Angry scenes demonstrate sense of betrayal amid rushed US pullout as Trump says remaining force is to protect oil not Kurds

Pelted with fruit and hounded by insults, the American military’s exit from Syria was very different from its time on the ground. The remnants of the US presence in the north-east of the country made an ignominious departure on Monday, driving through towns that had welcomed them for the past four years.

The regional capital of Qamishli, a hub of cooperation between US officers and Kurdish officials throughout the war against Islamic State, was among the least hospitable spots on the road out. As US battle trucks, sporting large American flags, made their way through town and headed towards Iraq, groups of locals threw rotting fruit and vegetables at them, cursing soldiers that only two weeks ago many in the region had considered to be their protectors.

The US convoy of roughly 100 armoured vehicles and lorries competed with a new wave of refugees as it made its way to the border, passing cars full of families crammed with their possessions. They too were leaving for Iraq, where the uncertainty of exile awaited.

The departing Americans, on the other hand, are set to regroup in Iraq’s Kurdistan region before returning home – their mission to safeguard a still-volatile region dramatically cut short by their commander-in-chief, who abruptly decided earlier this month to abandon allies who had been at the vanguard of the fight against Isis ahead of a Turkish assault.

Donald Trump made clear on Monday that those US forces remaining in eastern Syria would be there to protect the oil rather than the people.

“So we have a small group there, and we secured the oil. Other than that, there’s no reason for it, in our opinion,” the president told reporters. “Where’s the agreement that said we have to say in the Middle East for the rest of humanity, for the rest of civilization to protect the Kurds? We never said that.”

Trump appeared to think that the border area where the Turkish army and their civilian proxies are operating was equivalent to a demilitarized zone.

“In the old days, we’d call it a demilitarized zone,” he said, presenting the Kurdish retreat as a diplomatic victory made possible by the bloody fighting following the Turkish incursion.

“If they didn’t go through two and a half days of hell, I don’t think they would have done it.”

The US defence secretary, Mark Esper, confirmed that the US was keeping troops “in north-east Syria that are located next to the oil fields”.

“The troops in those towns are not in the present phase of withdrawal,” Esper told journalists during a visit to Saudi Arabia. “A purpose of those forces, working with the SDF [Kurd-led Syrian Democratic Forces] is to deny access to those oilfields by Isis and others who may benefit.”

The admission that the troops the US was leaving behind would be there exclusively to guard the oil, rather than the Kurds and the several other minorities in the area, seemed likely to further inflame already widespread feelings of betrayal.

“People are angry, and they have every right to be angry with the way Americans left them on the battlefield,” said Khalil Omar, 56, a shopkeeper, in Qamishli. “They are angry because they feel like they are tricked and taken for a fool for these past years.

“We sent our children with them to fight Isis, and they abandoned us. Betrayal is hard to get over, and I hope we’ll remember this for the future. America knows the people who are murdering people on the roads very well, but they chose to turn a blind eye, and now they are walking away from all of it. True friends don’t walk away in hard times.”

Quick guide What is happening in north-eastern Syria? Show Hide Who is in control in north-eastern Syria? Until Turkey launched its offensive there on 9 October, the region was controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which comprises militia groups representing a range of ethnicities, though its backbone is Kurdish. Since the Turkish incursion, the SDF has lost much of its territory and appears to be losing its grip on key cities. On 13 October, Kurdish leaders agreed to allow Syrian regime forces to enter some cities to protect them from being captured by Turkey and its allies. The deal effectively hands over control of huge swathes of the region to Damascus. That leaves north-eastern Syria divided between Syrian regime forces, Syrian opposition militia and their Turkish allies, and areas still held by the SDF – for now. On 17 October Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, agreed with US vice-president Mike Pence, to suspend Ankara’s operation for five days in order to allow Kurdish troops to withdraw. The following week, on 22 October, Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin agreed on the parameters of the proposed Turkish “safe zone” in Syria. How did the SDF come to control the region? Before the SDF was formed in 2015, the Kurds had created their own militias who mobilised during the Syrian civil war to defend Kurdish cities and villages and carve out what they hoped would eventually at least become a semi-autonomous province. In late 2014, the Kurds were struggling to fend off an Islamic State siege of Kobane, a major city under their control. With US support, including arms and airstrikes, the Kurds managed to beat back Isis and went on to win a string of victories against the radical militant group. Along the way the fighters absorbed non-Kurdish groups, changed their name to the SDF and grew to include 60,000 soldiers. Why does Turkey oppose the Kurds? For years, Turkey has watched the growing ties between the US and SDF with alarm. Significant numbers of the Kurds in the SDF were also members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) that has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for more than 35 years in which as many as 40,000 people have died. The PKK initially called for independence and now demands greater autonomy for Kurds inside Turkey. Turkey claims the PKK has continued to wage war on the Turkish state, even as it has assisted in the fight against Isis. The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US, the UK, Nato and others and this has proved awkward for the US and its allies, who have chosen to downplay the SDF’s links to the PKK, preferring to focus on their shared objective of defeating Isis. What are Turkey’s objectives on its southern border? Turkey aims firstly to push the SDF away from its border, creating a 20-mile (32km) buffer zone that would have been jointly patrolled by Turkish and US troops until Trump’s recent announcement that American soldiers would withdraw from the region. Erdoğan has also said he would seek to relocate more than 1 million Syrian refugees in this “safe zone”, both removing them from his country (where their presence has started to create a backlash) and complicating the demographic mix in what he fears could become an autonomous Kurdish state on his border. How would a Turkish incursion impact on Isis? Nearly 11,000 Isis fighters, including almost 2,000 foreigners, and tens of thousands of their wives and children, are being held in detention camps and hastily fortified prisons across north-eastern Syria. SDF leaders have warned they cannot guarantee the security of these prisoners if they are forced to redeploy their forces to the frontlines of a war against Turkey. They also fear Isis could use the chaos of war to mount attacks to free their fighters or reclaim territory.

On 11 October, it was reported that at least five detained Isis fighters had escaped a prison in the region. Two days later, 750 foreign women affiliated to Isis and their children managed to break out of a secure annex in the Ain Issa camp for displaced people, according to SDF officials. It is unclear which detention sites the SDF still controls and the status of the prisoners inside. Michael Safi

Two weeks after Donald Trump’s order for US troops to withdraw ahead of the Turkish invasion, the impact continues to ricochet across the battlefields of the Kurdish north and into the region beyond.

Kurdish forces attacked by the Turkish military said they had completed a withdrawal from a “safe zone” near the Turkish border. Meanwhile, Turkey, which had declared a ceasefire that is set to expire on Tuesday night, said it was setting up observation posts in a swath of Syria it has commandeered in a short intensive fight to oust Kurdish militias.

The Turkish move drew the ire of Iran, an ally of the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, whose forces are slowly returning to the region, as part of a deal brokered to slow the Turkish push.

The sudden US departure, the retreat of the Kurds and the advance of Turkey and its Arab proxies increased instability in an-already volatile region.

In the vacuum created by the Isis rampage across both sides of the Iraq-Syria border, Iran has emerged as a prominent actor, shoring up supply lines into Syria and Lebanon, which have helped secure Assad.

“With these events today, we are just hopelessly exposed,” said a senior US diplomat, who declined to be named, adding that the US move was “a capitulation”.

Additional reporting: Mohammed Rasool