Kurds Protest Aleppo Clashes as US Fails to Define 'Ally'
Syria's Kurds are protesting the withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from Aleppo. The New Arab article, like much of mainstream media, presents this as a standalone event, a new tremor in a volatile region. What they omit is a consistent pattern: the U.S. has repeatedly armed and leveraged Kurdish forces in Syria—from fighting ISIS to containing Assad—only to ultimately leave them vulnerable to Turkish
aggression or Syrian regime advances. One might recall the 2019 betrayal when Trump withdrew troops, greenlighting a Turkish offensive against the very Kurdish allies who had been the primary ground force against ISIS (a detail often memory-holed). This isn't 'fear' of wider conflict; it's the predictable outcome of strategic incoherence. The current Biden administration maintains sanctions on
Syria that cripple the populace, while simultaneously allowing Turkish and Syrian forces to operate with de facto impunity against groups the US claimed to support. It leaves one wondering if 'ally' is simply a placeholder for 'expendable pawn' in Washington's Middle East playbook. How many times will this tragic loop play out before the media connects the dots between a protest and the foreign
policy that manufactured its cause?