Map depicting
concentrations of Kurdish populations within Syria and in neighbouring
countries
It is presently fashionable, but totally erroneous to aver that the
Kurds have been “betrayed”. The truth is that the Kurds and the Americans have
used each other for their mutual ends in the Syrian War, a catastrophe
orchestrated by the United States and its regional allies Saudi Arabia and the
State of Israel.
For the
Saudis, the animus against the Assad government is based on the fact that it is
ruled by what is considered by mainstream Sunni Muslims to be a heretical
minority, the Alawites, whose alliance with Shia Iran poses a threat to Saudi
influence in the Muslim Arab world.
And for the
Israelis, it is the threat posed by the Triple Entente of Iran, Syria and the
Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, an alliance that is sometimes referred to as the
“Shia Crescent”. The destabilisation and the destruction of Syria would, from
Israel’s perspective, have achieved three goals. Firstly, the weakening of
Iranian influence in the region. Secondly, the isolating of Hezbollah, the
militant Shia group created out of the embers of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon
in the early 1980s, which was responsible for the Jewish state’s withdrawal
from the south of that country on two occasions. It is Hezbollah that has
prevented the longstanding goal of colonising Lebanon south of the Litani
River. Thirdly, a fractured Syria would from an Israeli view mean that no
successor state would make a legal claim for the restoration of the Golan
Heights, which was illegally annexed in 1981.
The object of
Israel has always been to balkanise its Arab Muslim neighbours, and the
enduring influence of its lobby in the United States is the overriding factor
in this enterprise which provided the Saudis with the role of funding the
anti-Assad jihadist insurrection begun in 2011. Israel, for its part, provided
medical, logistical and financial assistance to a number of these jihadi
fanatics and struck at Assad’s forces to weaken the Syrian effort in
confronting them.
It is useful
to be reminded of a declassified U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
document circulated in 2012 which explicitly sought the creation of a declared
or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria. The so-called Islamic
State (IS) and other Islamist-orientated militias functioned as the U.S.’s
proxy army to achieve this end.
But Russian
intervention with the help of Iranian soldiers and Hezbollah -all invited onto
Syrian soil by the legitimate government of the country- beat back the threat
posed by IS. The Americans, whose presence in parts of Syria is illegal, reacted
by arming, training and supplying Kurdish militias such as the YPG to continue
the quest of creating a statelet in oil-endowed eastern Syria.
Those who are
versed in the history of the region know that the Turks will not tolerate the
creation of an independent Kurdish state on its border. Moreover, members of
the Syrian-based YPG also operate as guerrillas for the Turkish-based PKK, a
group designated by the Turks as well as the U.S. and the EU as a terrorist
organisation.
The Turks are
of course no innocents in regard to the Syrian War. They were part of the
original U.S.-Saudi-Israeli effort to overthrow the Assad government. Turkey
provided a route through which jihadist fighters could infiltrate Syria’s
borders. The Turkish Army High Command furnished these mercenaries with
encampments and training facilities, and as IS began carving out its U.S.
approved principality in eastern Syria, the Turks facilitated the establishment
of this nascent caliphate by buying oil exploited from oil fields previously developed
by the Syrian national government. Indeed, many will recall the role played by
members of the Erdogan family in this illicit trade.
But while the
Turks, like the U.S., the Saudis and the Israelis are no innocents in the
enterprise that was geared towards destroying the Ba’athist government of
Syria, President Donald Trump described the Kurds as being “no angels”.
Do the Kudish
militias have clean hands? An examination of the facts reveals that they do
not. For during the quest to carve out a seperate, autonomous territory in
eastern Syria (Kurds represent just 8% of the population of Syria), Kurdish
militias ethnically cleansed the region of its Arab Muslim population and
murdered Christian Assyrian communities. As noted earlier on, their primary
role was to carve out a chunk of territory and the decision to arm Syrian Kurds
taken by Trump in 2017 because it was seen as the fastest way to seize Raqqa,
the capital of the proclaimed caliphate. It was a decision of course which drew
opposition from Turkey.
The irony is
that the Kurds would have been on more secure footing had they joined forces
with the legal, secular government of Syria in fighting the locally-bred
jihadists, as well as the imported Islamist fighters of al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and
IS.
But they have
miscalculated. Some accuse Ottoman-era Kurds of having facilitated the genocide
of Christian Armenians in the early part of the 20th century, as a means
through which thet could obtain a state of their own. But they were denied
this. And now in the 21st century, they look certain to be denied this.
The famous
maxim in international relations of their being no permanent friends or
permanent enemies, only permanent national interests may explain Trump’s
decision to withdraw U.S. forces from this area of Syria. For while the
national interests of the Turks, the Saudis and the Israelis are clearly
defined, the national interest on the part of the United States in pursuing the
policy of balkanising Syria. If the illegal presence of the United States in
Syria was indeed to fight jihadis, then it would have logically sided with the
Syrian administration.
Those who
claim that the Kurds have been “betrayed” do so largely out of ignorance of the
wider facts. And among neoconservative figures such as US Senator Marco Rubio
and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the frequent references to the Kurdish
role in fighting jihadis is to say the least disingenuous. Lindsey Graham, a
senator from South Carolina, was perhaps more honest when assessing that the
biggest losers from Trump’s decision would be the “Kurds and Israel”.
For it has
been in Israel’s interests that the campaign to destroy Syria has been waged,
and not, as Graham strongly, albeit inadvertently implies, in the interests of
the United States.
© Adeyinka
Makinde (2019).
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England.
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