michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: The Trump administration has ordered a full evacuation of the 1,000 American troops that still remain in northern Syria as Turkey intensifies its bombardment of the Kurdish forces there. How is it that those Kurdish forces came to be seen as allies to the U.S. and terrorists to Turkey? It’s Monday, October 14. Ben, give us a sense of what’s going on today where you are. What are you doing?

ben hubbard

I’m in Erbil, in northern Iraq.

michael barbaro

I spoke with my colleague, Middle East correspondent Ben Hubbard, on Friday afternoon.

ben hubbard

I’m waiting for permission from the Kurdish authorities here to cross the border into Syria so that we can go and cover the Turkish military incursion there.

archived recording [EXPLOSIONS]

ben hubbard

You know, it started the other day with sort of shells flying across the border, a few airstrikes. Today, there was a large car bomb —

archived recording [EXPLOSION AND YELLING]

ben hubbard

— in the main city, in this area where we usually stay and where we’ve stayed on our previous trips. It actually happened right down the street from this little fast food restaurant where we used to go and buy sandwiches.

michael barbaro

Wow.

ben hubbard

So that’s scary.

archived recording [SIREN]

ben hubbard

We, all the time, see these images from the Middle East of things getting blown up. But when you sort of recognize this place, it brings it home a bit more than just kind of seeing some kind of destruction on the news.

archived recording [YELLING]

michael barbaro

How many times have you done this now, gone into Syria?

ben hubbard

I’ve done seven trips into Syria since the start of the civil war. My last trip was earlier this year, and that was after Trump had said that he wanted to pull the United States forces. At that time, there were about 2,000 American troops based in northeastern Syria.

archived recording (donald trump) And we have won against ISIS. We’ve beaten them, and we’ve beaten them badly. We’ve taken back the land. And now it’s time for our troops to come back home. archived recording The pullout of U.S. troops from Syria has America’s allies bracing for more conflict. President Trump spoke to Turkey’s president on the phone yesterday and warned him not to mistreat members of the Kurdish community who are fighting ISIS alongside the United States.

ben hubbard

So we wanted to go back and visit and see what this place — you know, what it looked like, how people felt, how they were planning for it. There was a lot of nervousness. People didn’t really know how it was going to affect them. And there was a lot of worry that it would destabilize this part of the country.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

ben hubbard

And there this one particular person that I really wanted to meet. His name was Mazlum Kobani.

michael barbaro

And why did you want to meet him?

ben hubbard

So Mazlum Kobani is the most powerful person in this northeastern corner of Syria.

archived recording General Kobani built his army in Syria with farmers, factory workers and students. Members of an ethnic minority known as the Kurds dominate the militia.

ben hubbard

He is the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is an umbrella group of a number of militias.

archived recording But the Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., led by the Kurds had been the Americans’ main allies in the fight against the Islamic State group.

ben hubbard

And this guy is the head. I mean, he is the guy that decides what these various militias under his umbrella are going to do and where they’re going to fight and how they’re going to deploy.

archived recording Block by block, house by house, they became the foot soldiers who took the state out of the Islamic State.

ben hubbard

He’s involved in strategy, and he’s also the go-to guy for the United States.

archived recording A senior U.S. military officer told us much of the credit belongs to this man, S.D.F. leader General Mazlum Kobani.

ben hubbard

Mazlum Kobani stands right at the juncture of the United States, of Turkey, of the Kurds, of Syria. This is the guy that’s kind of at the center of this whole storm that’s just broken out this week.

michael barbaro

So tell me about the last time that you spent time with him?

ben hubbard

So I wanted to meet him on our last trip, because I wanted to talk to him and ask him, O.K., well, you know, you’ve spent this last number of years building up this partnership with the United States. Now the president wants to leave. How does it affect you? So we put in a message saying that we’d like to see him and that we were in town. And we waited. And then we sort of gave up on waiting, weren’t sure when it was going to come through. We actually went off to do something else. And when we were on the road, driving in the opposite direction, we got a phone call and said, well, if you want to see him, come now.

