NATO Can Save the Kurds and Make the Turks Happy
Turkey is in NATO, so why not use the alliance to forge peace along its Syrian border?
Surviving in a smokescreen.
Photographer: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images
Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does geopolitics. So it was predictable that, following the snap decision by President Donald Trump to pull U.S. forces out of Syria, the void in the north of the country was immediately filled by Russian troops supporting the regime of the war criminal Bashar al-Assad.
The humanitarian costs of the Turkish invasion are rising rapidly, with hundreds of Kurds dead and nearly 300,000 civilians - including 70,000 children - on the move. The chaos is allowing Islamic State fighters to escape jail, joining the thousands in hiding around the Syria-Iran border and looking for an opportunity to regroup. America’s former Kurdish allies have been forced to turn to the hated Assad regime for their very survival.