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Aljazeera
"Syria The Endgame"

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It looks like President Bashar al-Assad has won the war in Syria. But who will win the peace?

In the debut episode of The Take, a new podcast by Al Jazeera's Jetty Studios, we explore the final play in Syria: The country's die-hard rebels are locked in a corner, the Syrian government is opening borders, and the outside powers that supported opposing sides are now striking deals.

Host Imtiaz Tyab turns to Al Jazeera correspondent Zeina Khodr for clarity at a crucial point in one of the worst wars of the 21st century.

Learn more:
Can the opening of the Nassib crossing end of Syria's isolation? - By Zeina Khodr

Deadline passes for Syria's Idlib buffer without fighters leaving
Syria's War: Seven years, seven documentaries
More on Syria's War

The team:
Morgan Waters and Jasmin Bauomy produced this episode. They had production help from Kyana Moghadam, Jordan Marie Bailey, and host Imtiaz Tyab. The sound designer was Ian Coss. Graelyn Brashear is the lead producer of The Take. Special thanks to Zeina Khodr and Ali Abbas in Beirut.

Subscribe to The Take:
New episodes of the show come out every Friday. Subscribe to The Take on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen.

Follow The Take Twitter at @thetake_pod or on the show's Facebook page.

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It looks like President Bashar al-Assad has won the war in Syria. But who will win the peace? In the debut episode of The Take, a new podcast by Al Jazeera's Jetty Studios, we explore the final play in Syria: The country's die-hard rebels are locked in a corner, the Syrian government is opening borders, and the outside powers that supported opposing sides are now striking deals.

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The Federalist
"What To Know About U.S. Foreign Policy Positions In Israel, Syria, And China"

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SUBSCRIBE TO THE FEDERALIST RADIO HOUR HERE.
Josh Rogin is a columnist for the Global Opinions section of the Washington Post and a political analyst with CNN. Rogin joins Ben Domenech on this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the direction of U.S. relations with Israel, Trump's Syria policy, and the threat of China.

"The Chinese Communist Party is engaged in a broad strategic campaign of internal repression and external aggression, that includes expansion of their power, influence, values, and interference all over the world," Rogin said.

LISTEN HERE:

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What To Know About U.S. Foreign Policy Positions In Israel, Syria, And China

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SUBSCRIBE TO THE FEDERALIST RADIO HOUR HERE. Josh Rogin is a columnist for the Global Opinions section of the Washington Post and a political analyst with CNN. Rogin joins Ben Domenech on this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the direction of U.S.

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NYT
"The Story of a Kurdish General"

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transcript

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is "The Daily."

Today: The Trump administration has ordered a full evacuation of the 1,000 American troops that still remain in northern Syria as Turkey intensifies its bombardment of the Kurdish forces there. How is it that those Kurdish forces came to be seen as allies to the U.S. and terrorists to Turkey?

It's Monday, October 14.

Ben, give us a sense of what's going on today where you are. What are you doing?

ben hubbard

I'm in Erbil, in northern Iraq.

michael barbaro

I spoke with my colleague, Middle East correspondent Ben Hubbard, on Friday afternoon.

ben hubbard

I'm waiting for permission from the Kurdish authorities here to cross the border into Syria so that we can go and cover the Turkish military incursion there.

ben hubbard

You know, it started the other day with sort of shells flying across the border, a few airstrikes. Today, there was a large car bomb -

ben hubbard

- in the main city, in this area where we usually stay and where we've stayed on our previous trips. It actually happened right down the street from this little fast food restaurant where we used to go and buy sandwiches.

michael barbaro

Wow.

ben hubbard

So that's scary.

ben hubbard

We, all the time, see these images from the Middle East of things getting blown up. But when you sort of recognize this place, it brings it home a bit more than just kind of seeing some kind of destruction on the news.

michael barbaro

How many times have you done this now, gone into Syria?

ben hubbard

I've done seven trips into Syria since the start of the civil war. My last trip was earlier this year, and that was after Trump had said that he wanted to pull the United States forces. At that time, there were about 2,000 American troops based in northeastern Syria.

archived recording (donald trump)

And we have won against ISIS. We've beaten them, and we've beaten them badly. We've taken back the land. And now it's time for our troops to come back home.

archived recording

The pullout of U.S. troops from Syria has America's allies bracing for more conflict. President Trump spoke to Turkey's president on the phone yesterday and warned him not to mistreat members of the Kurdish community who are fighting ISIS alongside the United States.

ben hubbard

So we wanted to go back and visit and see what this place - you know, what it looked like, how people felt, how they were planning for it. There was a lot of nervousness. People didn't really know how it was going to affect them. And there was a lot of worry that it would destabilize this part of the country.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

ben hubbard

And there this one particular person that I really wanted to meet. His name was Mazlum Kobani.

michael barbaro

And why did you want to meet him?

ben hubbard

So Mazlum Kobani is the most powerful person in this northeastern corner of Syria.

ben hubbard

He is the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is an umbrella group of a number of militias.

ben hubbard

And this guy is the head. I mean, he is the guy that decides what these various militias under his umbrella are going to do and where they're going to fight and how they're going to deploy.

ben hubbard

He's involved in strategy, and he's also the go-to guy for the United States.

ben hubbard

Mazlum Kobani stands right at the juncture of the United States, of Turkey, of the Kurds, of Syria. This is the guy that's kind of at the center of this whole storm that's just broken out this week.

michael barbaro

So tell me about the last time that you spent time with him?

ben hubbard

So I wanted to meet him on our last trip, because I wanted to talk to him and ask him, O.K., well, you know, you've spent this last number of years building up this partnership with the United States. Now the president wants to leave. How does it affect you? So we put in a message saying that we'd like to see him and that we were in town. And we waited. And then we sort of gave up on waiting, weren't sure when it was going to come through. We actually went off to do something else. And when we were on the road, driving in the opposite direction, we got a phone call and said, well, if you want to see him, come now.

