8 NEWSWEEK.COM NOVEMBER 15, 2019
ore than half a million people have
been killed. Millions more have lost their
homes, seeking safe reguge elsewhere. This
is the toll of Syria’s eight-year civil war. And
when U.S. troops retreated from northeastern Syria in October,
allowing for a new offensive by Turkey, a fresh wave of horrors
was unleashed on local families and children as well as Kurdish
soldiers who had been fighting ISIS alongside the U.S. military.
Two weeks later, on October 23, the Trump administration
celebrated a permanent ceasefire, an end to a disaster that was
largely of its own making. The decision to withdraw was seen
widely as a betrayal of U.S. allies and got almost no Republican
support on Capitol Hill. After the Americans left, according to the
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 120 civilians
were killed. In addition, 275 Syrian Democratic Forces fighters,
196 Turkey-backed Syrian rebels and 10 Turkish soldiers were
killed. Three hundred thousand civilians were forced to flee.
“I’ve seen this so many times covering this region,” Thea Peders-
en, a Danish freelance journalist covering the situation in north-
eastern Syria, told Newsweek. Pedersen took the photographs on
these pages. “War goes beyond hitting and affecting civilians and
first and foremost the children.”
International concern has focused on prisons holding ISIS
fighters, as well as the women and children who lived under the
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Al-Hasakah
Qamishli
Al-Hol Camp
JORDAN
Damascus
TURKEY
LEBANON
IRAQ
SYRIA