Syrian Kurdish leader: US promised to protect us

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - Ilham Ahmed, the co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), told a congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday that US officials had previously assured Kurdish-led forces in Syria that America would not allow Turkey to attack areas under the group’s control.

However, as she explained, the US suddenly allowed Turkey to attack in early October, despite “promises” that American forces would remain in Syria until the defeat of the Islamic State and a political solution to the Syrian crisis had been reached.

When Turkey led a military assault on the northern Syrian region of Afrin in early 2018, she added, US officials had said at the time that they were not able to intervene because they had no forces there, but reassured the SDC that “wherever our forces are, we won’t allow any attacks to those regions.” 

“For these reasons, we trusted the US [government] and US forces,” she said, through an interpreter. “We believed when there is [an] attack to this region, [the] US would not allow that.”

Moreover, she added, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had just recently pulled back from the Turkish border, removing trenches, heavy weapons, and other fortifications in good faith with the hope that it would help prevent a Turkish attack. The SDF did so, she said, under the assumption that the “airspace would be closed by the US.”

Soon after a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Oct. 6, the US said it would open the airspace to Turkey and pull its forces from the border, the official said.

“We did not expect them to fight on our behalf,” she said, but Syrian Kurds were amazed by the abrupt US announcement that its forces would withdraw completely.

“We were shocked and puzzled,” she said. “As [a] result of this, we found ourselves in a fight against the Turkish state.”

However, Amb. James Jeffrey, the US Special Representative for Syria and Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that “they never communicated to Turkey that we would use military force to stop them from moving across their border.”

Earlier, on Tuesday, he told the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee that they “told Turkey we would oppose any such action diplomatically and through sanctions.”

On Wednesday, Trump announced that the US would now leave some forces in eastern Syria to keep control of the oil fields and would continue to work with the SDF, but would lift the sanctions on Turkey that it imposed on Oct. 14 in response to its cross-border assault. 

Read More: Trump: US to keep some troops in northeast Syria; maintain ties with SDF; lift sanctions on Turkey 

“Our forces were still fighting ISIS and chasing ISIS sleeper cells, but [were] attacked by the Turkish state without any reason,” said Ahmed. “We were never any threat to the Turkish state.”

She continued, “As a result of the Turkish war, at least 300,000 people were displaced, 250 people were killed with most of them being children. Furthermore, 300 people were unaccounted for and went missing.”

The Kurdish leader also held up photographs that she said proved that Turkish and Turkish-backed forces had committed war crimes, as has also been charged by human rights organizations. 

Read More: Amnesty accuses Turkey, Turkish-backed forces of war crimes in Syria 

She accused Turkey of using chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians, a charge Ankara has denied, and spoke about the Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf, who was dragged from a vehicle and summarily executed on the spot by a Turkish-backed militia. 

Read More: Senior female Kurdish political leader killed in ambush in Syria 

Moreover, she said, the Turkish attacks have given the opportunity for roughly 600 Islamic State suspects to escape SDF-guarded prisons and camps, including those who traveled from various nations abroad to join the group. 

Ahmed said that such escapes, which could allow the extremist organization’s fighters to regroup and carry out more attacks, not only posed a risk to the Middle East but also threatened security in America.   

“The situation,” she warned, “is very dangerous.”

Editing by John J. Catherine