Sanctions? Just Kidding Chum!

"Despite the agreement to halt the fighting, air and artillery attacks continue to target the positions of fighters, civilian settlements and the hospital [in Ras al-Ayn]."
"Turkey is violating the ceasefire agreement by continuing to attack the town since last night."
Mustafa Bali, chief spokesperson, northeastern Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)

"[D]espite the cease-fire deal, the Turks are still continuing airstrikes and ground offensive against Ras al Ain."
"Some civilians have been killed in Turkish strikes, as they were trying to save some injured [people] stuck inside the city."
Ilhan Hamed, Syrian Kurdish politician

"I never expected it to hold, as each side read it completely differently, and there’s no enforcement mechanism."
"We have very little to no leverage here. Honestly, I don’t know what to say other than that amidst this idiocy."
Faysal Itani, Syria expert, Atlantic Council, Washington

Deadly Turkish air strikes on Friday shattered an hours-old US-brokered deal to stop Ankara's military offensive against Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria

“As far as he [SDF commander, Mazloum Kobani] is concerned, the ceasefire is only where there’s active fighting and he totally rejects the idea of any kind of withdrawal, any removal of heavy weapons."
"So everyone seems to be talking a different language, which can only spell more trouble."
Charles Lister, Syria expert, Middle East Institute

None of which stops U.S. President Donald Trump from crowing that he has single-handedly, as a reflection of the great wisdom with which he is endowed, solved a long-standing problem in the Middle East. Throwing the loyal Kurds whose fighting mettle and sacrifices of over a thousand fighters in the conflict against Islamic State, assured the United States that the virulent threat of Islamist jihad reaching out to the United States no longer loomed as a concern.

A misapprehended belief on Trump's part to begin with, content to leave the tens of thousands of Islamic State prisoners for the Syrian Democratic Forces to be saddled with, guarding the venomous serpents from escape and the inevitable re-invigoration of their marauding, slaughtering forces on the local ethnic and religious minority populations along with outreach to foreign conscripts to jihad under the black-death banner of ISIL.

The brilliant tactical brain that modestly admitted that he had personally 'solved' the Islamic State threat to the world at large, appeared not to have envisaged the end result of allowing a Kurd-hating Erdogan free reign to cleanse the border of Syria of its stable Kurdish presence to create a "safe zone" for the Turkish president to dump millions of Syrian Sunni refugees. At one fell swoop extinguishing Syrian Kurds from the area, while forcibly settling Arab Syrians in their place as a buffer.

That wonderful agreement between an eastern and a western tyrant, saw one allowing the other to hold onto the territory his troops and allies had taken from Kurdish fighters, in the gullible pretence that Turkey had no intention, none whatever, of expanding its breach into Syrian territory. And since Recep Tayyip Erdogan had so obligingly agreed to presenting alongside Trump the facade of a withdrawal, the reward is twofold; Ankara retains plundered Syrian-Kurdish territory, and "massive" new sanctions will not be implemented.

Syrian rebel fighters in the border town of Tal Abyad.  Khalil Ashawi/Reuters

As shams go, the affair could not conceivably be any shabbier and transparent. While committing to a permanent ceasefire in the wake of a Kurdish retreat, no promise to withdraw the Turkey-partnering Free Syrian Army fighters, enabling them to continue enjoying their murderous conquest spree. Eliciting a comment from a Turkish official that thanks to the agreement, Turkey "got exactly what we wanted out of the meeting". 

The U.S. then felt free to agreeably convince the YPG forces to withdraw. "Good news", tweeted the world's premier twit. "This deal could never have been made three days ago. There needed to be some 'tough' love in order to get it done. Great for everybody. Proud of all!" According to U.S. Vice-President Pence, YPG leaders had "greatly welcomed", the deal. He also stated U.S. readiness to work with the YPG on an "orderly withdrawal" from the 32km zone, already underway on Thursday evening.

The YPG, on the other hand indicated no intention to surrender that territory.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

Just spoke to President @RTErdogan of Turkey. He told me there was minor sniper and mortar fire that was quickly eliminated. He very much wants the ceasefire, or pause, to work. Likewise, the Kurds want it, and the ultimate solution, to happen. Too bad there wasn’t.....

54.9K

11:42 AM - Oct 18, 2019

A Virtually Impossible Challenge...