[music]

ben hubbard

So we promptly turned the car around and drove out to a base that they have. And they sort of showed us where to park and brought us in and then took us into a little trailer with sort of some seats and carpeting. And I think it had A.C. - you know, it had air conditioning and a TV but nothing super luxurious.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

ben hubbard

And there he was - sitting there, wearing camouflage uniform. He was a fairly modest figure, quite soft-spoken. Didn't have sort of a bluster that you get from a lot of powerful military folk. I noticed when I shook his hand that his palm was quite soft, which sort of taught me that he was not somebody who spends a lot of time holding a Kalashnikov and firing at the enemy, but somebody who was involved in much higher strategic matters. And I sat across from him, asked him if I could record, set down my recording, and then we began the conversation.

michael barbaro

Tell me about that conversation.

ben hubbard

I mean, at that time, it was quite theoretical. Because Trump had said that he wanted to leave. And then a number of people in the administration had sort of talked him down and said no, this is a bad idea. And so, you know, his messaging was very much that we've had a very good relationship with the United States. It was working together with the United States that we were able to get rid of ISIS in Syria.

ben hubbard

You know, he sort of talked about it as in this partnership - was kind of keeping the lid on things. But there was a lot of concern about sleeper cells and about remnants of the Islamic State that were hiding out and just sort of looking for their opportunity to come back. I think he was quite concerned that if the U.S. left, that would be a lot easier for them to do.

michael barbaro

And Ben, what is it about this man that would cause him to be seen so differently by the Turks than by the Americans?

ben hubbard

Well, part of it is that the United States history with Mazlum Kobani is very short. The Turkish history with him is very long. And so we have to sort of go back and look at the much longer history, you know, of who this guy was and what he was involved in before he showed up as a partner with the Americans a few years ago. So he's Kurdish, for one. The Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world that does not have its own nation. There are 30 to 45 million of them, mostly in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. They were promised their own state by Western powers after World War I, which they never got. And so the current borders of the region were drawn, and the Kurds were left in all these different countries. And so most of them have been interested in having some kind of Kurdish independence or an independent Kurdish state since that happened. In Turkey, there was a very strong effort by the state to try to quash Kurdish identity.

[music]

ben hubbard

They would ban teaching of Kurdish language in schools and other forms of cultural expression. And in the late 1970s, there was a reaction to this. There were a number of Kurdish activists who got together and founded something called the Kurdistan Workers' Party, also known as the P.K.K.

ben hubbard

They became a military organization. They were basically an underground guerrilla organization that went to war with the Turkish state. And they would attack Turkish army vehicles, army posts, sometimes Turkish civilians. The Turkish Army would respond with raids and attacks on Kurdish villages. And it was just kind of classic insurgency and counterinsurgency.

ben hubbard

And so when Turkey thinks about the Kurdish issue and when they think specifically about the P.K.K., this is what they think about.

michael barbaro

So when Turkey calls the Kurdish terrorists, they're referring to Kurds who attempted to stage a kind of uprising within Turkey to finally get the state that they believed they were owed?

ben hubbard

Exactly.

ben hubbard

So in the midst of this insurgency and counterinsurgency that's tearing apart southeastern Turkey, the P.K.K. spreads. You have operatives who leave and set up bases elsewhere in the region. You have Kurds from other countries who sympathize with the movement and join. And this is where Mazlum Kobani comes into the picture.

michael barbaro

And what does he tell you about his own role in this story?

ben hubbard

Almost nothing.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

ben hubbard

We don't exactly know what his real name is. I mean, he goes by the name Mazlum Kobani, which is a nom de guerre. Mazlum is a nickname, and Kobani is the name of his hometown. When I asked him what his real name was, he told me it was Mazlum Abdi. Then if you go and ask the Turks, they tell you that his real name is Ferhat Abdi Shahin. So nobody knows exactly what the guy's real name is.

michael barbaro

Hmm. But from what you can piece together, how does he fit into this movement that ends up operating in this part of Syria?

ben hubbard

So I was very curious about his history. I mean, when you work in the Middle East, you learn that people's histories matter. You know, people don't change affiliations very easy. And when I met Mazlum, he was 52 years old. And I knew that he had studied at Aleppo University and that he had popped up in Syria in his late 40s. And so my question was, well, what did this guy do in the meantime? Where was he?

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

ben hubbard

American officials didn't seem very curious about that question. So I talked to other people in the region. I talked to the Turks, and I talked to officials in Iraq, who told me that, yeah, he had been very active in the P.K.K. He had joined when he was in university. He'd been an operative primarily based in northern Iraq. I was told as well that he more recently became the head of a special operations unit that oversaw some attacks on Turkish soldiers.

michael barbaro

So this is how we get to this really fraught moment where the U.S. and Turkey see him so differently, because, in fact, he quite possibly is both things - somebody who was inflicting damage on Turkey and a very reliable ally to the U.S.?

ben hubbard

Exactly.

[music]

ben hubbard

The Turks, when they look at this guy, they pay attention to what he did in the previous three decades, and how he was active in this organization that carried out a lot of violence in Turkey and received a lot of violence from the Turkish state, to be fair. The Americans are not really interested in that. What they see is what he's done since 2014 - that he's been this very disciplined military leader who has very organized forces who do what they're told and ended up being very successful partners in the battle against the Islamic State.

michael barbaro

We'll be right back.

So this ends up being this kind of fascinating geopolitical collision, where, in acting as a militia organization fighting Turkey, this group of Kurds ends up in a spot in Syria where they're perfectly positioned to help the U.S. join this fight against the rising threat of ISIS.

ben hubbard

Yeah. There's no way that these guys would have had the organizational skills and the military skills to become valuable allies to the United States if they didn't have all this history fighting the Turks.

michael barbaro

Mm. But what's in it for these Kurds to work with the U.S. against ISIS?

ben hubbard

Well, it starts because they're in a state of emergency.

ben hubbard

I mean, in 2014, their backs were really to the wall. ISIS was expanding and taking over a tremendous amount of territory. It was terrifying people by beheading people on television. And, you know, they were besieging some of their towns. And they wanted to go in and slaughter all the Kurds because they considered them infidels.

ben hubbard

In that situation, they find out that the United States also wants to fight against the Islamic State. But they didn't want to put people on the ground. So they needed local partners, and they found this Kurdish militia. And the United States started launching airstrikes. This is really when this partnership was born. You had the guys on the ground, telling them where the positions were that needed to be bombed. And they pushed ISIS back from Kobani.

ben hubbard

Then they start putting in place plans to push ISIS out of other towns. And as their territory expands, as they push the jihadists back, they sort of look around and say, wow, we have all this territory now, and we need to govern it. And so this is when a new project comes along, which is trying to figure out how to put their ideology into place and institute a kind of autonomous rule for local communities in these areas.

michael barbaro

So Ben, what kind of understanding develops between the U.S. and these Kurds in Syria about how deep this partnership will be, how long it will last, and what kind of protections both are going to provide for each other?

ben hubbard

Well, it's unclear, which is one of the ways that we got ourselves in the situation that we're in now. I don't think it's ever really spelled out. So basically, these guys start taking over more territory. They come into Arab areas. They come into Christian areas. These places have their own militias. This is what all comes together to become the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is the umbrella group that we're talking about now. And there's always been, in my view, a contradiction in U.S. policy, where we were very happy to work with these guys militarily. I mean, we trained them so that we didn't have to have Americans on the ground. But there was never any real American recognition that they also had a political project that they were trying to implement. And this finally came to a head.

michael barbaro

Hmm. So it was a bit of an inconvenient truth for the United States, so we just focused on the most recent part of their history, and we kind of ignored the part that involved Turkey?

