By Matt Underwood Syria’s Kurdish community is extending a stark warning to their Iranian counterparts, urging them to exercise extreme caution and resist any temptation to align with the United States in a potential confrontation against Tehran. This cautionary tale stems from their own deeply felt experiences of what they perceive as American abandonment, a pattern they fear the Iranian Kurds might also fall victim to.
The sentiment among Syrian Kurds is that aligning with the U.S. comes with an inherent and predictable risk of being left vulnerable. They draw parallels to past situations where allies found themselves unsupported after serving American interests, suggesting that any agreement between the U.S. and Iran could, in the future, lead to the immediate marginalization and abandonment of Kurdish aspirations.
For over a decade, Syrian Kurdish fighters forged a partnership with the U.S., a crucial alliance that helped in the fight against the Islamic State. This collaboration led to the establishment of a semi-autonomous region in territories reclaimed from ISIS. However, recent events, including the Syrian government’s successful offensive that reclaimed most of these Kurdish-held areas, left the Syrian Kurds feeling exposed when their calls for U.S. intervention were met with recommendations to integrate with the Syrian forces.
This sense of betrayal and concern about being “betrayed” is a sentiment echoed by Iranian Kurdish sources as well, who have reportedly expressed anxieties mirroring the experiences of their Syrian brethren. The specter of being used and then discarded by a powerful ally is a deeply ingrained fear.
There’s a palpable sense of déjà vu, with some observing that the lessons learned from past alliances, or rather, the failures of them, seem to be a recurring theme. The analogy is drawn to historical moments of evacuation, like Saigon in 1975 and Kabul in 2021, serving as stark reminders that reliance on American promises, however strong they may seem at the time, often requires a robust fallback strategy.
The core of the Syrian Kurds’ message is rooted in the belief that the U.S. engagement with Kurdish groups has historically been transactional, serving a specific purpose for a limited duration. Once that objective is met, or when geopolitical calculations shift, the commitment to these allies appears to evaporate, leaving them to face the consequences alone. This cyclical pattern of alliance and abandonment is seen as a persistent feature of how the U.S. interacts with minority groups seeking self-determination or fighting against regional powers.
Furthermore, the Syrian Kurds point to the precarious nature of U.S. commitments, especially in the context of volatile regional politics. They emphasize that any perceived American encouragement to confront Iran is inherently risky, given past instances where such directives have led to putting their lives on the line, only to be left without sustained support once the immediate threat or strategic goal has been addressed.
The argument is made that the U.S. has a history of breaking deals and betraying allies for what are often perceived as short-term, strategic gains. This creates a long-lasting erosion of trust, making it incredibly difficult for any group to rely on American assurances in the long run. The Syrian Kurds’ warning is, therefore, a plea born from bitter experience, a desire to prevent others from suffering a similar fate.
The Iranian Kurdish leadership is advised to be wary, as past interactions with the U.S. have often concluded with a sense of being used and then forgotten. This pattern is not isolated to one administration but is seen as a consistent, albeit unfortunate, aspect of U.S. foreign policy, particularly when dealing with groups in complex geopolitical landscapes.
A key aspect of this caution is the inherent unreliability attributed to the U.S. as an ally, a perception that has been exacerbated by recent events and past policy decisions. The Syrian Kurds’ advice serves as a somber testament to the fragility of alliances built on shifting sands of international relations.
The Syrian Kurds’ counsel to their Iranian counterparts is essentially a stark, lived experience lesson: the U.S. can be a powerful partner, but history and recent events strongly suggest that such partnerships are ultimately transient and can end with profound disappointment and vulnerability for those who depend on them.