[music]

ben hubbard

So we promptly turned the car around and drove out to a base that they have. And they sort of showed us where to park and brought us in and then took us into a little trailer with sort of some seats and carpeting. And I think it had A.C. — you know, it had air conditioning and a TV but nothing super luxurious.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

ben hubbard

And there he was — sitting there, wearing camouflage uniform. He was a fairly modest figure, quite soft-spoken. Didn’t have sort of a bluster that you get from a lot of powerful military folk. I noticed when I shook his hand that his palm was quite soft, which sort of taught me that he was not somebody who spends a lot of time holding a Kalashnikov and firing at the enemy, but somebody who was involved in much higher strategic matters. And I sat across from him, asked him if I could record, set down my recording, and then we began the conversation.

mazlum kobani [SPEAKING ARABIC]

michael barbaro

Tell me about that conversation.

ben hubbard

I mean, at that time, it was quite theoretical. Because Trump had said that he wanted to leave. And then a number of people in the administration had sort of talked him down and said no, this is a bad idea. And so, you know, his messaging was very much that we’ve had a very good relationship with the United States. It was working together with the United States that we were able to get rid of ISIS in Syria.

mazlum kobani [SPEAKING ARABIC]

ben hubbard

You know, he sort of talked about it as in this partnership — was kind of keeping the lid on things. But there was a lot of concern about sleeper cells and about remnants of the Islamic State that were hiding out and just sort of looking for their opportunity to come back. I think he was quite concerned that if the U.S. left, that would be a lot easier for them to do.

mazlum kobani [SPEAKING ARABIC]

michael barbaro

And Ben, what is it about this man that would cause him to be seen so differently by the Turks than by the Americans?

ben hubbard

Well, part of it is that the United States history with Mazlum Kobani is very short. The Turkish history with him is very long. And so we have to sort of go back and look at the much longer history, you know, of who this guy was and what he was involved in before he showed up as a partner with the Americans a few years ago. So he’s Kurdish, for one. The Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world that does not have its own nation. There are 30 to 45 million of them, mostly in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. They were promised their own state by Western powers after World War I, which they never got. And so the current borders of the region were drawn, and the Kurds were left in all these different countries. And so most of them have been interested in having some kind of Kurdish independence or an independent Kurdish state since that happened. In Turkey, there was a very strong effort by the state to try to quash Kurdish identity.

[music]

archived recording The Kurds have suffered repression, mainly in education and political representation in the country.

ben hubbard

They would ban teaching of Kurdish language in schools and other forms of cultural expression. And in the late 1970s, there was a reaction to this. There were a number of Kurdish activists who got together and founded something called the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the P.K.K.

archived recording Although banned, the Kurdish Workers’ Party is supported by many thousands of Kurdish villagers, especially the youth. Most are convinced it’s the only way forward.

ben hubbard

They became a military organization. They were basically an underground guerrilla organization that went to war with the Turkish state. And they would attack Turkish army vehicles, army posts, sometimes Turkish civilians. The Turkish Army would respond with raids and attacks on Kurdish villages. And it was just kind of classic insurgency and counterinsurgency.

archived recording According to Turkish sources, up to 2008, the conflict between Turkey and the P.K.K. resulted in over 40,000 deaths, including P.K.K. members, the Turkish military and civilians.

ben hubbard

And so when Turkey thinks about the Kurdish issue and when they think specifically about the P.K.K., this is what they think about.

michael barbaro

So when Turkey calls the Kurdish terrorists, they’re referring to Kurds who attempted to stage a kind of uprising within Turkey to finally get the state that they believed they were owed?

ben hubbard

Exactly.

archived recording And the P.K.K. is certainly growing. It now claims 50,000 members fighting for an independent Kurdistan.

ben hubbard

So in the midst of this insurgency and counterinsurgency that’s tearing apart southeastern Turkey, the P.K.K. spreads. You have operatives who leave and set up bases elsewhere in the region. You have Kurds from other countries who sympathize with the movement and join. And this is where Mazlum Kobani comes into the picture.