ben hubbard

I think for the United States, it was very much a marriage of convenience. I mean, when I - after I met Mazlum, I went and I interviewed American military people who knew him and had worked with them. And most of them who were around said, oh, yeah, we know exactly who these guys were. And so I think the U.S. government was aware at the time of the P.K.K. background of these guys, but this is not a group that has huge resonance in the United States. They've never attacked American interests. They've never been active or significantly active in the United States. So I think for American policymakers who were also in a state of emergency, trying to figure out what do we do about the Islamic State, it seemed like the best way to do it. And it was. I mean, it worked. But there was never any agreement about what happens after the Islamic State is gone, what happens in this territory, who's in charge. That's been a question that's been hanging over U.S. policy - is O.K., what next?

michael barbaro

Right. And now we know what's next is the U.S. is starting to withdraw and giving Turkey the green light to cross over into Syria and attack these Kurdish troops.

ben hubbard

Yes.

michael barbaro

And Ben, would the U.S. have been able to contain ISIS in this part of the region without Mazlum and his troops?

ben hubbard

It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which we could have done that. It was very clear that even under Obama, there was no way that we were going to send significant numbers of American troops onto the ground here. The legacy of the Iraq War kept everyone out of it. We didn't want to do that. And so it really allowed us to outsource the ground fighting. We had very small numbers of American troops on the ground. We were allowed to keep American jets in the air and American commanders on protected military bases. And these guys did a lot of the ground fighting. They were the ones who were on the front lines, going into these cities and being spotters for airstrikes. There's just really no way without a massive American deployment that we could have done this.

michael barbaro

Ben, I'm curious, was the relationship with the U.S. ultimately part of what made the Kurdish fighters such a threat to Turkey, the fact of that partnership?

ben hubbard

Absolutely. There's really no way that this group would have ended up in control of as much territory as they now have if they had not had the military backing of the United States. I mean, that really turbo-charged what they were able to do and left them in charge of this huge swath of northeastern Syria. And the Turks sitting across the border were horrified by this. They basically said, you know, here's one of our allies in NATO who's working with this group that has a history of fighting us inside of our own borders. And thanks to their partnership with our NATO friends, they're taking more and more territory and setting up governance and, you know, this is going to be a national security threat. At the same time, I think that the Kurds in Syria were very aware that this was maybe not going to go very well. I mean, Trump was very clear, as soon as he came in, that he did not want to keep people here long-term. During my last trip, when I actually sat down with Mazlum, he spoke about this.

mazlum kobani

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

ben hubbard

Mm-hmm.

mazlum kobani

[SPEAKING ARABIC]

ben hubbard

He said our idea would be for the Americans to stay, because we think that what we've done is positive. We think we had a positive partnership. We were able to do good things, and that we can continue to stabilize this part of Syria.

ben hubbard

But after I left that interview, we drove around elsewhere in the area. And we noticed along the sides of the roads every 200, 300 meters, there was a little pile of dirt. And we realized people were digging. And they were digging tunnels because they were scared that if the Americans left, they were going to be stuck fighting the Turks. And being a good old-fashioned guerrilla organization, when you do that, you build tunnels, so that you can pop out and shoot at people from behind. And so that made it very clear to me that they no longer have faith that the U.S. is going to stay and have their back. And they're coming up with their plan B, which is they think that they're eventually going to fight the Turks, and they're starting to put in place the infrastructure to do that.

michael barbaro

Have you had a chance to speak to Mazlum in the time since President Trump actually drew down U.S. forces from the Turkey-Syria border and these Turkish forces began this military operation, actually starting to invade this part of Syria?

ben hubbard

So I was able to reach him on a very poor telephone connection. This was after Trump had acknowledged that the Turks were going in and said that he was going to pull American troops out of the way, but before it had actually started.

michael barbaro

What did he say about this decision by the U.S.? Does he feel betrayed?

ben hubbard

He never used that word. The word that he used was disappointment. He said that this decision was a disappointment for them. Then when I asked him about what was next, he basically said, we're going to resist. If the Turks come in, we're ready for them. We've been at war for seven years, and we can continue the war for another seven years.

michael barbaro

But without the U.S. as a buffer and a protective force, what kind of chances do these Kurdish forces have against the Turkish military?

ben hubbard

I think we have every reason to expect a very bloody battle that could draw on for a very long time. What we're going to see is a NATO country that has a very modern military with jets and tanks and all sorts of heavy machinery going up against what's basically a militia that has guns and R.P.G.s and more kinds of light weapons. What they do have is a lot of experience doing insurgency. So I think what we could see is going back to the way that they fought the Turks inside of Turkey. And so we're going to see roadside bombs. We can see covert attacks to blow up tanks and things like that. But I think that if the Turks really do keep pushing in, I think it could get very bloody and very violent.

michael barbaro

So when you do cross the border, will you try to find Mazlum? Will you try to check in with him?

ben hubbard

I'll definitely try to see him. I'll definitely send a message to his people and say that we're there and that we would like to talk to him and hear what he's thinking and what he's planning for the future. I have no idea if that'll work.

[music]

ben hubbard

He might consider it too risky to meet with us. And I think when he's talked to me in the past, it's because he saw me and he saw The New York Times as a way not just to speak to American policymakers, but also to speak to the American people. The mood has obviously changed. He's seen a decision from Washington that's left his people and the region that he is trying to protect incredibly vulnerable to a longtime enemy. Now we've got bombs going off in cities and shells landing and airstrikes happening. And I think there's probably a sense that the reason this is all happening is because of a decision made in the United States. And he might not feel it necessarily worth his while now to try to send a message to the United States anymore.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well, Ben, stay safe. Good luck on this reporting, and we'll talk to you soon.

ben hubbard

Thank you.

michael barbaro

On Sunday, during an interview with CBS, the U.S. secretary of defense, Mark Esper, said that he was evacuating the 1,000 American troops that remain in northern Syria - for their own protection.

archived recording (mark esper)

So I spoke with the president last night after discussions with the rest of the national security team. And he directed that we begin a deliberate withdrawal of forces from northern Syria.

archived recording (margaret brennan)

A deliberate withdrawal from the entire country?

archived recording (mark esper)

From northern Syria.

archived recording (margaret brennan)

From northern Syria.

archived recording (mark esper)

Which is where most of our forces are.

michael barbaro

The evacuation will represent a nearly total withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and the complete abandonment of Kurdish fighters there. In response, the Kurdish fighters announced they had formed a new alliance with the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, a sworn enemy of the U.S. Amid the U.S. withdrawal, The Times reports that Turkish-backed fighters have brutally executed Kurdish leaders and that Kurdish forces have lost control of a prison holding 700 relatives and supporters of Islamic State fighters, allowing everyone inside to escape.

archived recording (margaret brennan)

Just in the past few hours online, there have been videos circulating - horrific videos - showing execution of some of these Kurdish allies of ours. There are reports of hundreds of ISIS fighters and family members just running free.

archived recording (mark esper)

It's terrible. It's a terrible situation. We condemn it. We have condemned it.

michael barbaro

We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. The Times reports that federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into whether the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani broke lobbying laws in his dealings with Ukraine. The prosecutors are examining Giuliani's efforts to undermine the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was fired by President Trump after two associates of Giuliani waged a campaign to discredit her. Over the weekend, in a show of support for Giuliani, Trump had lunch with him at his golf club in Virginia.

