Journalist Houda-Pepin: We betrayed the Kurds

In an article in the Journal de Montreal, journalist Fatima Houda-Pepin said “we have betrayed the Kurds”.

Fatima Houda-Pepin wrote in the Journal de Montreal (https://www.journaldemontreal.com/auteurs/fatima-houda-pepin ) that Kurds “have been abandoned with a tweet by President Trump, who announced, on December 18, the unilateral withdrawal of American troops in Syria, which led to the resignation of his Secretary in Defense, Jim Mattis.”

Houda-Pepin said that the “abandonment” happened after “the United States and its allies had set their sights on this brave people to protect them from the Islamist threat. With rudimentary weapons and a determination to move the mountains” the Kurds have managed to bring the Islamic State to the verge of defeat.

The journalist also reminded of Kurdish women who “have prove to be formidable fighters” and added: “By sacrificing the Kurds on the altar of his reconciliation with the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Donald Trump delivers them to their sworn enemy, who dreams of erasing them from the map.”

The Americans, she said “are repeating the same mistakes they made in Iraq that gave birth to the emergence of the Islamic Caliphate”, and she warned: “Far from disappearing, IS is becoming international while strengthening its bases in the Middle East, Afghanistan and the Sahel.”

Clearly, said Houda-Pepin, “we betrayed the Kurds.”