America is turning out to be a fair weather friend for the abandoned Kurds in Northern Syria.
President Donald Trump argues the Kurds fought well as allies against the Kurds as a paid militia, but now ISIS has been defeated they are of no further use to Washington so are being left to their fate in the face of a military onslaught from Turkey.
The irony is Turkey is a NATO ally of the US and has an army that has benefitted much from US training and equipment in the same way as the Kurds.
Trump says the US is not the world’s police force and US forces in the region are packing up and going home.
“Our soldiers are totally safe. They’ve got to work it out. Maybe they can do it without fighting,” he said.
History littered with wars over arbitrary lines on maps
“We’re watching and we’re negotiating and we’re trying to get Turkey to do the right thing, because we’d like to stop wars regardless.
“They fought with us. We made a lot of money for them to fight with us, and that’s okay. They did well when they fought with us. They didn’t do so well when they didn’t fight with us.”
The Kurds feel used and abandoned by the US and are furious with Trump.
Washington is also mindful of carving out a home state for the Kurds which straddles the borders of Turkey, Syria and Iraq with the benefit of hindsight from the continuing problems in Palestine.
The world is littered with wars resulting from colonial powers drawing arbitrary lines on maps.
Spoiling for a fight
The Turks want to set up a safe zone to clear their country of 2 million Syrian refugees, for whom they will guarantee safety in a 30-mile buffer zone within the borders of Northern Syria shared with Turkey.
The buffer is across a swathe of land controlled by the Kurds who are refusing to give up their prize.
They have forged an uneasy alliance with Syrian President Assad who is flooding the region with troops that could lead to a military confrontation with the Turks.
Trump has pulled the plug to bring US troops home and caused mayhem in a highly volatile region where all sides are armed to the teeth and spoiling for a fight.