Boston-area Kurds are pleading with their senators and representatives to stop the “massacre and genocide” they say is awaiting their relatives in Kurdistan should President Trump remove U.S. troops from the Syrian border.
“It’s going to be bloody,” said Sardar Jajan, of Watertown, whose sister, aunt and uncles still live in the part of Syrian Kurdistan most at risk of attack with the removal of U.S. troops. “Our people will pay the price — from children to old people. Will be devastated.”
Trump announced late Sunday he will remove U.S. troops from northern Syria, and said the U.S. will not intervene in long-planned advance by Turkey against Kurdistan forces — the Kurds have been a strategic ally in Syria and played an important role in the defeat of ISIS.
“If U.S. turns its back on them and waits for violations of human rights, massacre and genocide, it will be too late,” said Shawnam Osman, a refugee from Iraqi Kurdistan who has lived in Dorchester with her family for 20 years.
Trump’s proposal stirred bipartisan backlash, drawing criticisms from U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said on Twitter that the move “ensures ISIS comeback” and Trump’s former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who tweeted Trump was leaving America’s Kurdish allies “to die.”
“I am too sad to hear American troops are pulling out of Syria. The Kurds have been the boots on the ground for the U.S. Army. Pulling out from the region will be a catastrophe,” said Jajan, noting he hopes the strong reaction from political leaders across the aisle could lead to a more gradual removal of troops.
Kurdish people are considered the largest stateless ethnic group in the world, with more than 28 million living throughout the Kurdistan region, spread across parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Another 10-to-15 million Kurdish immigrants and refugees live in Europe and North America. Up to 1,000 are believed to live in New England.
Soma Syan, 23, a Kurdish refugee and a political science student at UMass Boston who founded the Kurdish Student Alliance last year, is working with partners at other Kurdish community organizations to rally people to lobby their senators to halt the pullback of troops in northern Syria.
“We speak the same language, we have the same culture, the same everything but because of certain borders they face more challenges,” said Syan, who is from Iraqi Kurdistan.
