In 2014, ISIS – also called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Daesh, its name in Arabic – captured the Syrian city of Raqqa to establish a caliphate (i.e., a “political-religious state comprising the Muslim community and the lands and peoples under its dominion in the centuries following the death (632 CE) of the Prophet Muhammad”).
In his book Caliphate: The History of An Idea, professor of Arabic at the University of London Hugh Kennedy makes the concept of a caliphate a little easier to understand: “You can choose what you want to take from this tradition, but the choice is yours. If you want a caliphate which is aggressive and fiercely controlling of the Muslim population, you can find precedents in the vast historical records. If you want a caliphate which is generous and open to different ideas and customs while, of course, remaining true to its vision of God’s will and purpose, then you can find that in the historical tradition too.”
“The past bears many different messages. There are those who see caliphate as a vehicle for imposing their particular and often very narrow view of Islam on the umma (i.e. the whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion); there are others who see caliphate as a justification for aiming at world conquest; but there are equally those who see caliphate as simply providing a framework in which Muslims can strive to live a godly life and make up their own minds about the best way to this.”
Unfortunately, the aggressive, fiercely controlling type is what ISIS had in mind in Syria in 2014. Through the next few months, ISIS stampeded across eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq gaining territory – including Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. ISIS finally declared its self-styled caliphate in June. At its peak, ISIS had engaged over 40,000 recruits from 100 countries.
Almost five years later, in March 2019, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – the Syrian Kurdish militia led by the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) – declared victory over ISIS.
Serving as America’s primary ground ally, the SDF liberated five million people from terrorism and 52,000 square kilometers of Syrian territory at the cost of 11,000 of their soldiers’ lives. Although ISIS was not entirely defeated, the collapse of the caliphate was a massive victory for the SDF and the United States.
At the same time, in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was on a tyrant roll, increasingly favoring more radical versions of Islam and becoming a growing threat to Israel; meeting with Hamas leaders that were on pretty much every terrorist watch list, including ours; arming the Muslim Brotherhood in Africa; and expanding Turkey’s military presence into thirteen countries, including Libya where he unilaterally claimed large natural gas deposits.
Erdoğan was also busy provoking important friends of America. He was fighting with Greece, a U.S. NATO ally, over gas reserves and maritime rights; he was taunting France by violating an arms embargo against Libya; and he was threating the United Arab Emirates because they normalized ties with Israel.
But the biggie was that, for years, Erdoğan had been threatening to invade northern Syria as tensions increased over 1) a “safe zone” between the SDF and southern Turkey, as well as the Syrian town of Manbij, and 2) Turkey’s acquisition of a $2.5 billion Russian-made missile system – the S-400 air defense system – that the West saw as a threat to NATO security.
< The main problem with the S-400 is that it’s not fully compatible with the broader NATO air defense system, which several member countries believe would weaken the entire NATO defense framework. That said, since then, the S-400 has faced significant, publicized failures in Ukraine, exposing tactical vulnerabilities. >
Erdoğan claimed he was forced to buy the missile system from Russia because the Obama administration would not sell him Patriot missiles, but that was a lie. Both the Obama and Trump administrations approved weapons sales to Turkey. Because of Erdoğan’s S-400 deal with Russia, in July 2019 the United States kicked Turkey out of its F-35 fighter jet program over safety concerns (the F-35 is an advanced aircraft that is going to be used in several NATO-member air forces). Essentially, American officials thought the new Russian system would compromise U.S. stealth technology – or more to the point, that the Russians implementing the new S-400 defense system on the ground in Turkey would steal our stealth technology, which was probably a good bet.
This move by the United States prompted Erdoğan & Co. to tell anyone with a microphone that, if the U.S. showed aggression toward Turkey in any way, they would not hesitate to retaliate. This was not just talk. Erdoğan had been amassing troops along the borders of northern Syria and northern Iraq for over a year.
Meanwhile, in April 2019 Russia and Syria unleashed brutal attacks in the northern province of Idlib, an area located on the Turkish border in northwest Syria – even though there had been a long-standing truce between Turkey and Russia that would ostensibly protect Idlib (called the Sochi agreement, signed in 1992).
This outright slaughter of innocent civilians eventually led to the displacement of over 100,000 people. This, in addition to the over 5 million Syrians who had already been forced to leave the country and the more than 6 million who were already internally displaced.
Amnesty International recounted scenes from this nightmare (we know this account is long and likely upsetting, but it’s difficult for many of us in America to truly picture the atrocities involved here – and it’s important that we do, at least occasionally):
The Syrian government, backed by its ally Russia, subjected civilians in opposition-held areas in northwest Syria to a new wave of horrors. In an all-too-familiar pattern, attacks from the air and the ground repeatedly struck residential areas and crucial infrastructure. Yet even by the standards of this calamitous nine-year crisis, the resulting displacement and humanitarian emergency were unprecedented.
In towns and villages in Idlib and western Aleppo governorates, the barrage of attacks emptied out entire communities; the escalation was evidently a continuation of an offensive that began in April 2019 targeting the last pocket under the control of armed opposition groups. Cornered, and with nowhere left to go, civilians flooded already overstretched displacement camps, pitched tents in farms and schools, or ended up in the open in brutal weather.
Amnesty International documented a total of 18 attacks on medical facilities and schools that happened between May 5, 2019 and February 25, 2020 in Idlib, northwestern Hama and western Aleppo governorates. Of those, Syrian government forces carried out three ground attacks and two-barrel bomb attacks. The remaining 13 attacks were air strike attacks: two by Syrian government forces, seven by Russian government forces, and four by Syrian or Russian government forces.