michael barbaro

And what does he tell you about his own role in this story?

ben hubbard

Almost nothing.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

ben hubbard

We don’t exactly know what his real name is. I mean, he goes by the name Mazlum Kobani, which is a nom de guerre. Mazlum is a nickname, and Kobani is the name of his hometown. When I asked him what his real name was, he told me it was Mazlum Abdi. Then if you go and ask the Turks, they tell you that his real name is Ferhat Abdi Shahin. So nobody knows exactly what the guy’s real name is.

michael barbaro

Hmm. But from what you can piece together, how does he fit into this movement that ends up operating in this part of Syria?

ben hubbard

So I was very curious about his history. I mean, when you work in the Middle East, you learn that people’s histories matter. You know, people don’t change affiliations very easy. And when I met Mazlum, he was 52 years old. And I knew that he had studied at Aleppo University and that he had popped up in Syria in his late 40s. And so my question was, well, what did this guy do in the meantime? Where was he?

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

ben hubbard

American officials didn’t seem very curious about that question. So I talked to other people in the region. I talked to the Turks, and I talked to officials in Iraq, who told me that, yeah, he had been very active in the P.K.K. He had joined when he was in university. He’d been an operative primarily based in northern Iraq. I was told as well that he more recently became the head of a special operations unit that oversaw some attacks on Turkish soldiers.

michael barbaro

So this is how we get to this really fraught moment where the U.S. and Turkey see him so differently, because, in fact, he quite possibly is both things — somebody who was inflicting damage on Turkey and a very reliable ally to the U.S.?

ben hubbard

Exactly.

[music]

ben hubbard

The Turks, when they look at this guy, they pay attention to what he did in the previous three decades, and how he was active in this organization that carried out a lot of violence in Turkey and received a lot of violence from the Turkish state, to be fair. The Americans are not really interested in that. What they see is what he’s done since 2014 — that he’s been this very disciplined military leader who has very organized forces who do what they’re told and ended up being very successful partners in the battle against the Islamic State.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. So this ends up being this kind of fascinating geopolitical collision, where, in acting as a militia organization fighting Turkey, this group of Kurds ends up in a spot in Syria where they’re perfectly positioned to help the U.S. join this fight against the rising threat of ISIS.

ben hubbard

Yeah. There’s no way that these guys would have had the organizational skills and the military skills to become valuable allies to the United States if they didn’t have all this history fighting the Turks.

michael barbaro

Mm. But what’s in it for these Kurds to work with the U.S. against ISIS?

ben hubbard

Well, it starts because they’re in a state of emergency.

archived recording [GUNS FIRING] ISIS is on the move again, taking on Kurdish fighters and extending the borders of what they call their Islamic State.

ben hubbard

I mean, in 2014, their backs were really to the wall. ISIS was expanding and taking over a tremendous amount of territory. It was terrifying people by beheading people on television. And, you know, they were besieging some of their towns. And they wanted to go in and slaughter all the Kurds because they considered them infidels.

archived recording Well, the Kurds themselves say they need help because they fear a massacre.

ben hubbard

In that situation, they find out that the United States also wants to fight against the Islamic State. But they didn’t want to put people on the ground. So they needed local partners, and they found this Kurdish militia. And the United States started launching airstrikes. This is really when this partnership was born. You had the guys on the ground, telling them where the positions were that needed to be bombed. And they pushed ISIS back from Kobani.

archived recording Kobani — that is the town on the Syrian-Turkish border, just on the Syrian side. ISIL fighters there, as you can see, bombarding the town. Shells —

ben hubbard

Then they start putting in place plans to push ISIS out of other towns. And as their territory expands, as they push the jihadists back, they sort of look around and say, wow, we have all this territory now, and we need to govern it. And so this is when a new project comes along, which is trying to figure out how to put their ideology into place and institute a kind of autonomous rule for local communities in these areas.

michael barbaro

So Ben, what kind of understanding develops between the U.S. and these Kurds in Syria about how deep this partnership will be, how long it will last, and what kind of protections both are going to provide for each other?

