprising that America’s military and political leadership did not foresee this eventuality.
The Turkish army’s invasion into Kurdish-dominated SDF territory has resulted in over one hundred thousand internally-displaced persons and accusations of war crimes committed by Turkey and its militias. The invasion and the behavior of the invading forces have resulted in a widespread outcry from Western media sources, American politicians, and many of America’s allies. Despite this, the Syrian pullout should not have surprised anyone due to Turkey’s growing security concern of an empowered Syrian Kurdish enclave, the nature of the American-Turkish relationship, and America’s unclear policy regarding its long-term presence in Syria.
From the outset of the U.S.-Syrian Kurdish partnership, marked by the 2014 battle of Kobani, where the United States first provided Kurdish ground forces with air support, Turkey’s opposition and hostility to the arrangement should have signaled the political dilemma that would follow. The battle of Kobani marked not only the beginning of a U.S.-led effort to actively assist the Syrian Kurdish forces on the ground, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), but it also laid bare Turkey’s priority of curbing more nuanced Kurdish ambitions rather than combatting the obvious threat of a brutal ISIL that had abutted its southern flank…