Summary
The commander of Syrian Kurdish forces didn't use the word "betrayal". But with U.S. troops withdrawing from the Turkish-Syrian border and Turkish troops poised to attack, he warned Monday morning that a bloodbath could be ahead -- and pleaded for continued U.S. support.
Mazloum told me that U.S. forces had withdrawn from observation posts along the frontier but remain in major SDF garrisons, such as Ain al-Arab (known in Kurdish as Kobani).
Mazloum said he was sending "thousands" from his total force, which he estimated at 70,000, north toward the border to defend Kurdish areas.
The Syrian Kurdish commander said the real danger was that Turkish forces would attempt "ethnic cleansing" -- evicting Kurds from their ancestral lands in northeast Syria and installing Syrian Arab refugees who have been living in camps in Turkey since the Syrian civil war began.
Mazloum scoffed at Sunday night's White House statement that the Daesh prison camps would be protected by Turkish forces, noting that the foreign fighters had initially entered Syria through a porous Turkish border.
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