That's it for "The Daily." I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

The Americans promised they would protect his people. Now, one Kurdish leader is forced to turn to former foes for help.

Hosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Eric Krupke, Alexandra Leigh Young and Lynsea Garrison, and edited by Lisa Chow and Lisa Tobin

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Turkey has invaded Kurdish-controlled territory in Syria, upending a fragile peace in the region and inciting sectarian bloodshed. The Trump administration has ordered a full evacuation of the 1,000 American troops that remain in northeastern Syria, leaving Mazlum Kobani, the commander of the Kurdish-led militia, and his forces to rely on Russia and Syria for military assistance.

Who are the Kurds? How is it that Kurdish fighters came to be seen as allies to the United States and terrorists to Turkey? And what would the fall of Kurdish territory in northeastern Syria mean for the region?

Image

Kurdish fighters in the Syrian village of Baghouz in February. The militia worked closely with American troops to fight the Islamic State. Credit... Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Ben Hubbard contributed reporting.

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transcript michael barbaro From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is "The Daily." Today: The Trump administration has ordered a full evacuation of the 1,000 American troops that still remain in northern Syria as Turkey intensifies its bombardment of the Kurdish forces there.

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NPR

"Who Was ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?"

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Who was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and how did he manage to turn ISIS into one of the world's most fearsome terror organizations? He made the organization completely at home in the digital age.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

To another story now. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was not the first commander of ISIS, but he was the one in charge when the group steamrolled into Iraq and Syria in 2014. That land grab allowed it to declare a state, an outlaw territory that drew thousands of recruits from around the globe. Now that President Trump has declared Baghdadi dead, NPR's Hannah Allam looks at his bloody legacy and what his death means for a movement that is trying to make a comeback.

HANNAH ALLAM, BYLINE: In 2010, the militia that would come to be known as ISIS was struggling. The leader had just been killed. The fighters were spent from years of battle - the U.S. military, rival jihadists, angry tribes. The incoming commander? A 38-year-old Iraqi known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Under his leadership, the militia not only regrouped, by 2014, it had captured land in Syria and Iraq for an audacious new project that would take it to the next level.

AARON ZELIN: He did something that was extremely taboo within the Muslim world by declaring that the caliphate was back and that he was the caliph.

ALLAM: That's Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He monitors ISIS. Muslims across the world condemned the so-called caliphate, but within extremist circles, Zelin says, this was a game-changer. ISIS now had bragging rights over rivals like al-Qaida.

ZELIN: One of their main arguments in this regard vis-a-vis, you know, al-Qaida was that, yes, you might have done the 9/11 attacks, but we're the ones who resurrected the caliphate.

ALLAM: Baghdadi ordered all other jihadist groups to fall under the Islamic State umbrella. Al-Qaida said no way.

AMARNATH AMARASINGAM: It was moving too fast. It was too violent. I think in a bizarre way, al-Qaida took a principled stance to say, these guys are just too extreme even for our taste.

ALLAM: Amarnath Amarasingam is a Canadian terrorism researcher. He's interviewed several Islamic State members and says that extreme reputation was part of the appeal, especially for young recruits, millennials who helped push the movement into the digital age.

AMARASINGAM: They would land in Syria and maintain their social media accounts, continue to post about their breakfast and what they were doing while being a member of ISIS.

ALLAM: Gone were the days of hand-smuggled tapes from mountain hideouts. Baghdadi, himself a rapist and a killer, let his followers post their own atrocities online in sickening clips that were stylized, even cinematic. Zelin, the researcher.

ZELIN: It's more like you're watching a TV show or movie. And also, it's not just focused on the specific leaders of the group but also just the random foot soldier or member.

AUDREY KURTH CRONIN: It wasn't all negativity and brutality.

ALLAM: That's Audrey Kurth Cronin, an American University professor who's written extensively about how militant groups decline. She says ISIS draws its resilience from the broader promise of an extremist utopia, a goal that's not tied to any single commander.

CRONIN: Anyone who thinks that the killing of al-Baghdadi is going to end ISIS really hasn't understood the nature of the group and really hasn't been doing - reading its history.

ALLAM: Another professor, Jenna Jordan at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, wrote a book about what happens to a terrorist group when the leader is removed. She found that the ones that survived tended to be more bureaucratic. They were built around ideology, not personality - in short, like ISIS, with or without Baghdadi.

JENNA JORDAN: The organization still exists. It still has a lot of operatives in Iraq and Syria and supporters globally, and that he was able to create that is incredible. That said, he created something that is able to withstand his death.

ALLAM: ISIS hasn't yet named a successor to Baghdadi, and it's unclear whether the next leader will share the same ruthless ambition that galvanized a generation of extremists.

Hannah Allam, NPR News.

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Who Was ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?

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Who was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and how did he manage to turn ISIS into one of the world's most fearsome terror organizations? He made the organization completely at home in the digital age. MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: To another story now.

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BBC
"Syria Week Part 5: Regime Response to War Crime Claims"

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PM - Syria week part 5: regime response to war crime claims - BBC Sounds

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Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

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"What Next Daily new and analysis
What The Kurds are Fighting For"

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Subscribe to any show for free and download episodes for offline listening.

All your listening is automatically synced across devices so you can pause on one device and resume on another with the Google Assistant.

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BBC.co.uk

"Iraq’s Kurds: From Flight to Freedom"

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Twenty-five years ago thousands of Iraqi Kurds died fleeing Saddam Hussein's forces. BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir revisits the exodus.

Twenty-five years ago, thousands of Iraqi Kurds lost their lives as they fled the forces of Saddam Hussein into the Zagros and Taurus mountains of northern Iraq, towards Iran and Turkey. Massively outgunned, many were killed by the helicopter gunship fire and tanks at the command of Saddam's well trained and brutal troops. BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir revisits the exodus.

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BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast, Iraq's Kurds: From Flight to Freedom

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Twenty-five years ago thousands of Iraqi Kurds died fleeing Saddam Hussein's forces. BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir revisits the exodus. Twenty-five years ago, thousands of Iraqi Kurds lost their lives as they fled the forces of Saddam Hussein into the Zagros and Taurus mountains of northern Iraq, towards Iran and Turkey.

