Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant and Jerry Gordon bring back Dilliman Abdulkader, a Kurdish policy expert.
Abdulkader is director of external relations at Allegiance Strategies, a Washington, DC -based public affairs consulting firm. יhis family fled from Kirkuk, Iraq during the Gulf War and spent seven years as a child in the Al-Hol refugee camp in northeastern Syria now filled with 70,000 ISIS fighters and families.
Abdulkader said Erdogan’s Turkish Armed Forces unleashed a jihadist terror war using former Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and ISIS fighters to ethnically cleanse Kurds from their ancestral homeland in northeastern Syria.
He noted Friday preaching in Turkish Mosques of the Quranic Mohammedan Army verses promoting jihad against Kurds, Jews, Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities.
He thinks President Trump’s proposed sanctions are not as tough as those in proposed bi- partisan legislation co-sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chris Van Holen (D-MD).
Abdulkader adds that it would be in Israel’s long-term interest to support Kurdish interests in northeastern Syria. He suggests Israel reduce exports to Turkey akin to EU arms embargoes.
He contends that the US presence on the ground while symbolic is necessary to preserve the gains of Kurds and other religious minorities to stabilize the area. The alternative facing the US is the resurgence of ISIS that cost 11,000 Syrian Kurdish lives to defeat the Caliphate.