Newsweek - USA (2019-11-08)

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

1

Al-Hasakah

Qamishli

Al-Hol Camp

JORDAN

Damascus

TURKEY

LEBANON

IRAQ

SYRIA