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TheGuardian.com

"How the US caught up with Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi"

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US special forces finally caught up with the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on Saturday at a safe house in the Syrian province of Idlib, one of the few areas of the country still outside regime control. In a night-time raid, Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest and killed himself and three of his children, according to Donald Trump.

The Guardian's Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov, has followed the rise and fall of Isis in the past five years from close quarters. He tells Rachel Humphreys what Baghdadi's death will mean to the terrorist organisation, which has lost almost all the territory it held at its peak.

Also today: Robert Booth on the criticism of the London fire brigade's response to the Grenfell Tower disaster.

The Guardian is editorially independent. And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all. But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.

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How the US caught up with Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi | podcast

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US special forces finally caught up with the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on Saturday at a safe house in the Syrian province of Idlib, one of the few areas of the country still outside regime control. In a night-time raid, Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest and killed himself and three of his children, according to Donald Trump.

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ETHNICALLY AMBIGUOUS
"We Are The Kurds"
https://www.ethnicallyambiguouspod.com/podcasts/we-are-the-kurds.htm

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BBC
"How will Kurds be affected by Turkish attack on IS in Syria?"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045n6rd

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The Takeaway
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/turkey-begins-offensive-northern-syria-kurds

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Turkey Begins Offensive in Northern Syria: What Will Happen to the Kurds? | The Takeaway | WNYC Studios

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President Trump has been criticized for turning his back on the Kurdish people in the region.

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Institute for the Study of War
http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/podcast-turkeys-syria-incursion

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Sign up here to receive podcasts and publications directly via e-mail Crisis Brief: Significance of the Turkey-Russia Meeting on Syria (Update #5 - October 23, 2019)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met to coordinate military movements in Northern Syria. The two presidents reached an initial agreement intended to push Kurdish forces away from the Turkey-Syria border region over the coming days. ISW Syria analyst John Dunford discusses what is known about the new deal and how it will affect Turkish and Russian actions in Syria moving forward.
Crisis Brief: Russia Exploits U.S. Withdrawal from Syria (Update #4 - October 16, 2019)
The U.S. military withdrawal from Syria and subsequent Turkish advances are creating a new opening for Russia and its partners. Russian forces have taken over areas vacated by the U.S. as the Kremlin positions itself to reshape Syria's future. ISW Russia analyst Mason Clark joins ISW Research Director Jennifer Cafarella to discuss the latest Russian maneuvers and how they advance Vladimir Putin's broader ambitions in Syria. Additional resources on the situation in Syria, including maps, are available here.
Crisis Brief: Continued Chaos as the Turkish Offensive Advances into Syria (Update #3 - October 15, 2019)
The situation on the ground is rapidly evolving as the Turkish offensive advances into Syria. ISIS is taking advantage of the conditions of chaos to resurge and threaten to reverse progress made by the Anti-ISIS Coalition. ISW's Research Director Jennifer Cafarella, Syria analyst John Dunford, and Counterterrorism analyst Brandon Wallace discuss how recent developments may threaten U.S. forces as they withdraw and what ISW is watching heading into the week.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Stitcher. Transcript forthcoming. Crisis Brief: Turkey Kicks Off Operation in Syria (Update #2 - October 9, 2019) Turkey has initiated a military operation into a part of Northern Syria controlled by Syrian Kurdish-led forces. The operation follows a U.S. decision to withdraw from the immediate area controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - the primary Syria-based U.S. partner in the campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS). As Turkish forces move across the border and the SDF responds, ISW's Syria expert John Dunford explains the context, key dynamics shaping the battle, and the effects on the counter-ISIS campaign. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Stitcher. Transcript forthcoming. Crisis Brief: Imminent Turkish Invasion of Northern Syria (Update #1 - October 7, 2019) Turkey is about to invade Northeastern Syria with U.S. permission despite previous American security guarantees to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The U.S. has not yet announced a full withdrawal from Syria but U.S. forces pulled back from the border. ISW Research Director Jennifer Cafarella and Syria expert John Dunford discuss what options the SDF has and how other actors, including ISIS and Iran, are prepared to exploit the possible chaos to follow. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Stitcher. Read the transcript here.

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Sign up here to receive podcasts and publications directly via e-mail Crisis Brief: Significance of the Turkey-Russia Meeting on Syria (Update #5 - October 23, 2019) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met to coordinate military movements in Northern Syria.

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Preemptivelove.org
"BREAKING: US Withdraws from Syria (And it Could Lead to War)"

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Kayla: It's been a difficult week across the Middle East ... from protests in Iraq, to the recent news that the US administration is withdrawing its presence from northeastern Syria. On this breaking episode of the Love Anyway podcast, we hear from our Preemptive Love team about how this decision could have reverberations that last generations.
MUSIC
Kayla: I'm Kayla Craig, and this is a special episode of the Love Anyway podcast.
MUSIC
Kayla: We can't follow the news right now without seeing headlines about US pullout from northeastern Syria. So, what's happening? What are the implications? Why is this withdrawal so important...and so potentially devastating, not just for our friends in Syria, but for of us? I spoke with Preemptive Love founder Jeremy Courtney, who has lived in the Middle East, including Turkey and Iraq, for more than a decade.
MUSIC
Jeremy: So for some years now, there has been some kind of presence of US troops, the mere presence of US soldiers is often thought to be enough to keep others at bay. Just having boots on the ground, whether they be advisors or observers or trainers or actual foot soldiers, has has been thought to be enough to kind of stave off the worst of war. What the White House revealed on Sunday night is that Turkey would be seeking to make an incursion, and the US would not be seeking to get in the way to complicate matters, basically allowing Turkey to do whatever Turkey has declared that it will do. Many of us are afraid then that without any advisors or fighters or troops in the area, Turkey will come in and it could result in all-out-war between the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Turkish military.
MUSIC
Kayla: A US presence in this part of Syria helped keep tensions between Kurdish militias in Syria and Turkish armed forces from escalating into full-scale war. Turkey and Syria have a complicated history spanning generations.

Jeremy: There's a lot going on here. But I just think it's important to situate today's modern debates and tactical things that are going on into a decades-long story and struggle in the region.

Kayla: In the 1980s, the Kurdish population created a movement to separate from Turkey. Infighting and even violent attacks ensued, leading governments around the world to label the separatists as a terrorist movement. None more so than the Turkish authorities.

Jeremy: And as the Turkish Government sought to put down the terror attacks, and decimate the terror group, they drastically overreached and ended up committing what one might reasonably call genocide against the Kurds, that Kurdish separatist movement took refuge over the border in Syria, where there is a long-standing Kurdish population as well.
MUSIC
In fact, part of the separatists movements goal was to unify the broader swath of land that they call Kurdistan, the land of the Kurds that stretches across Turkey, across Syria, Iraq, Iran, and maybe a little bit beyond that.

Kayla: They were trying to unify all of this traditional Kurdish land under one new state in Syria.

