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remains of homes destroyed in waves of
battles against ISIS, which the Kurds of
both Iraq and Syria fought to the death.
With the help of U.S. air cover, Kurd-
ish militias in Iraq halted, then led the
way in defeating the well-armed, fanati-
cal extremists in 2014 and again in 2016.
In Syria, Kurdish fighters were the es-
sential U.S. ally, pushing far beyond their
own area to eradicate the caliphate that
had been so key to ISIS recruitment. The
Syrian Kurds’ battle deaths are estimated
to have totaled 11,000.
Trump’s betrayal of that sacrifice fits
snugly into the narrative of great-power
double-dealing that the Kurds have told
since 1923, when the treaty that gave them
a country (dubbed Kurdistan) was over-
taken by the treaty that erased it. “The
Kurds have no friends but the mountains,”
the saying goes. And yet they press on.
In Iraq, the territory the Kurds took from
ISIS they then claimed as an extension of
their own—only to be forced off most of
it in 2017 by the government in Baghdad.
In Syria, Kurdish officials continued to
play a crucial part in eliminating Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi, maintaining a covert agent
near the ISIS leader despite Trump’s be-
trayal. But in the territory the Kurds were
forced from, they are patrolling with the
Russians as well as with the remaining
Americans, hedging their bets. □
Syrian Kurdish
refugees gather to
receive winter clothes
during a distribution
inside the Bardarash
camp on Oct. 31
MAGNUM PHOTOS
