Tug Of War

Turkey’s offensive into Syria launched a new round of horror and death for fighters and civilians

- Tara Chan

More than half a million people have been killed. Millions more have lost their homes, seeking safe reguge elsewhere. This is the toll of Syria’s eight-year civil war. And when U.S. troops retreated from northeastern Syria in October, allowing for a new offensive by Turkey, a fresh wave of horrors was unleashed on local families and children as well as Kurdish soldiers who had been fighting ISIS alongside the U.S. military.

Two weeks later, on October 23, the Trump administration celebrated a permanent ceasefire, an end to a disaster that was largely of its own making. The decision to withdraw was seen widely as a betrayal of U.S. allies and got almost no Republican support on Capitol Hill. After the Americans left, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 120 civilians were killed. In addition, 275 Syrian Democratic Forces fighters, 196 Turkey-backed Syrian rebels, and 10 Turkish soldiers were killed. Three hundred thousand civilians were forced to flee.