ben hubbard

Well, it’s unclear, which is one of the ways that we got ourselves in the situation that we’re in now. I don’t think it’s ever really spelled out. So basically, these guys start taking over more territory. They come into Arab areas. They come into Christian areas. These places have their own militias. This is what all comes together to become the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is the umbrella group that we’re talking about now. And there’s always been, in my view, a contradiction in U.S. policy, where we were very happy to work with these guys militarily. I mean, we trained them so that we didn’t have to have Americans on the ground. But there was never any real American recognition that they also had a political project that they were trying to implement. And this finally came to a head.

michael barbaro

Hmm. So it was a bit of an inconvenient truth for the United States, so we just focused on the most recent part of their history, and we kind of ignored the part that involved Turkey?

ben hubbard

I think for the United States, it was very much a marriage of convenience. I mean, when I — after I met Mazlum, I went and I interviewed American military people who knew him and had worked with them. And most of them who were around said, oh, yeah, we know exactly who these guys were. And so I think the U.S. government was aware at the time of the P.K.K. background of these guys, but this is not a group that has huge resonance in the United States. They’ve never attacked American interests. They’ve never been active or significantly active in the United States. So I think for American policymakers who were also in a state of emergency, trying to figure out what do we do about the Islamic State, it seemed like the best way to do it. And it was. I mean, it worked. But there was never any agreement about what happens after the Islamic State is gone, what happens in this territory, who’s in charge. That’s been a question that’s been hanging over U.S. policy — is O.K., what next?

michael barbaro

Right. And now we know what’s next is the U.S. is starting to withdraw and giving Turkey the green light to cross over into Syria and attack these Kurdish troops.

ben hubbard

Yes.

michael barbaro

And Ben, would the U.S. have been able to contain ISIS in this part of the region without Mazlum and his troops?

ben hubbard

It’s very hard to imagine a scenario in which we could have done that. It was very clear that even under Obama, there was no way that we were going to send significant numbers of American troops onto the ground here. The legacy of the Iraq War kept everyone out of it. We didn’t want to do that. And so it really allowed us to outsource the ground fighting. We had very small numbers of American troops on the ground. We were allowed to keep American jets in the air and American commanders on protected military bases. And these guys did a lot of the ground fighting. They were the ones who were on the front lines, going into these cities and being spotters for airstrikes. There’s just really no way without a massive American deployment that we could have done this.

michael barbaro

Ben, I’m curious, was the relationship with the U.S. ultimately part of what made the Kurdish fighters such a threat to Turkey, the fact of that partnership?

ben hubbard

Absolutely. There’s really no way that this group would have ended up in control of as much territory as they now have if they had not had the military backing of the United States. I mean, that really turbo-charged what they were able to do and left them in charge of this huge swath of northeastern Syria. And the Turks sitting across the border were horrified by this. They basically said, you know, here’s one of our allies in NATO who’s working with this group that has a history of fighting us inside of our own borders. And thanks to their partnership with our NATO friends, they’re taking more and more territory and setting up governance and, you know, this is going to be a national security threat. At the same time, I think that the Kurds in Syria were very aware that this was maybe not going to go very well. I mean, Trump was very clear, as soon as he came in, that he did not want to keep people here long-term. During my last trip, when I actually sat down with Mazlum, he spoke about this.

mazlum kobani [SPEAKING ARABIC] ben hubbard Mm-hmm. mazlum kobani [SPEAKING ARABIC]

ben hubbard

He said our idea would be for the Americans to stay, because we think that what we’ve done is positive. We think we had a positive partnership. We were able to do good things, and that we can continue to stabilize this part of Syria.

mazlum kobani [SPEAKING ARABIC]

ben hubbard

But after I left that interview, we drove around elsewhere in the area. And we noticed along the sides of the roads every 200, 300 meters, there was a little pile of dirt. And we realized people were digging. And they were digging tunnels because they were scared that if the Americans left, they were going to be stuck fighting the Turks. And being a good old-fashioned guerrilla organization, when you do that, you build tunnels, so that you can pop out and shoot at people from behind. And so that made it very clear to me that they no longer have faith that the U.S. is going to stay and have their back. And they’re coming up with their plan B, which is they think that they’re eventually going to fight the Turks, and they’re starting to put in place the infrastructure to do that.

