Britain and Europe must act after Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds

If anyone still doubted the recklessness of Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy, all such doubts should have been dispelled by his decision – apparently taken over the weekend in the privacy of his White House bedroom – to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, thus opening the door to an invasion by Turkish troops that threatens the survival of America’s erstwhile allies, the Kurds.

Yesterday afternoon, Turkish warplanes attacked targets in a sector south of the Syrian border, “east of the Euphrates,” controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. At the same time, artillery opened fire across the border, hitting a number of towns and villages, causing local residents, including women and children, to flee for their lives. In Turkey itself, large numbers of tanks and fighting vehicles were massing, apparently in preparation for a large-scale land incursion.

According to the SDF, which has ordered a general mobilisation, Turkish troops were halted on the approaches to several large towns and appear to be awaiting reinforcement.

The object of the operation, according to Turkish President Recep Erdogan, was to clear out Kurdish “terrorists” allied to the banned PKK in Turkey itself and to create a safe zone in which Syrian refugees, currently living in camps in southern Anatolia, can be re-settled, in effect establishing an ethnic Arab buffer against the SDF.

How the offensive will end, it is too early to say. But there is little doubt that Erdogan intends to deliver a blow to the Kurds from which they will not easily recover. He will not be overly concerned about the impact on the Kurdish population native to the region. As far as he is concerned, Kurdish nationalism, wherever it resides, is a threat to the integrity of the Turkish state that cannot and will not be tolerated.

Trump, meanwhile, looks to have washed his hands of the affair. Having belatedly warned Erdogan that he would “obliterate” his country’s economy if it overreached itself in Syria, he confined himself yesterday to saying that he did not “endorse” what was happening, which seemed to him to be a “bad idea”.

While many of his fellow Republicans were expressing their dismay over the consequences of the “green light” he gave to Erdogan on Sunday, Trump himself was apparently preoccupied with the Democrats’ efforts to impeach him, and even with the thought that his old sparring partner, Hillary Clinton, might re-emerge as his opponent in next year’s presidential election.

The consternation Republicans felt as Erdogan’s tanks rolled was obvious. Senator Lindsay Graham, of South Carolina, a prominent Trump loyalist, vowed yesterday to make Turkey pay a heavy price for its precipitate action. More revealingly, he said he would “pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump Administration”. Other GOP luminaries were similarly moved to distance themselves from the President.

Astonishingly, as though unaware of the likely realities on the ground in Syria. Trump chose to demand of the Kurds that they continue to mount guard over captured ISIS prisoners. Otherwise, he told journalists, “they’re going to be escaping to Europe”.

As for the Kurds themselves, “They didn’t help the US in World War II”.

It is as if the occupant of the White House, lost in his twitter stream and and obsessed by his personal political survival, has given up entirely on his role as Leader of the Free World. In his original online announcement of the pull-out of U.S. troops, he said he was fed up with “stupid, endless wars”, yet again underlining not only his America First policy but an egoism unique among holders of his office.

Only nativists, holed up in their mountain redoubts, stacked with guns and cans of tinned beans, could possibly approve the President’s actions. All other Americans, including its diplomats and its military top brass, must be embarrassed and ashamed.

Where Syria’s strongman Bashar-Al Assad and his principle backer, Vladimir Putin, fit into the new circumstances remains to be seen. Putin has been courting Erdogan in the last couple of years – even supplying him with high-grade weaponry –  and Assad’s priority up until yesterday was in consolidating his hold on territory regained by his troops with Russian and Iranian help and clearing out Isis fighters from their remaining holdouts.

Britain, meanwhile, along with France and Germany, have been forced to respond to an act of gross irresponsibility by their senior coalition partner in the region. The Kurds are hoping for early action from the EU and the UK, condeming the Turks and distancing themselves from Trump.

Britain’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab issued a statement in which he expressed his “serious concern” about the Turkey’s unilateral intervention which, he said, “risked destabilising the region, exacerbating humanitarian suffering, and undermining the progress made against Daesh which should be our collective focus.”

Turkey, Raab went on, had shown considerable generosity in hosting millions of Syrian refugees, “but we will not support plans for returns until the conditions are in place for a voluntary and safe return home”.

Such condemnation will be noted but is likely to have little impact on the ground. Only a strong condemnation from the UN Security Council would have much effect, and, with Russia and America on opposing sides of the conflict, how likely is that?

And while the world dithers, the Kurds have their backs to the wall. The aircraft and heavy weapons of the U.S. were their shield, and now that shield has been withdrawn, with consequences that could result in the deaths of thousands.

The Kurds were the West’s strong right arm in Syria. They were our allies and our friends. The respect in which they are held even by ordinary Britons who know little of the complexities of what has been a horrendous conflict is plain for all to see.

They have been betrayed by Donald Trump. They have been abandoned to their number one enemy at a moment of maximum vulnerability. This cannot stand. Britain and Europe must act.

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