Jeremy: And so the northeastern part of Syria became this kind of launchpad, where this group would continue to wage war against the Turkish state. The Turkish state now sees this land as basically a terror den where Kurdish terrorists plot the overthrow of the Turkish Government, even to this day. And so now that now that the Syrian civil war has played out. They are very afraid of what is emerging as an ever more powerful and ever more functioning kind of Kurdish state or region on their border.

Jeremy: We have friends all across this conflict. Jessica and I lived in Turkey for a number of years before moving to Iraq and starting Preemptive Love. So we have many Turkish friends, some of whom would entirely support the Turkish government's moves right now, some of which would take exception to the broad brushing of Kurds as terrorists and would want to have a much more nuanced conversation about that. We have friends who are Kurds, they live in Turkey, we have friends who are Kurds who live in Syria, we have friends who are Kurds who live in Iraq, Iran.

Kayla: More than any nationalist aspirations they still possess, the Kurds and others like them are simply trying to ... survive. Now that the US is withdrawing, Turkey has vowed to enter this part of Syria, taking any means necessary to drive back the Kurdish people ... the same ones who were allies with the US in the fight against ISIS.

Jeremy: The way the Trump administration is positioning this is as though we built a temporary Coalition for a singular purpose, which was to defeat ISIS, which the White House called the territorial Caliphate, meaning the actual land that they held. Now, having defeated the territorial Caliphate, all bets are off, the coalition is effectively dissolved. There is no grander vision or values or partnership here to be had. And everyone's on their own. The administration is saying we're out of the game, we accomplished what we said we were going to accomplish. Everyone is on their own. From a Kurdish standpoint, they were never fighting for something as simple and short term as defeating ISIS, they were always trying to also prop themselves up as a freestanding, functioning, flourishing society. And they are there still a long way off from that goal. at the best of times, the Kurds in northeastern Syria might have imagined that the Obama administration or the Trump administration cared about their own freedom and flourishing. But what this move from the White House on Sunday night reveals, and makes very clear is that we don't care. And we are not interested in thinking long term about keeping ISIS defeated. It was enough to have quote, unquote, defeated them. And now we're willing to just cede all this land, and all the realities back over to the fates to see what happens next.

Kayla: And the possibility of what happens next is what scares many of us the most. Because what happens next ... as Jeremy mentioned earlier... could be war.

Jeremy: The Turkish Government military has made it very clear that they've got their battle plans drawn, they are locked and loaded, and they will be coming and they will be invading Syria.
MUSIC
Jeremy: The thing that a lot of us are concerned about is that ISIS will now find a vacuum, a hole to fill, as current security forces that have been holding them at bay, will be diverted. So what used to be a coalition fighting against ISIS is now turning into a lot of infighting. And the US is just standing on the sideline throwing up its hands saying not our problem. That's the exact kind of vacuum and the exact kind of space in which ISIS grew up in the first place. And so for anyone to act surprised, one year from now, if ISIS has reconstituted itself, and is wreaking havoc on Syrian and Iraqi villages, or has upped their game and recruiting people to commit violence across the planet, no one should be surprised. We see this coming week. We know this map, we know this playbook. This is exactly what happened in the run up to 2014 when ISIS became a household name, and all the cards are set for it to happen. Again, all over.
MUSIC
Kayla: In addition, there are nearly 3 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey at the moment. Turkey has made no secret of its plans to forcibly relocate them just across the border in Kurdish-controlled territory. Even though the vast majority of these refugees are not from this part of Syria. This is, in effect, a second displacement for these families, putting them right in the middle of a war zone.

Jeremy 13:33: So now you take population, families, children, women, widows, disaffected young men, maybe boys who when they landed in Turkey, were just 11 years old. But now they're 19. They're a fighting age, and they've never known anything but displacement for their entire adolescent and young adult years. Now, you're talking about the Turkish Government forcibly uprooting them, and forcibly resettling them back into a land where. They feel vulnerable. At the worst case scenario of all this, they won't be resettling them into a peaceful environment, they'll be resettling them into an environment that is now at conflict. And this is exactly the kind of conditions that groups like ISIS will exploit. This is the kind of conditions where violence spreads from one person to another from one camp to another. This is what makes young men in particular, very vulnerable and easy to recruit into one side or another. And the more troops we get, the more young men we get, who feel like their only way to feed their family is to get paid by somebody militia group or some military group or another, the longer the war goes on.
MUSIC
Jeremy: We kind of understand at least in theory, the different storylines that everyone is telling. And together, we've formed a community and a coalition of friends across the board, who want to press into these complex matters and serve anyway, who wants to provide food and shelter and housing and jobs for those who are caught up in the midst of all this and, and so while we give policy advice, and we seek to make sense of the complexities, we never stop giving concrete, front lines, put our bodies on the line kind of responses.

Jeremy: This is the exact kind of condition that basically ISIS has been waiting for. And we haven't had enough time, frankly, to change the ideas that lead to war, we haven't had enough time, or enough resources financially to show them the kind of love and depth of relationship that that might be required to, to get us out of this cycle that we find ourselves in. And so it feels like we're just kind of inexorably tumbling down the hole again, and I think a lot of us just wish we had more time and more resources to have staved this off a little bit longer.

Kayla: As I talked with Jeremy, one thing became very clear ... we're not giving up.

Jeremy: I think there's plenty that we can do in this moment. However bad these things look on the news. Things can always be worse if we don't play our part. When we press into these hard places, and keep giving services to people in need, we stop violence from spreading even further, we stop the death toll from going even higher. So we can always do more. But we could always do less as well. And it's the doing less that really concerns me. And I think that if you're listening right now, and you like us want to continue to work to end war, maybe not just on a global scale, but you want to work to end this war, you want to work to stave off the next battle. Maybe before it starts one of the things that we have to do is we have to show up in these vacuum spaces and try and prevent violence from spreading. And so we do that with food and shelter and medical services and try to get jobs in place so that young men can't be recruited into this violence so easily because they've got better options available.

Kayla: I also spoke to Erin Wilson, our senior field editor in the Middle East.

Erin: I think the best way to describe it is this part of the world is standing and holding their breath in fear that we are about to witness massacre to be perfectly frank.
MUSIC
Erin: Kurdish people have a very famous saying they have no friends, but the mountains, that they've been betrayed by so many governments, so many people over the years that they've learned that ultimately, they can't trust anyone. And I mean, that's what we're here for. As preemptive love, we're here to love people. And part of that is developing trust. And so to see people we love betrayed so swiftly, it's, it's very painful. It's also painful because I mean, our friends, our colleagues, our students, and our tech hubs, the makers, the women who crochet washcloths, the small business owners that live in refugee camps here who we've helped start small businesses, their families come from these places. And this is, this is not about other people in other places. This is about people we love, and, and the loss that they're experiencing now with the trail, and then the loss, we're afraid will come with violence.