michael barbaro

Have you had a chance to speak to Mazlum in the time since President Trump actually drew down U.S. forces from the Turkey-Syria border and these Turkish forces began this military operation, actually starting to invade this part of Syria?

ben hubbard

So I was able to reach him on a very poor telephone connection. This was after Trump had acknowledged that the Turks were going in and said that he was going to pull American troops out of the way, but before it had actually started.

michael barbaro

What did he say about this decision by the U.S.? Does he feel betrayed?

ben hubbard

He never used that word. The word that he used was disappointment. He said that this decision was a disappointment for them. Then when I asked him about what was next, he basically said, we’re going to resist. If the Turks come in, we’re ready for them. We’ve been at war for seven years, and we can continue the war for another seven years.

michael barbaro

But without the U.S. as a buffer and a protective force, what kind of chances do these Kurdish forces have against the Turkish military?

ben hubbard

I think we have every reason to expect a very bloody battle that could draw on for a very long time. What we’re going to see is a NATO country that has a very modern military with jets and tanks and all sorts of heavy machinery going up against what’s basically a militia that has guns and R.P.G.s and more kinds of light weapons. What they do have is a lot of experience doing insurgency. So I think what we could see is going back to the way that they fought the Turks inside of Turkey. And so we’re going to see roadside bombs. We can see covert attacks to blow up tanks and things like that. But I think that if the Turks really do keep pushing in, I think it could get very bloody and very violent.

michael barbaro

So when you do cross the border, will you try to find Mazlum? Will you try to check in with him?

ben hubbard

I’ll definitely try to see him. I’ll definitely send a message to his people and say that we’re there and that we would like to talk to him and hear what he’s thinking and what he’s planning for the future. I have no idea if that’ll work.

[music]

ben hubbard

He might consider it too risky to meet with us. And I think when he’s talked to me in the past, it’s because he saw me and he saw The New York Times as a way not just to speak to American policymakers, but also to speak to the American people. The mood has obviously changed. He’s seen a decision from Washington that’s left his people and the region that he is trying to protect incredibly vulnerable to a longtime enemy. Now we’ve got bombs going off in cities and shells landing and airstrikes happening. And I think there’s probably a sense that the reason this is all happening is because of a decision made in the United States. And he might not feel it necessarily worth his while now to try to send a message to the United States anymore.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well, Ben, stay safe. Good luck on this reporting, and we’ll talk to you soon.

ben hubbard

Thank you.

michael barbaro

On Sunday, during an interview with CBS, the U.S. secretary of defense, Mark Esper, said that he was evacuating the 1,000 American troops that remain in northern Syria — for their own protection.

archived recording (mark esper) So I spoke with the president last night after discussions with the rest of the national security team. And he directed that we begin a deliberate withdrawal of forces from northern Syria. archived recording (margaret brennan) A deliberate withdrawal from the entire country? archived recording (mark esper) From northern Syria. archived recording (margaret brennan) From northern Syria. archived recording (mark esper) Which is where most of our forces are.

michael barbaro

The evacuation will represent a nearly total withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and the complete abandonment of Kurdish fighters there. In response, the Kurdish fighters announced they had formed a new alliance with the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, a sworn enemy of the U.S. Amid the U.S. withdrawal, The Times reports that Turkish-backed fighters have brutally executed Kurdish leaders and that Kurdish forces have lost control of a prison holding 700 relatives and supporters of Islamic State fighters, allowing everyone inside to escape.

archived recording (margaret brennan) Just in the past few hours online, there have been videos circulating — horrific videos — showing execution of some of these Kurdish allies of ours. There are reports of hundreds of ISIS fighters and family members just running free. archived recording (mark esper) It’s terrible. It’s a terrible situation. We condemn it. We have condemned it.

michael barbaro