Syrians Broadly Welcome U.S. Withdrawal

Outside of Kurdistan, many are upbeat about post-US Syria
Jason Ditz
Antiwar.com
Dec. 25, 2018

While US media coverage of the withdrawal from Syria has been presented as sending the entire world into a tizzy about what will happen next, with the Syrians presented as viewing the pullout as an “American betrayal.”

That may hold true for Syrian Kurds, the one group of allies the US has kept in the war, but most everyone else seems upbeat about the prospect of a US withdrawal. Syrians living in Turkish-backed territory in particular are hopeful this will mean the return of some cities which the US backed the Kurdish YPG in taking to the population largely driven out by the fighting.

Those in the Syrian government’s territory also clearly benefit, as while the US is never entirely openly at war with them, US attacks aren’t unheard of, and even in the best of times the US has tried to destabilize those areas in the name of regime change.

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