A doctor who survived one of the documented attacks – three air strikes in the vicinity of al-Shami hospital in Ariha on January 29, 2020 – told Amnesty International how the strikes flattened at least two residential buildings around the hospital, killed 11 civilians including one of his colleagues, and injured more than 30 others. ‘I felt so helpless. My friend and colleague dying, children and women screaming outside… We were all paralyzed,’ he said. ‘It took the civil defense two days to remove the bodies’ from underneath the rubble of one the flattened buildings, he added.
Based on corroborating witness statements and other credible information, particularly observations by flight spotters, Amnesty International concluded this unlawful attack was carried out by Russian government forces.
A teacher who witnessed an attack on a school in Idlib city on February 25, 2020 described to Amnesty International how a cluster munition explosion injured her and killed a student before her eyes. As soon as she had finished teaching the first period that day, the principal ordered everyone to evacuate the school due to a wave of attacks on the city.
She and others who evacuated were walking past another nearby school when it was hit by a cluster munition. ‘A bomblet exploded close to my feet, blowing the flesh off… The pain was unbearable… Two students were walking in front of me. One died instantly and the other one, miraculously, survived… I know the sound of a cluster munition attack very well. You hear a series of small explosions. As if the sky were raining shrapnel instead of water,’ she said. In total, three people were killed, and five others injured.
Amnesty International concluded this unlawful attack was carried out by Syrian government forces; it identified the remnant as a surface-fired, 220mm 9M27K cargo rocket, manufactured in Russia and transferred to the Syrian army, containing 9N210 or 9N235 cluster munitions, which are prohibited under international law.
Evidence shows that, in their entirety, the documented attacks by Syrian and Russian government forces entailed a myriad of serious violations of international humanitarian law. To name a few, the attacks were not directed at a specific military object, and they violated the immunity from direct attack of civilians and civilian objects, as well as the special protection afforded to specific persons and objects, particularly medical facilities, medical personnel and children.
These violations amount to war crimes. The attacks must also be viewed in the context of the well-established pattern of Syrian government forces targeting civilian infrastructure and civilians in areas under the control of armed opposition groups as part of a widespread and systematic attack on the civilian population, therefore constituting crimes against humanity.
It was against this highly volatile and murderous backdrop that, reportedly bored in the White House on a Sunday in October, Donald Trump decided to insert himself into the drama – which, as we all know, is always super helpful.
Nine months prior to this day, in December 2018, President Trump randomly announced that the U.S. was going to pull 2,000 troops out of Syria – a proclamation that came as such an offense to some people in his administration that two of them resigned (Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Special Presidential Envoy to the Coalition Fighting the Islamic State Brett McGurk). The primary reason for their adamant dissent was the immense danger the Syrian Democratic Forces – our fearless and faithful allies – would face if America abruptly left Syria.
Thankfully, President Trump was talked out of this monumentally terrible idea and around 1,000 U.S. Special Operations forces remained.
Fast forward nine months to that boring October Sunday in the White House. In typical schizophrenic fashion, Donald Trump again announced that U.S. forces would withdraw from the border between Syria and Turkey – an out of the blue, unilateral announcement that, without question, is one of the single most ill-informed, irresponsible, and shameful foreign policy failures of Donald Trump’s first term (and that’s saying something).
It cannot be overstated what an amateur move this was. Clearly, the sitting president of the United States knew nothing about the situation on the ground in Syria and cared about nothing more than making his boyfriend Erdoğan happy, which he certainly did by handing Erdoğan exactly what he had always longed for… American allies and soldiers be damned.
President Trump’s Sunday Surprise also gave Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies – who had already proven they would go to any lengths necessary to regain total control of Syria – free rein to continue committing mass murder and other vicious war crimes.
But, BY FAR, the absolute worst – and most heartbreaking – part of this insanely irresponsible decision was the immeasurable danger the Syrian Democratic Forces were immediately put in by Donald Trump.
It’s impossible to imagine how betrayed they felt by his actions. It physically makes us sick to our stomachs to think that any leader of our beloved country could do this to such dedicated and faithful allies.
< Note: At the time, we thought this would surely be one of the most disgraceful foreign policy actions in U.S. history, at least in our lifetimes. We never imagined that this shameful episode would be matched by the actions of the very next American president, who outright abandoned many of our dedicated and faithful allies in Afghanistan with what seemed like zero conscious or compassion. More on this here. >
To make matters far worse, American troops were standing right next to SDF forces when they learned of their commander-in-chief’s decision, placing our service members squarely in the crosshairs of an incredibly hostile and dangerous situation. The entire episode is just outrageous.
Almost immediately – and entirely predictably – the Islamic State started murdering local SDF leaders, and within three days, Turkey launched air and ground operations against them. To protect themselves – and given no other choice by the United States – the SDF, one of the most loyal partners America has even known, was soon forced to announce a partnership with the Russian and Iran-backed government in Damascus.
To add insult to injury, over a hundred extremely dangerous ISIS fighters that were previously being held by the SDF escaped, a consequence that SDF leadership had long warned of in the event of an American exit.
Well, fellow Americans, after having lived through almost an entire term under President Trump by then, we should have guessed where this was heading. After creating colossal chaos, his specialty, President Trump – under enormous domestic pressure and international outrage – suddenly changed his mind and reversed course yet again.
Within two months of his Sunday Surprise troop-withdrawal proclamation, the U.S. military resumed large-scale counter-terrorism missions against the Islamic State in northern Syria.