A Syrian boy holds his father's hand after disembarking from one of the buses that brought 784 Syrian refugees to Bardarash Refugee Camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. Credit:Kate Geraghty

As refugees continue to flood out of Syria and into Iraq, the Kurds are burning with resentment against their former United States ally.

Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size No sooner had we ordered tea and coffee at a cafe in downtown Dohuk on Thursday afternoon than a rangy, middle-aged man sitting nearby started throwing us dirty looks. This is a Kurdish town in the hills of northern Iraq and on the wall behind us the TV was fixed on a 24-hour news channel covering one story only: the Turkish invasion of neighbouring Syria at the expense of these people's Kurdish cousins. But the man was not watching the news. He had his eyes fixed on us. "Are you American?" he spat in our direction. "No, no," our colleague, Halan Shekha, assured him in Kurdish. "They are Australian journalists." "Just as well," the man replied, relaxing. "If you had been American, I would have told you this [gesturing at the TV] was all your fault." Colonel Amin Mohammed made it abundantly clear he was not pleased with the US. Credit:Kate Geraghty


The Kurds have a saying that their only friend is the mountains, and in the past few weeks, US President Donald Trump and his deputy, Mike Pence, have seemed determined to prove them right. Kurdish forces fought alongside Americans to defeat Islamic State at the cost of 11,000 of their young fighting men and women's lives. Despite this, almost two weeks ago the United States withdrew the 1000 troops who were keeping the peace along the border with the Kurds' long-time enemy, Turkey. Ankara responded almost immediately by invading territory the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces have effectively ruled over for several years. On top of that, as is his habit, Trump insulted them. Their existential battle with Turkey "has nothing to do with us", the President said, and Kurds were, by the way, "no angels". Former Peshmerga captain Ibrahim Mohammed discusses the US "betrayal" of the Kurds. Credit:Kate Geraghty 'The biggest betrayal'

The skinny man in the Dohuk coffee shop introduced himself as Ibrahim Mohammed, a former captain in the Kurdish military, the Peshmerga.


He fought alongside Americans in the war to oust Saddam Hussein. He says he saved a group of them in a 2004 or 2005 battle in Mosul and was wounded in the hip and shoulder by an explosion in 2006. His brother was a translator for the US military during their invasion of Iraq and, until the past two weeks, a staunch defender of America. But to Mohammed, Trump's Syria pullout was "the biggest betrayal". He was disgusted and his brother, the translator, "very upset and sad". Trump, Mohammed said, was "together" with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in trying to damage the Kurdish people. "I think we Kurds will stop being an ally of America and we'll end up being allies of Russia, because when they say something they don't go back on it," Mohammed said. "America is not [to] be trusted." It's a common sentiment here and, just a few hours after we spoke, on Thursday night local time, US Vice-President Mike Pence made an announcement that will once again put America's trustworthiness to the test. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video After a four-hour meeting, Pence signed a peace agreement with Erdogan that appeared to give the Turkish leader substantially what he wanted in Syria in return for a ceasefire. Among the things Erdogan wanted was a 32-kilometre-deep "buffer" extending into Syrian territory along its border with Turkey. Turkey's army - the second largest in NATO after the United States' - would have the primary responsibility of patrolling that buffer, a joint US-Turkey statement said, and the Kurdish military force in Syria, the YPG, has a five-day window to clear out.


Two birds, one stone

The Syrian Kurds' military leader, Mazlum Abdi, said he had been part of the negotiations and that he welcomed the ceasefire, saying it had been achieved through "the struggle of our people and our soldiers". Loading "Whatever we can do as [the Syrian Democratic Forces] to make this ceasefire work, we will do." So far so good, but the agreement has some significant gaps. It said nothing about the role of the Syrian government, the Russian army, or the dozens of armed, radical militias that Turkey has employed to do its dirty work in Syria - three key and highly invested players in the conflict. Most importantly, the deal was silent on Ankara's ultimate aim, which is to fill its "safe" zone with two million Syrian refugees who fled north during the bloody civil war and have been living in Turkey ever since. Erdogan wants to kill two birds with one stone - lighten his country's refugee burden and use those primarily Arab refugees to create a "buffer" between Turkey and the Kurds, whom he regards as "terrorists".


Men discuss the war in Rojava - the name given to the Kurdish region in Syria - at a coffee shop in Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan. Credit:Kate Geraghty But this part of the plan was always the most contentious, an unsubtle attempt to wipe Kurds from 15,000 square kilometres of land, city, farms and suburbs that they own, and tilt the demographic balance by adding millions of Arabs. Some called it "ethnic cleansing", and we have to assume, because it's not mentioned in the agreement with Pence, that Erdogan has not given up on this key ambition. Not surprisingly, that would be unacceptable to the Kurds. "Demographic change must not be carried out," commander-in-chief Abdi said. "The people of this region must return to their own homes and land. The aims of the attackers must not be realised." On its first night in operation, the Pence-Erdogan agreement also threatened to get bogged down between the parties in an argument about which particular regions of north-eastern Syria it would cover. Tough guy tennis



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