"Given the numbers, the Kurdish authorities and International Committee of the Red Cross are just overwhelmed in terms of registering and finding out who is coming."
"Our top priority at the present moment is to identify the unaccompanied children, to notify the governments that we have found children without parents, and to see whether somewhere from China to Argentina there is family of unaccompanied children to which we can send the kids back."
"We have seen in those camps there are not only families of foreign fighters but we see also victims of Islamic State aggressions in the past."
"We found Yazidi women who have been abducted by Islamic State into Baghouz, who have been enslaved in Baghouz, who managed to get out [of Baghouz]. Because they can't prove who they are they are basically put in detention-like facility in camps."
"[The ICRC's first priority is the return of unaccompanied children] and second we try to see whether women with their children who wish to return can be returned."
"We are just looking at a pretty stark picture of a highly complex situation in which we see that nobody is particularly interested to put structures, processes in place, to deal with the issue beyond emergency assistance."
"The big issue" is to find a system to deal with the different categories of people and identify who's a victim, who's been involved in criminal activity, who remains highly radicalized — and then determine what to do with them."
"Even for me, it was quite an experience to talk to those women who are extremely radical in their approach and think Islamic State will be back, and it's just a temporary displacement. They think nothing bad has happened."  
Peter Maurer, president, International Committee of the Red Cross

The ICRC calls the situation at al-Hol a 'humanitarian emergency.' (Issam Abdallah/Reuters)

"I don't want to raise my kids in a society [Germany] that's totally corrupt, where every sin is promoted."
"The afterlife is forever."
German ISIL 'wife'

"Our brothers are everywhere, in Germany, in Russia, in America -- we believe that al-Dawla al-Islamia [the Arabic name of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] will come back."
Chechen woman, 22, Islamic State wife

"Nothing has changed."
"The children are innocent, but when they end up in the camp, they will learn what their parents teach."
Mohammed Bashir,  camp administrator, Al Hol Camp, Syria

Trinidadian Galion Su, 45, is hoping she will be able to leave the camp so she can locate her teen-age son. They were brought to Syria in 2014 by her husband, but was soon afterward divorced. That led her to 'marry' four men, each on the condition she would be permitted to keep her son with her. Then Islamic State jihadists wanted to force him to become a fighter. She camouflaged him as a girl, and they fled but were arrested by Kurdish forces. "I just want to be normal and go back to a normal society", she said.

A woman from the Netherlands left, to go abroad to Syria with the express purpose of joining the Islamic State. There she married one of their fighters. When he was killed, she married another. Before the second was killed, she became pregnant. As the Islamic State collapsed, she gave herself up to the YPG, ending up in the Al Hol tent camp, there joining the human tide of the former Islamic State caliphate.

Al Hol Camp is surrounded by chain link fencing with armed guards on duty. Originally the tent camp held around 9,000 people in detention, back in December. When the final territory of the Islamic State fell, the population of the camp increased to over 72,000. It is now held to be the temporary home of 100,000 people, a high percentage of children, some unaccompanied. The original problem was how to counter and defeat the expansionary, deadly plans of Islamic State.

Now the concern is a totally humanitarian issue, what to do with the tens of thousands of 'leftovers' from the camp, the woman who had joined ISIl, and their offspring, now that the terrorist network has been deprived of its territorial caliphate. In the foreigners' area of the camp, thousands of women speak in English, Russian, French, Chinese and other languages. Women with babies, with toddlers, with older children who were indoctrinated into the Islamic State ideology even at their young and impressionable age.

It is their impressionability, along with their current condition and ongoing exposure to the venomous ideology of the terrorist jihadist movement that concerns humanitarian agencies. There are three detention camps the Kurdish-led administration operates in northeastern Syria; Al Hol is the largest. There are tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis and according to Redur Xelil with the Syrian Democratic Forces, there are 12,000 foreign women and children, aside from the over 8,000 ISIL fighters in prisons.

Most countries have no wish to welcome the caliphate's former residents back in their home countries, while France, Russia and Chechnya have accepted some of their citizens for return. Local concern in Syria is that without international support the Islamic State could reform and once again launch its civilizational assault of Islamist terror. Of the children at Al Hol, many witnessed their father's deaths; violence was commonly witnessed by them, some of the children taught to commit it themselves.

As far as camp officials are concerned, their hands, attention, time and resources are spent with providing tents, food and medical attention to the residents. There is no energy left to be concerned about offering schooling for the children. The issue of dealing with people suffering psychological afflictions given what their experiences have been -- sought or dealt out -- is beyond their capacity to respond to.

The camp was initially built to house about 5,000 people. There are now as many as 100,000 there. (Issam Abdallah/Reuters)