Kayla: I asked Erin to describe the sense she is getting from her friends and neighbors in Iraq, many of whom have Kurdish friends and family in the line of fire in northern Syria.

Erin: There's a lot of hopelessness right now. To be honest. Broken trust is a pretty devastating thing. When it was with ISIS. It was a known enemy that we knew was coming to harm. And we were mentally prepared for that. I think we understand very well. What happened here in Iraq over the weekend, what will continue to happen over time and what is happening now in Syria? This is not an unknown enemy. These are our friends, our allies, our brothers. And it just it just feels...Yeah, it just feels hard.
MUSIC
Kayla: As we shared in our last episode, Iraq is currently in the middle of political protests and the most intense period of unrest since the rise of ISIS in 2014. And now, the United States' withdrawal has paved the way for ISIS to reemerge on the battlefield. But, Preemptive Love isn't going anywhere. And we need your help as we continue to stay on the frontlines.

Erin: Yes, I have been hearing a lot of hopelessness, but I am not without hope. And when things are hard, I continue to be convinced that this is when we need to be pressing in. This is not when we should turn our backs or turn away. And so I mean, there's like just a lot of hard stuff going on right now. And I know people are probably feeling burnout, just trying to keep track of what's happening in their own community. But it's really important that we make space for what's happening in other people's communities, too.
MUSIC
Kayla: One of the best ways that you can make space for others is by giving monthly to Preemptive Love. Your gift goes directly to those affected by violence and helps us work to prevent war before it even starts, providing jobs, small business loans, and other things families need to build a new future. When you give, you help refugees rise from the devastation of war. Visit preemptivelove.org/podcast, where you can give and join us in choosing to love anyway.

Kayla: Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

Until next time, I'm Kayla Craig. And this is the Love Anyway podcast.

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BREAKING: US Withdraws from Syria (And it Could Lead to War) - Preemptive Love

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Kayla: It's been a difficult week across the Middle East ... from protests in Iraq, to the recent news that the US administration is withdrawing its presence from northeastern Syria. On this breaking episode of the Love Anyway podcast, we hear from our Preemptive Love team about how this decision could have reverberations that last generations.

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VTDIGGER

"The Deeper Dig: Peter Galbraith on the ‘catastrophe’ in Syria"

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The Deeper Dig is a weekly podcast from the VTDigger newsroom. Listen below, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Peter Galbraith was shocked when he heard that the Trump administration would be withdrawing U.S. troops from the Kurdish region of northern Syria.

The former U.S. diplomat and two-term Windham County state senator has worked with Kurdish populations across the Middle East for decades. He had just returned to Vermont from northern Syria last week when the White House announced the withdrawal Sunday night.

Trump said he wanted to end the U.S. military's involvement in the "endless wars" being fought in the Middle East. But Galbraith said in an interview this week that he believes the president's motives were not clear.

By caving in to pressure from Turkish President Recep Erdogan, Trump was "in effect giving a green light to a Turkish invasion" of the Kurdish zone, Galbraith said. Strikes since Wednesday have claimed civilian lives and created chaos throughout the region, according to news reports.

The survival of the Kurdish people is at stake, Galbraith said. But the longer term consequences of the invasion Trump has allowed may be a prolonging of the Syrian civil war, a conflict that was winding down until this week's events. Galbraith worries about the unintended consequences of letting that conflict continue.

"It's a catastrophe for the Kurds," Galbraith said. "It's a catastrophe for all of Syria."
What kind of work have you been doing in Syria most recently?

Since 2014, I've been going regularly to northeast Syria. That is the part that's controlled by the Kurds. And it's been in a variety of capacities, mostly related to mediation and negotiation.

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Initially, I went to try to mediate among Kurdish factions. This was sponsored by a British charity, then at the request of French President Hollande to mediate between the Syrian Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds, and more recently to help the Syrian Kurds think and prepare for possible negotiations with Damascus.

I've been following the reporting that's been coming out of that region in the past few days and to be honest, in some cases, struggling to understand the context around it. I wonder if you could help to explain: what was the status of that region before Sunday, before this announcement that U.S. troops were going to withdraw?

There's been a secondary issue that's brought me there recently, and that is the fate of about 6,200 children of ISIS fighters. There are about 200 very young children who are the product of the rape of the younger Yazidi women by ISIS. And there are about 5,400 children who are in a religious, very difficult camp called al-Hol, which has 70,000 people and which is effectively run by ISIS.

If one thinks of the war in Syria, which is now in its eighth year, in fact, it was two separate wars. In the area west and south of the Euphrates River, about two thirds of Syria, it was a war between the Syrian government and a range of opposition groups which tend to be dominated by Islamists and extremists. And by about 18 months ago, the Syrian government had mostly won that war. There's still some ongoing areas of conflict. But the result is clear.

This announcement that came through on Sunday, that U.S. troops will be withdrawing from that region, how does that change things? What are the consequences of a decision like that?

In the area that's east and north of the Euphrates, the Syrian Kurds - and this is the Kurdish part of the country - had been fighting against the Islamic State. And that war essentially concluded in March of 2019, when the last ISIS stronghold embargoes fell. And so since March, in essence, Syria has been divided along the Euphrates, between a Kurdish controlled northeast and a government controlled south and west, which had not been at conflict with each other.

But this whole area has always been under threat, not only from the Syrian government, but from Turkey, which sees the Kurds as a branch of the PKK - this is a Kurdish insurgency in Turkey that's been fighting the Turkish government since 1984. And it is true that some of the cadres from the PKK do hold prominent positions in the northeast Syria administration, but the northeast Syria administration is much more than that.

I'm curious what you thought when you first heard about this announcement that came down on Sunday night.

The Syrian Kurds were the U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State. The U.S. got involved in 2014, when the Islamic State took over a large area of Iraq and a large area of Syria, and the Syrian army was unwilling or unable to fight them. The Iraqi army simply collapsed.
In making this announcement, he tried to make the argument that these wars that the U.S. has been fighting in the Middle East are these "endless wars." What's wrong with that argument? What's wrong with using that as a justification for this kind of pull out?

After the collapse of the Iraqi army, the only people in Iraq opposing the Islamic State were the Kurds in the north and east of Iraq, and the only people who are really fighting the Islamic State in Syria are the Kurds.

The U.S. came to the assistance of the Kurds first with airstrikes in in the fall of 2014, and then dropping weapons, then inserting advisors. And so when Trump says that we helped them, yes, there's some truth to it. But then, the US persuaded the Kurds to not just to liberate and defend Kurdish areas, but to continue the battle into Arab areas, which is a huge part of the area they control like Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. And in the course of essentially being the ground troops in the fight against the Islamic State, the Kurds lost more than 10,000 men and women killed in action. By contrast, the U.S. forces had around 10 casualties.

What do you think the president's motivation is here?

I was shocked. Because it's a betrayal of an ally - an ally that we induced to get into the fight, and certainly to carry the fight on into Arab areas. And if you have any sense of decency, you don't do that to the ally. You don't do it to people who sacrifice so much and put everything on the line to be friends of the United States.

What exactly is at stake here for the Kurds and for this region?

But having seen Donald Trump in action, I think there's no ally that he wouldn't betray, and really no limit to his treachery.

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Because the U.S. involvement in the Syria war is not an endless war. It's not Afghanistan, where more than 100,000 troops were deployed at its peak in 2009, and where the U.S. has been there for 18 years. It's not Iraq, which the U.S. invaded in 2003, again, maxing out with 150,000 troops, some of whom are still there.

This is a war, a battle, that was carried on by the Kurds against the Islamic State, which is a terrorist organization that had killed Americans and staged all sorts of terrorist attacks in Europe. And the fighting was not done by Americans. It was done by the Syrian Kurds.

I find it very difficult to understand Donald Trump's motivations. The call with Erdogan was set up not to discuss this issue, but to placate the Turkish President Recep Erdogan because Trump had not agreed to a bilateral meeting during the UN General Assembly. And in the course of the meeting, Erdogan made the case to Trump that the Kurds were terrorists, and that Turkey was willing to come in. It would fight ISIS and it would take over the ISIS prisoners.

And that's all stemming from this decision by the president this past week?
I wonder if you could help me put this in a bit of historical context. I know the struggles that the Kurds have faced has gone back generations. How does this conflict relate to the history of that region?

Trump, who hadn't prepared for the meeting, wasn't following his talking points, then agreed with Erdogan and in the end, the White House put out the statement that it did, saying that the United States was in effect giving a greenlight to a Turkish invasion.

For the Kurds, what's at stake is survival. There are about 3 million Kurds in northeast Syria. Almost the entire population is literally right on the border with Turkey. So if you're in Qamishli as I was last week - it's the largest city. It's really a shared city with Nusaybin on the other side of the border. It's just that there's a wall in the middle of it, like Berlin in the old days. And that's true of Kobani, Amuda, one of the other cities where I spent some time. As I went around, you could just see the wall.

If you're having an invasion and artillery and bombing and all that is going on right now - they are striking at places where hundreds of thousands or well over a million people live. Those people are fleeing their homes. They may never get back to them. Of course, some are being killed. And then everyone is talking about putting into this area two million Syrian Arab refugees who had fled western Syria and were now taking refuge in Turkey. So they would be, if you will, deported to northeast Syria.

He said that he wants to build cities for them. But these would be cities where there are no jobs, where there are basically no services. And it's also quite likely that he would put them into the houses of Kurds who had who had run away, who had fled. And so this is really a demographic change in northeast Syria.

It also - and this is one of the more catastrophic consequences - it's also likely to take the war in Syria, which was winding down, and enlarge it. As I said at the beginning, there were two wars, the Kurds against the Islamic State in the east, and the Syrian government against the opposition. Kurds had won in the east, the Syrian government in the west, but Turkey had backed the opponents of the Syrian government in the west.

How do we move forward from here? What do you believe happens next in this situation?

What they're now doing is sending in the Syrian Arab forces that they have sponsored, many of whom are Islamists and extremists. If they take over this whole area, the one third of Syria that the Kurds have controlled, then you're going to have a major military force backed by Turkey that will be at war with the rest of Syria. And so an eight-year war that has taken 300,000 lives, and which finally looked like was going to end, is now likely to be reignited. And who knows how long it's going to take.

It's a catastrophe for the Kurds. It's a catastrophe for all of Syria.

It is all a consequence of Donald Trump's decision to give a green light to the Turkish president to invade and to abandon allies that had stood by the United States.

Well, first one needs to understand, who are the Kurds? They are a national group, or an ethnic group, with their own language, Kurdish. They are the original inhabitants of that part of the Middle East.

In modern times, they've never had their own state. In fact, they often say the Kurds are the most numerous people in the world who do not have their own state. After the First World War, they had been promised by the Allies that they would have their own state. But instead, they ended up partitioned among Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. And since they never wanted to be part of any of these countries, they've been in various times in rebellion against the countries where they were stuck. And the countries have responded with varying degrees of brutality.

The most brutal case was Iraq, which culminated in the 1980s. Saddam Hussein's genocide against the Kurds, a genocide that involved extensive use of chemical weapons, the systematic destruction of every Kurdish village, and the deportation and killing up about 5% of the population. These were events that early in my career, I was an eyewitness to.

But in Turkey, there was an insurrection that began in 1984 and continues to this day in southeast Turkey. The Syrian repression of the Kurds was more effective than the Turkish and the Iraqi in the sense that there were not uprisings. But when the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, the Syrian government eventually pulled its forces out of the Northeast, the Kurdish area, so that they could fight in the West. And this gives the opportunity for the Kurds there to set up their own administration.

What Turkey, of course, fears is that the Kurds in northeast Syria will somehow attack attackers into Turkey or support the insurgents in Turkey. There's no evidence that they have done so.

Some of this is simply politics by the Turkish president. He was losing popularity. And one way to regain popularity, at least in that part of the world, is to start a war. So that's exactly what he's done.

I'm not optimistic. I think that Turkey is going to proceed with its military operations. I think there'll be mass casualties among the Syrian Kurds' civilian population. But a lot of Turkish soldiers are going to die as well. And that once Turkey takes over this area, it will bring in the Syrian groups that it has sponsored. And that these groups will then be fighting Assad, the Syrian government, and the war will simply continue for however long. No one knows. It could be a decade.

One of the things that I've learned in a career that has very much been involved in dealing with conflict situations, with wars, is that they always have unintended consequences. It's not for us to sit and think, 'well, there's a civil war in Syria,' that continuing it's not going to affect us one way or another. Something happens that you don't predict.

Who would have predicted back when Ronald Reagan started arming the Afghan freedom fighters, as they were called, the Mujahideen, against the Soviets - that 20 years later, those very same people would come to New York and Washington and kill 3,000 Americans. So who knows the unintended consequences of this.

But the prospect now is for a many year war, and it will be horrific for the Syrian people. But it'll probably be bad for us too.

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Tags: Deeper Dig, Donald Trump, Peter Galbraith, podcast, Syria

About Mike

Michael Dougherty is VTDigger's digital editor. He is in charge of comment review, social media engagement and multimedia productions.

Dougherty is a DC-area native and studied journalism and music at New York University. Prior to joining VTDigger, Michael spent two years as a program coordinator for the Vermont Humanities Council. Before moving to Vermont in 2015, he spent seven years managing recording operations for the oral history nonprofit StoryCorps, assisted Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas, and contributed to the Brooklyn-based alt-weekly L Magazine.

Email: [email protected]

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